hakunamakaka
1000+ Head-Fier
A good amp with ok headphones will always give you a better result than good headphones with an ok amp. It’s pretty obvious that the speakers (headphones) can’t correct for problems earlier in the chain. Anyone who has put together enough two channel systems knows this. Idk why the headphone guys don’t seem to accept it. Source first, then amplification, then speakers (headphones). The good news about the 600s is that they will scale up very well as you improve your sources and amplification.
Well I usually don't bother with hard to drive stuff much. With speakers I always went with active monitors and regards headphones majority of them are easy to drive today. I agree that source matters and it's not logical to blow all your $$ on speakers/headphones, but things that reproduce sound is still a priority for me. I don't see myself buying an amp/dac first and then trying to find a headphone which would pair nice with them. When I hear stuff reproducing music than I can adjust what could pair with it.
When I was looking for my desktop headphone setup I went to audio shop and I've tried HD600 from various sources and they did sound good on some tube amps for cozy&relaxed evening listening sessions while timbre being their best trait. These amps though where expensive 2000$-5000$ + a good DAC if you want to extract the last bit of goodness from HD600. Then I gave it a go for Utopia which was driven from a portable DAP player and it was a game over for my wallet.
Different folks can have fetish for a different gear, some for amps, others for speakers or cables. My route with focusing on headphones\speakers first, simply works best for me
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