macdonjh
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2015
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Hush your mouth. THEY are listening...I wish more people understood that and I wish more people understood more watts does not equal better sound, only louder.
Sam Tellig (Stereophile, '90s) used to write something very similar in his column when he championed "flea-powered amplifiers".So, the undeniable fact of the matter is:
If you design headphone and power amps and you can't make the first one or two watts count for something? Then what the hell are you even doing.
All that said, from my experience, I agree in general with Bob Carver. Lots of power is required for lively dynamics and especially transients. The kind of signals which would confound VU meters and make you think your amplifiers never have more than a couple of watts of output.
Given your self-description, I think you might be putting too many pennies on the MX-5's head shell.Unless you're tall and fat like I am. I would totally rock a Miata, but it's just way too cramped.
Case for a Syn here got a little better: I did some searching and got reminded JRiver can down-mix (as well as up-mix) before sending the audio signal out. So my home theater chain might look something like: computer (down-mixing to 2.0 if necessary) -> Eitr -> Syn -> amps. I guess for convenience I'd leave my HDMI output connected to my pre-pro to send video to the TV. I've also got a Gungnir I don't use every day, so I could add that to the chain to see if it helps or hurts or doesn't add anything to playback. Initial assumption is it would be more noticeable to me during music playback. Maybe not at all during TV show playback.
Maker's Mark has an even stronger flavor than Balcones. I like the Balcones I had better (not the blue corn). I think it's Maker's Mark which has several batches with different profiles: sweet, spicy, etc. I'd be interested in trying a couple of those. I also have samples of Woodford Reserve and Bulleit on deck.