hahah yeah right 
The (Un)Official Amp Thread For ZMF Headphones
- Thread starter Monsterzero
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Great! good option
If you're so kind, I'd be interested in your impressions about Denafrips Ares II > A20 > Verite
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Just throwing this question to the group....has anyone tried a ZMF with the Cayin CS-55A? It's predominantly a speaker amp but it has a 6.3mm SE headphone jack on the front panel. I'm assuming it's not a dedicated headamp stage, but I've not read anything specific about the headphone specs.
jonathan c
Headphoneus Supremus
I would guess that the headphone stage feeds off the amplifier output stage - with a resistor added to raise the impedance for headphone matching.
Guarddawg30
Head-Fier
and it could be cheaper also@Pharmaboy why roll tubes when you can roll amps instead
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Yeah, I figured it was something like that. I wonder how that type of implementation tyically sounds compared to the speaker outs...
jonathan c
Headphoneus Supremus
Guessing again: … since the speaker outs go to nominal 4-ohm, 8-ohm (sometimes 16-ohm) loads, having a 32-ohm headphone load would present a ‘damping factor’ of 8, of 4 (sometimes of 2). This would suggest greater headphone driver control by the amplifier than would be for loudspeakers. Bass would likely be tighter, with less overhang. Note: if headphones are tapped via speaker outs, keep volume at the minimum, turn up very slowly
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Thankfully I don’t have that many hard-to-drive headphones lol. But it’s good to know that I can maybe drive efficient planars with it. I’m assuming that 300ohm dynamics would be fine without question.Guessing again: … since the speaker outs go to nominal 4-ohm, 8-ohm (sometimes 16-ohm) loads, having a 32-ohm headphone load would present a ‘damping factor’ of 8, of 4 (sometimes of 2). This would suggest greater headphone driver control by the amplifier than would be for loudspeakers. Bass would likely be tighter, with less overhang. Note: if headphones are tapped via speaker outs, keep volume at the minimum, turn up very slowly
DavidSerig
100+ Head-Fier
Use the output impedance of the amplifier to calculate damping factor, n'est pas? You seem to be assuming a damping factor for speakers of 1 for some reason.Guessing again: … since the speaker outs go to nominal 4-ohm, 8-ohm (sometimes 16-ohm) loads, having a 32-ohm headphone load would present a ‘damping factor’ of 8, of 4 (sometimes of 2). This would suggest greater headphone driver control by the amplifier than would be for loudspeakers. Bass would likely be tighter, with less overhang. Note: if headphones are tapped via speaker outs, keep volume at the minimum, turn up very slowly
DavidSerig
100+ Head-Fier
Zach has mentioned that using solid state can lead to his cans being overdamped, due to the higher damping factor.
Generally, speaker amplifers have a a lower output impedance than headphone amplifiers, so the damping factor will be even higher. At what point this becomes audible I have no idea.
jonathan c
Headphoneus Supremus
I am only assuming that the loudspeaker nominal impedance is 4 ohms, 8 ohms, 16 ohms. As for a headphone with a nominal impedance of 32 ohms, the damping factor (load impedance divided by source impedance) has to be higher - regardless of the amplifier. [The variation of impedance across the frequency spectrum for headphone vs loudspeaker is not addressed
.]
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The CS-55A is a tube amp. Not sure how that changes the point you were trying to make, but thanks anyways lol
That depends upon the specific tube amp.
I've had tube amps with an output impedance over 100, and then others as low as eight.
At CanJam Socal I got to hear so many cool things with my Atriums!
I purchased two amps, the Vioelectric 226 and the Cayin-HA-3A.
Both sound absolutely amazing. The vioelectric amp is revealing things in music I love that I had never heard before that i was intimately familiar with. I havent had a chance to use my dac on it (Bifrost 2/64), but the internal DAC noticeably smooths out the high end, but I enjoy this for more relaxed listening. As for the amp quality itself, the bass comes through incredibly powerful and clean notes sound impactful.
For the Cayin, I only have what I heard at the show(I'm moving) but it has such a nice euphonic goodness while still keeping the character of the headphones intact.
I also got to demo a Holo Audio Bliss with the May dac... Quite frankly I ascended into heaven.. it turned the Atrium into a sub bass monster. It was reaching in the low end with an insane amount of dynamics. This seems to be my end game amp...
I purchased two amps, the Vioelectric 226 and the Cayin-HA-3A.
Both sound absolutely amazing. The vioelectric amp is revealing things in music I love that I had never heard before that i was intimately familiar with. I havent had a chance to use my dac on it (Bifrost 2/64), but the internal DAC noticeably smooths out the high end, but I enjoy this for more relaxed listening. As for the amp quality itself, the bass comes through incredibly powerful and clean notes sound impactful.
For the Cayin, I only have what I heard at the show(I'm moving) but it has such a nice euphonic goodness while still keeping the character of the headphones intact.
I also got to demo a Holo Audio Bliss with the May dac... Quite frankly I ascended into heaven.. it turned the Atrium into a sub bass monster. It was reaching in the low end with an insane amount of dynamics. This seems to be my end game amp...
Glad to see some impressions on the V226. I should have one arriving today, shipping gods willing. Found a nice used one locally so I set my plans for a DAC upgrade back a little to try the Vio out.
