SolarCetacean
500+ Head-Fier
Do you apply those same relaxed standards to regular headphone amps? Does it matter if a normal headphone amp rolls off in the high frequencies? If a regular headphone amp measurably rolled off the upper treble by several dB, ASR and all of the amp measurement reviewers would be throwing a fit. Headless panthers and all. Yet with estat amps, somehow we get into this discussion on whether amps really need to have linearity throughout the entire frequency range.They clearly don't see the need to do a full voltage swing at 20 kHz, because, well, it's pointless lol
An ideal amp is a wire with gain. That means at minimum full bandwidth from <20 Hz to >20KHz. And it's not like we're dealing with excessive amounts of headroom either. Bob Katz measured the Audeze CRBN acoustically on the Mjolnir Carbon and that amp, one of the most powerful amps on the market, only went up to 113 dB SPL before clipping. This isn't normal headphone amps that have practically unlimited headroom on regular headphones.