Request: Subjective Input/Personal Reccomendations
Nov 13, 2008 at 7:23 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 6

Draesk

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Hi,

I've been looking around head-fi for years now, but never registered. After slaving over technical details for days on end, your posts finally convinced me go with the Denon AH-D2000s when I was selecting some high-end cans for myself a while ago (which is a decision that I am particularly happy with).

After that small financial black-hole, I was in no position to buy myself an amp to go with it. However, now I am (or I can at least ask to be given one for Christmas!). I've been looking through details of various amps for a while now, but even what I've found was kind of difficult to extract - information on amps isn't nearly as wide-spread as on their end-of-line brethren.

I've had an overdose of objective information, and for once, I don't really find myself much closer to enlightenment. So, I've decided to try and find myself some subjective information. I'm looking for an amp to go with the headphones above: portability isn't an issue (it could be housed in an ATX case for all I care), but price is - I'm running on roughly a $200 budget. If the chosen amp would give me a back-rub and wash the dishes at the same time, I might just stretch to $300. I also, unfortunately in this case, live in the UK. As such, I'm severely limited in where I can buy things from - sources outwith the UK incur heavy shipping fees, and worse still, when customs get their grubby paws on the package, they hold it hostage until I fork up the 17.5% VAT for it.

"Feature" wise, I'd prefer if it came with a DC power adapter so that I'm not chewing batteries for the rest of its life, but it's not a deal-breaker. From what I gather, amps have a frequency response too (I originally thought they just re-produced the signal?). In that case, it's pretty important to me that the amp doesn't have a lesser range than my cans. You can throw the 20Hz rule at me all you want, but you can still feel frequencies below that - besides, what's 5 - 10Hz for if not just rumbling along?
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I know this may sound daft, but I'd like the amp to have at least the input socket on the back - the output can be on the front or the back. For clarification, I'm defining the "front" as the side that has the volume control. Again, this isn't deal-breaking, but it would make life easier for me. 1/8" would also be preferable, but now I'm just nit-picking.

Given those criteria, what would you buy, venerable head-fi users?

(folk recommending anything by Behringer will be hung, drawn, quartered and fed to Behringer execs)
 
Nov 13, 2008 at 8:19 AM Post #2 of 6
I'm particularly smitten with my latest amp, which does unholy good things with my markl-modified Denon D5000s. It's made by an obscure Chinese company to be found at http://audio-gd.com, and is $US330. However, it needs a proper source, such as a DAC or CD player (that is, something that sends a proper line-out signal) as it has impedance buffers built-in.

That being said, what's your source? Suggesting amps wont be much help if you're, say, using a crappy computer sound card to play music with.
 
Nov 13, 2008 at 5:10 PM Post #4 of 6
Quote:

Originally Posted by Currawong /img/forum/go_quote.gif
That being said, what's your source? Suggesting amps wont be much help if you're, say, using a crappy computer sound card to play music with.


Oh, my mistake. Sorry I forgot to mention that - I blame the fact squarely on the fact I made the post at 7am - without having been in bed for the preceding hours, that is.

Anyway, I'm running a Creative X-Fi Music Edition. I know it's perhaps not ideal - should I be changing that first?
 
Dec 3, 2008 at 3:20 AM Post #6 of 6
scaz is right. Ideally you'd like to upgrade everything at some point, but might as well start off with an amp first.

You are also right that amps impart their own characterisitics to the sound. The first thing is seeing those frequency response spectrums. Your typical amp will be pretty flat, but that's not giving you the hole picture.
Even with a flat frequency response, amps can change the way the music sounds, by messing with the soundstage, 'quickness', etc.

You live in the UK, so check out the headphone amp by Musical Fidelity. You may even have a dealer near you that carries it. A lot of people have started out using the X Can V3 with good results.
 

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