Unless you know for certain that the amps have a common ground, do NOT use any adapter that reduces down to a 1/4" headphone connector. Really, the safest thing you can do is use a balanced headphone connector like a 4-pin XLR and built a speaker tap adapter to mate with that.
You need a set of speaker taps to connect to the amp speaker outs, and a balanced cable for your cans to attach to the speaker taps. You could make one cable that connects directly to the amp, but then you would have to unhook the 4 wires from the amp and rehook different ones each time you change headphones. It is simpler to have separate taps that you just leave connected to the amp(s), and just snap the XLR connector in or out each time.
There are multiple folks on head-fi who make these connectors for reasonable prices, and several more who make them for unreasonable prices. If you are a cable believer, feel free to contact the more expensive cable makers. I used Ron who goes by HiFlight here on Head-Fi to make my taps for ~$50, and bought eBay and/or Amazon balanced cables for my cans (I think I paid <<$100 for those). They work fine.
Hi,#i have 2 questions. I am usinf my abyss 1266 (46Ohm) directly from speaker output of my ayon crossfire (30Watt - 8 Ohm). I am always turning it down before i switch it on and do not listen to loudly. A friend of mine warned me that this combination (speaker aoutput 8 ohm anf 46 Ohm HP) could damage my tube amplifier or both amp and HP. And that the tubes and amplifier parts get used much quicker.
I am loving this combo (ayon - abyss) so it would be a very bad news for me to give this u.
What should i do?
if you dont need any attenuation, can just run a 10ohm, 5+watt resistor across the 8 ohm and ground terminals of the amp. Make sure you get non-inductive resistors. Then hook up the headphones to the same terminals. This will give you an 8.2 ohm total. I use this for my HE-6, and have had no problems for the year or more that ive had it set up.
Please for the love of judas, don't build the Robinette box. Under no circumstances should there ever be a switch that can bridge terminals of a speaker amp together, even with resistors in the path. There should never ever be a 1/4" jack attached to speaker outputs unless you know with 110% certainty that the amp has a common ground on the negative terminals. But at that point if you have the skillset to recognize this and are even considering building the box, then you definitely have enough skill to reterminate your headphone for XLR4 and not bother with the stupid thing in the first place.
If your tube amp has transformer coupled outputs, then as CrocCap mentioned slap a resistor across the binding posts to present a constant load to the amplifier. If you've got a solid state amp, you've got nothing to worry about.
It's just a bad design that unnecessarily risks damaging your amplifier.
A plain XLR4 speaker tap is far safer. A plain L-pad is far safer.
Banana-to-1/4" adapters should be abolished completely, not only because of the risk they present to non-common-ground amps, but because TRS plugs will create shorts as they are inserted.
Just found this thread. I initially posted a thread here, but didn't get a response: http://www.head-fi.org/t/822757/using-a-speaker-amp-for-hd-800-any-engineers
Essentially, I was wondering if someone could take a look at the following amp and see if it could match with the HD 800.
http://www.amphion.fi/en/create/products/amp100/
It's based on Anaview AMS Modules: http://www.anaview.com/products/ams-series
I already have the amp which I use with my monitors, but was wondering if the HD 800 could work well with the Class D and the impedance mismatch. Is there an inherent danger in this pairing, aside from turning the amp too high?
As long as you keep the volume level down, there shouldn't be anything to worry about. The whole concept of impedance mismatch is really unnecessary when it comes to solid state amps (sure there's maybe a tiny bit of influence in terms of current draw, but for the most part it's not going to matter).
Hi,
well my amp is a tube one, but... I have contacted the producer and he said that there should be no problems. I have also compared my abyss directly via speaker output (8 Ohm) vs via hifiman adapter and there is a big difference in SQ. Abyss directly from speaker output of my ayon crossfire is the best HP setup i have ever heard. So if you got the chance to listen to it, do it!
THanks to my HE6 I discovered the joy of driving headphones through speaker amps. I sold the HE6 recently but the HD800S goes on the First Watt as well. Definitely like it better than the headphone out of the Benchmark DAC 3. Granted the headphone amp of the Benchmark unit is not TOTL The bass is quite pronounced with the First Watt, for a HD800S. If anyone owns a First Watt amp I highly recommend trying at least one pair of headphones through them.
It was the planars that got headphone fans interested in using a speaker amp. Once we rigged our other headphones to try them, the secret was out. But that don't make money.
Try APPJ Tube amp headphone adapter box on EBay
I have one and it is very transparent
I run a low gain 15watt KT88 tube power amp to drive my HD 800 and HE560
Using my PS Audio PWD DAC II it sounds great ;the output is 2.0V max
The iDSD Micro works better / I have to put the power lever from ECO to Normal esp for the HE560 which is lower efficiency than the HD800
When I try the APPJ on my High gain Audionote 300 b monoblocs, I have to crank back the volume on
The HQPlayer software
Still I get a low level hiss in the background
Fitting a 10 watt 1% wire wound resistor to get higher attenuation to reduce the hiss
How do you connect?
RCA from the DAC to the tube amp then speaker taps using speaker wire to speaker jacks into sockets at the rest of the APPJ
The Appj boc has 3.5mm and 6.35mm headphone sockets
It was the planars that got headphone fans interested in using a speaker amp. Once we rigged our other headphones to try them, the secret was out. But that don't make money.
I talked about this in the HiFiMAN HE-1000 thread just a couple days ago and the follow up response was "I respect your opinion, but using a speaker amp with headphones is just about the worst thing you could do ... Paying for watts, not quality ... Distortion ... Headphone amps are better for headphones ... Using no amp at all is best ..."
I'm not saying there's only 1 way to go, but I've been rather impressed with the 5-6 speaker amps I've used with headphones, now. And I completely plan on trying my 4-5 pairs of headphones all on various speaker amps and headphone amps because I now know that both can offer up some pretty great stuff.
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