[raymanh]

...I think I did something wrong.

Today I went to a few shops to try a few headphones. I'm new to this and have been using my M40X's for the last year, but am now looking for an upgrade. I was testing using my phone's 3.5mm out and the YouTube music app. I have a Xiaomi phone so I assume the DAC isn't particularly good.

Anyway, in the corner of an Audio Technica store I spotted an AP2000Ti headphone paired with a AT-HA22 tube amp. I plugged in the 3.5mm cable from the amp into my phone and turned my phone up to 50% and the amp to about 75% thinking it would be better to let the amp do most of the amplifying. It sounded good, but not much better than my M40X straight from my phone. Is that because my phone's on board amp/DAC is the bottleneck? As in, although I was using that expensive amp, it's still plugged into my phone and using my phone's amp and DAC. Plus YouTube quality is probably not the highest. So are those two factors the reason I wasn't really blown away?

Thanks.

 

[Steven31]

What was the cable coming from the amp, that you plugged into your Xiaomi phone? I presume it was an analogue Y cable? that you plugged into the headphone output of your phone?
Perhaps the power output (mW) of your phones headphone/line output is not sufficient enough for the amp to extract any meaningful/audible sound improvement. You should've set the volume of your phone to 100% to maximise the boost of the signal going into the headphone amp.

 

[Shane D]

...I think I did something wrong.

Today I went to a few shops to try a few headphones. I'm new to this and have been using my M40X's for the last year, but am now looking for an upgrade. I was testing using my phone's 3.5mm out and the YouTube music app. I have a Xiaomi phone so I assume the DAC isn't particularly good.

Anyway, in the corner of an Audio Technica store I spotted an AP200Ti headphone paired with a AT-HA22 tube amp. I plugged in the 3.5mm cable from the amp into my phone and turned my phone up to 50% and the amp to about 75% thinking it would be better to let the amp do most of the amplifying. It sounded good, but not much better than my M40X straight from my phone. Is that because my phone's on board amp/DAC is the bottleneck? As in, although I was using that expensive amp, it's still plugged into my phone and using my phone's amp and DAC. Plus YouTube quality is probably not the highest. So are those two factors the reason I wasn't really blown away?

Thanks.

I am not sure that I understand what you did? Why didn't you just plug your headphones into that amp (I am assuming it was hooked up to a DAC and a music source?).

Were you trying to use the line out from your phone to feed the amp? Or were you using a Y-cable from the amp to your phone (which really doesn't work. I tried that a few years ago.)

My suggestion would be to try your headphones his that amp. Then, use their headphones with their amp and see if you can find music that you are familiar with.

If your phone has a line out function and you have the cable, you could feed your phone in as the music source.

 

[raymanh]

What was the cable coming from the amp, that you plugged into your Xiaomi phone? I presume it was an analogue Y cable? that you plugged into the headphone output of your phone?
Perhaps the power output (mW) of your phones headphone/line output is not sufficient enough for the amp to extract any meaningful/audible sound improvement. You should've set the volume of your phone to 100% to maximise the boost of the signal going into the headphone amp.

I don't know what an analogue Y cable is, sorry, but it was very thick and was like two cables stuck together, but with only one 3.5mm jack that I plugged into my phone.

So basically I did it the wrong way round? I did phone volume low, amp gain high, whereas I should've done it the other way round. I think I did it that way round because I tried with the phone on 100% volume but then I had to turn the amp knob down to about 20% so I assumed the amp wasn't really doing anything.

 

[raymanh]

I am not sure that I understand what you did? Why didn't you just plug your headphones into that amp (I am assuming it was hooked up to a DAC and a music source?).

Were you trying to use the line out from your phone to feed the amp? Or were you using a Y-cable from the amp to your phone (which really doesn't work. I tried that a few years ago.)

My suggestion would be to try your headphones his that amp. Then, use their headphones with their amp and see if you can find music that you are familiar with.

If your phone has a line out function and you have the cable, you could feed your phone in as the music source.

The cables were kind of hidden under the display table. There was one thick cable, that looked like two parallel cables stuck together, with a 3.5mm jack. So I'm pretty sure this was going to the HA22 tube amp. So I plugged that cable into my phone's headphone jack.

The AP2000Ti's I could see were plugged into that amp. So after I plugged the aforementioned thick cable into my phone, I put on those AP2000Ti's. The amp was in the chain as the volume/gain knob was changing the volume.

So it went phone to HA22 amp to AP2000Ti.

 

[Steven31]

I am no electrician but based on the reading i've done on this subject, if the headphone output jack of your phone (that you connected the cable coming from the amp into) has a lower impedance (less resistance to the electronic current flowing into/through it) than the headphone output jack of the headphone amp, then that has a muting affect on the signal you are hearing through the headphone drivers. This kind of chain defeats the purpose of amplification. This is probably why you where somewhat underwhelmed by the performance of the phone/amp combination.
Portable devices are not really meant to be used with such amps. They are no match for the power output of say a CD player. You should try a portable amp/dac with your phone instead, something like a Beyerdynamic Impacto portable usb amp/dac might help.

https://www.richersounds.com/beyerdynamic-impacto-portable-dac.html