Well, here's the good news: I'm listening right now -- lossless>iBook G4>Headroom Airhead>Senn HD580s (among the hard-to-drive cans).
This is, for many reasons, a very compromised system. There is no DAC to get me out of the computer and upgrade the quality of the digital to analog processing. I'm amping an amp by putting the Airhead inline and, really, the Mac is loud enough on its own, I think I hear a bit more punch and definition with the Airhead in there, but I'm not really sure. I mostly have it in line for its volume control. And I'm trying to drive a difficult load with an amp that runs on four AAAs. Not highly recommended.
It's not even my best option. I get a little better results from either the HP out of the Panasonic digital receiver in the den or the vintage Harman Kardon integrated amp that's now at my dad's house. But it is my most convenient option and the one I use most.
How does it sound? ? It has it's own color, but that's pretty subjective. If there's anything
wrong, it's a bit of boominess, lack of control, in the bass. But really, the problem seems to go away above the range of a bass guitar. Acoustic guitars are crisp and quick, as are bells and cymbals and horns and voices. Beyond the initial bite of a splash cymbal, or the hard attack of an unwound string on an acoustic guitar, well, I'll have to consult one of the dogs. Maggie...would you mind slipping these on?
Dynamic range is dramatic. The noise floor is well below the voices in my head.
I don't have much experience with headphone-specific gear (many years of listening, though), but I have a lot of experience with audio, and I think that, even the inexpensive, improperly driven system I'm listening to at the moment takes you deeper into the music than most high-end speaker rigs in most rooms. In a perfectly treated, dedicated listening room, no. But how many of us have one of those?
This is the beauty of headphone listening. You give up the illusion of facing a sound stage (that never existed in the studio in the first place), but in return, it takes you deep inside the music. Nuance is revealed that is obscured by all but the most ideal listening conditions with speaker rigs. If this is what floats your boat - listening deep into the recordings and losing yourself in the music, in a world of your own, isolated from distraction, you've found home in headphone listening.
And even if you have hard-to-drive headphones that are adequately, if not properly amped, it's all good; and it's all uphill from here.
Tim
