[geardoc]

Its time to replace my living room reciever/home theatre system with a new one. I'm using a PC as a source for music and movies. It has optical out, so I'd like to find a reciever/amp with optical in and a good headphone out sound. What would be a good choice under about $300?

I don't need the 5/6/7.1 dts/dolby/latest, just good ole 2 channel stereo.

 

[macdane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by geardoc I'd like to find a reciever/amp with optical in and a good headphone out sound. What would be a good choice under about $300?

If you can do without the optical in and just want a good old fashioned receiver that sounds great and does a pretty nice job with headphones, I can't recommend Luxman receivers highly enough. I bought my wife an old R-113 for $100 and it served quite nicely in the headphone department while I shopped around for a dedicated amp. It also happens to sound flat out terrific with virtually any speakers you can reasonably imagine.

Other than Lux, I've had good results with the headphone outputs on Rotel integrated amps (do you need a tuner?). I don't know if either of these will help with your optical needs, but they're otherwise very worthwhile...and affordable.

 

[macdane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by macdane I bought my wife an old R-113 for $100 and it served quite nicely in the headphone department while I shopped around for a dedicated amp. It also happens to sound flat out terrific with virtually any speakers you can reasonably imagine.

Like this one:

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls....cvr&1115342453

35 w/ch and no remote, but it's a steal!

 

[Asterix]

I have to put in another vote for Luxman. I love my LX-33 integrated amp to death, and I'll never sell it. It's a tube amp with a great headphone out.

 

[Nak Man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by geardoc so I'd like to find a reciever/amp with optical in and a good headphone out sound. What would be a good choice under about $300? I don't need the 5/6/7.1 dts/dolby/latest, just good ole 2 channel stereo.

Imo it would be difficult to find 2ch stereo amp / receiver with optical in ?? I would suggest going 'older' rather than newer offerings for good phones output. For 'budget' gears, it's almost always a trade off between 'features' such as digital processing / optical in with good output. For old integrated with no optical in, my favorite is audiolab 8000a, phones sound powerful yet not as muddy as with other receivers. Never compared into detail with the others though.

 

[jpelg]

For your budget, I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find something with all those features. As others have suggested, vintage (mid 70's-early 80's) tend to have decent headphone jacks, and can be gotten off of eBay for little $$. Marantz receivers have gotten good press in this regard. Do a search here on this board, and you will turn up a lot of info on them.

The thing about receiver headphone jacks is that they tend to have a high output impedance. This may not match well with your headphones. For example, Senn's tend to like headphone jacks with near-0 ohm output impedance to sound best.

 

[peter braun]

I personally recommend the vintage Sansui units such as the 4000. The 6060 and 7070 are solid units also. I have no experience with the Marantz receivers but the 2220B and 2230 models are well regarded.

 

[geardoc]

Sounds like under $50 at ebay will do the trick with the search terms you guys mentioned.

I did get a chance to try a $300 Yamaha receiver at a local audio store that sounded good (headphone out to Grado SR125). But it didn't have any optical/SPDIF capability.

A similarly priced Denon AV receiver had considerable hiss at the headphone out, though it had SPDIF.

I'll mostly be using my Senn's and A900's for listening, so I'm worried that the output impedance issue on the older models. I guess if ebay has something for <$50 its no great loss.

Ah decisions. Maybe I should forget this idea and just start saving for a full sized headphone amp. Gilmore lite, maybe, or DAC1. Who listens to radio anyway? Its sound is poor and there are no jazz stations here.

 

[Aye75]

Try any NAD receivers which could be bought cheap used... not sure which model has any optical out though
Reason I'm suggesting this is I currently own a nad302 receiver at home which is heavily modified with panasonic fc caps, some nichicon muse fg, vishay dale resistors, vishay reoderstein polypropelyne caps etc etc and to me they sound really good.

Currently I'm also building a PPA which is done but using only 2 internsil buffers per channel. I bought originally 12 but there were some problems with the rest so I could only use 2 buffers per channel...still waiting for the next order of buffers to arrive.

Anyway back to the point, at this current stage I find that I'm liking the output from the nads better compared to the PPA (I'm sure many would disagree with this) . I'm not sure if adding the rest of the buffers would improve the sound or anything. The ppa altough detail sounds a bit compressed to me (maybe it coz of the buffers ??). I also find that the nads out are more involving and have better seperation bla bla bla. It's quite surprising since these are coming from a stereo receiver which is not built for purely driving headphones.

Don't take my whole word on it since I'm not yet 100% finished with my PPA.. who knows what the final version would do to the sound ... plus it's currently still being powered by a regulated psu bought locally. STEPS is following later on..

but IMHO for the current specs the PPA currently has (cerafines+blackgate for c1, muse fg for c4, mkt 1837 for c5 etc etc) and comparing it to the sound the nads are producing, and taking into account how much can a used nad be had plus a few modifications, the nads are considered a steal.

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by geardoc Ah decisions. Maybe I should forget this idea and just start saving for a full sized headphone amp. Gilmore lite, maybe, or DAC1. Who listens to radio anyway? Its sound is poor and there are no jazz stations here.

I can't help in terms of jazz stations (only a good FM antenna and/or some luck with propagation might), but I disagree with radio - FM, that is - sounding poor, as long as the source material isn't processed to death. Rather it's the usual integrated FM/AM tuner parts that suck. The one in my Onkyo TX-SV636 (one of the very few Onkyo models with a half decent headphone output featuring at least a dedicated 4556 opamp and Rs = 3x 47 ohm instead of only a power amp connection via 390 ohms; the other opamps used are 4558s *shudder* and cry for being replaced) was quite OK, but a good standalone tuner made a noticeable difference particularly in highs and bass extension. The FM part in my parents' Sony 5.1 receiver sounds pretty shabby, rather thin in spite of the otherwise rather warm sound via 'phones. Since I'm mostly into Onkyo tuners, I'd recommend to lend an ear to, say, a T-407, T-4087, T-4017, T-4500 (unless affected by amnesia), T-4700, T-9060 and maybe T-4150. And do pay a visit to TIC.

I'm currently still looking for a good headphone amp solution myself. Maybe I'll just end up having my (basically satisfying) TX-SV636 modded, which IMO plays together nicely with the HD590s (maybe these work best with a ~120 ohm source resistance, which would explain why some have experienced them as bright sounding) and is hard to beat in terms of comfort (remote!) - internal cabling, opamps, caps, there certainly is enough worth upgrading in there.

 

[geardoc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aye75 Try any NAD receivers which could be bought cheap used... .snip

I'll definitely add NAD to the search. Plain looking units compared with vintage Marantz, Kenwood, Sansui, but it seems like they make up for it sound quality.

 

[kontai69]

The headphone output from my 10+year old NAD 1600 preamp/tuner sounds pretty clean through my Senn HD650/Zu Mobius. I can turn up the volume pretty high till my ears bleed and it still sounds good without any distortion or noise that I can hear. I'm eagerly awaiting for my Gilmore Lite to arrive to see how it compares.

 

[geardoc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgrossklass ..snip Since I'm mostly into Onkyo tuners, I'd recommend to lend an ear to, say, a T-407, T-4087, T-4017, T-4500 (unless affected by amnesia), T-4700, T-9060 and maybe T-4150. And do pay a visit to TIC.

Do many of these tuners have a useful headphone out? Or, would you
need to have a headphone amp? In looking at the photos on the Tuner
Information Center, I don't see any. Thats a cool site, by the way.

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by geardoc Do many of these tuners have a useful headphone out?

I think a few '70s vintage tuners had (fully discrete) headphone outputs, but generally only high-impedance line-outs are featured, which also applies to the models I mentioned.

BTW, the same precautions as for FOTM 'phones apply to FOTM tuners

. (A "discovery" at TIC usually drives up the prices to unrealistic levels.)

 

[purk]

Sony STR-DA777ES has a very nice headphone output. I think it is an equilvalent with maxed out Meta42 amp.