[hk91320]

I made this comment in a different thread, but thought it might warrant its own discussion. So here it is....has any of you tried using good speaker cables for your headphone? 
 
I have both HE-6 and HE-500. Given that I drive them with speaker amps, I wondered... What if I drive them with a decent quality speaker cables? It so happens that I had Audioquest Copperhead speaker cables lying around in the house. They were not too high end, but reasonably thin good cables at $2-300/pair for typical 6ft pair of speaker cables. I had 12+ ft pair of these cables, so I connected HifiMan headphone connectors on one end to see what would happen.
 
Well... they actually sound MUCH better than the stock HE-6 cable that I was using for both cans. More open, more organic, and quite a bit less veiled sounding. I didn't think my HifiMans sounded veiled before this experiment... This was after about 50 hours of break-in. These cables are heavier (obviously), and somewhat cumbersome to use, but they do sound better. 
 
Has anyone used even higher end speaker cables for their cans? I am thinking something like Audience AU24 which are pretty thin. Maybe even Cardas Golden Reference might work since while a bit heavy, they are pretty flexible. Of course, these cables of any reasonable length would be more expensive than most headphones... 
 
Is there anyone crazy enough to try it? 

 

[chowmanfu]

I'm crazy enough to try it, but I want to make sure it's a good idea with my PureDAC amp. Trying to find out if its worth using the speaker outs at all, or just sticking with the balanced headphone jack.
 
Since I already have the PureDAC and PureUSB1, I figured I'd stick with BMC and try their copper MonoC cable. Can't find a price for them though.
 
I've also got HE-6's. I'm really wondering just what a difference this cable can make, and coming out of the speaker outs!

 

[liamstrain]

Shouldn't make any difference at all. Might look funny. 

 

[chowmanfu]

Darn. So output is the same, whether through balanced headphone or speaker out? The HE-6's are great with the PureDAC, except the low end. I get better low end from my IEM's. I was hoping speaker out would solve the issue.

 

[liamstrain]

If the amplifier (power and impedance) are the same, then yes - there would not be an output difference. If you are using different amplifiers - then there might be a difference, depending on the above factors and the impedance curve of the HE-6's. 
 
I had misunderstood and though the discussion was just about using speaker cables in place of a smaller headphone cable. 

 

[Bansaku]

You mean like this?
 

 

[chowmanfu]

Yup, something like that. Well, I think I just have to get another amp and use my PureDAC for a Preamp. Found this WA22 on the wooaudio website.
 
http://www.wooaudio.com/products/wa22.html
 
It looks like it will be a beautiful match for the pureDAC, but then again, I don't know what all the numbers mean yet. I might open up another post about that though. Thanks for your help guys!