Gilmore Lite and O2 are among my favorites but I'm sure there are many others under $500. I never saw a reason to spend more than that and I certainly would never purchase a tube amp, the antithesis of "neutral."
If I want to color my sound, I use an equalizer. Infinite customization on the fly. And yes, equalization is a taboo dirty word in these circles. Speak softly or you might anger the audiophile god mods.
Does anyone know why its not ideal to run a line out of a headphone port on a pc or ipod and bring that into a separate amp. Why is the preamped signal bad vs a virgin one.
Does anyone know why its not ideal to run a line out of a headphone port on a pc or ipod and bring that into a separate amp. Why is the preamped signal bad vs a virgin one.
The headphone jack is connected to the amp of the PC's motherboard or iPod. That means you're going to get all the noise and distortion associated with that amp (though less than a typical headphone because the line-in of an external amp has very high impedance). So you've got the usual DAC noise and distortion, the usual external amp's noise and distortion, and the headphone jack's amp's distortion. Plus any other problems it could cause like phase, roll-off, etc.
The headphone jack is connected to the amp of the PC's motherboard or iPod. That means you're going to get all the noise and distortion associated with that amp (though less than a typical headphone because the line-in of an external amp has very high impedance). So you've got the usual DAC noise and distortion, the usual external amp's noise and distortion, and the headphone jack's amp's distortion. Plus any other problems it could cause like phase, roll-off, etc.
They do, you just don't hear them on their own. Everything has noise and distortion. When you add it to what comes next in the chain, you're just increasing it further. At some point it becomes audible. Whether it's audible to you or not depends on you. These things are less of a problem than most people think, so don't worry about it if you don't hear it.
Best to just go to a meet with a couple Cd's that you have known for awhile. Headphone set-ups are much like big screen TVs. Everyone has a level of perception and for some a small 20 inch TV is all they need and all they ever want. You have to have a set of headphones too that will resolve the quality of the amp. You need a source up steam that will get you a source signal that the headphones will resolve too.
The easy way too understand this is you could take a pair of Skull-candy IEMs and plug them into an I-Pod and afterwords plug them in back of a 10K system and never hear a difference. Plug a flagship set headphones into the I-pod then the 10K system and you will hear a difference. The final question is. What do you practically need. Even if you do a complete survey of what you think you need, your education and understanding will change over the years and you may outgrow a type of system.
Many folks at first mistake treble for hi-quality. Also many have slow responding systems with no PRaT but don't even know it. This is just due to the fact that all of us don't know what we don't know. No system is perfect but the finished ones out there are the tone their owner likes. Even the best rigs add a color and tone to the music, even though most will never admit it or have no perception of it.
Once you have an understanding of the sound signature you want you pursue it. It's OK for there to be a group of people who believe the whole amp thing is a farce. Many have no ability to hear a difference. It is you personal challenge to find out truth for yourself. It is no mystery to the advancements of sound reproduction on headphones. Unfortunately many folks in Head-fi think you can get a 1970 VW to go as fast and handle like a formula one race car. It does not happen on the road and it does not happen with headphone systems either.
Double amping, as I understand it, can reduce the electrical damping effect on the bass, muddying it somewhat with lower impedance headphones. So the conventional wisdom is that it is better to amplify the signal once, than to amplify an already amplified signal, if possible.
To answer your other question about clean amps without getting into hype and placebo - Dynalo (Can be found for $250 ish), 02 ($120 ish), and M-stage ($250 ish) all fit the bill for me without getting into DIY (they can be done DIY, but commercial builds are available for all 3 - the Wire would be another choice, but as far as I know, is DIY only).
The e9 is under 100 and is extremely powerful, and under 200 with a DAC on it. Might be worth a try. I wouldn't mind trying something with more forward sound to, like dt880/600. e9 will power it well.
It would work fine with the 880/600 - the E9 does have a slightly higher than normal output impedance (it measures at 10ohm, i believe), so with headphones of less than 80 ohms impedance, the electrical damping would be less than is usually considered ideal (which can affect bass clarity/distortion in particular).
I love the hd580, but sometimes I do want a little more forward detailed presentation. Beyer might compliment them. 600 ohms would also give me an excuse to have an amp... at less than $500 total (e7/e9/dt880/600).
Double amping, as I understand it, can reduce the electrical damping effect on the bass, muddying it somewhat with lower impedance headphones. So the conventional wisdom is that it is better to amplify the signal once, than to amplify an already amplified signal, if possible.
To answer your other question about clean amps without getting into hype and placebo - Dynalo (Can be found for $250 ish), 02 ($120 ish), and M-stage ($250 ish) all fit the bill for me without getting into DIY (they can be done DIY, but commercial builds are available for all 3 - the Wire would be another choice, but as far as I know, is DIY only).
Driving one amp with a second amp has no effect on the headphone damping. Damping is defined by the headphone and the headphone amplifier, not the signal chain before the headphone amplifier.
I think what you are saying is that driving a good headphone amp from a poor amplifier sounds not much better (if at all) than the signal from the poor amp.
Just my humble opinion, but most tube amps sound rather different than most solid state amps.
The objectivist/subjectivist debate has raged for decades. Same for the 'do cables matter' and 'does equipment burn in?'
debate. At the end of the day...if you do not hear a difference, don't spend the money. Your personal satisfaction is the
desired target, not necessarily the affirmation of others regarding your choices. Just sayin'
Hibuck...
You often hear around here so many headphones are dull or boring without expensive 500 dollar amps, but there is never any blind testing to prove it. I am willing to bet that most people could not tell a difference with an hd800 out of an ipod and an expensive amp. Yet people rave on about equipment when they first hear it. Placebo affect. Where are the blind tests?
What's the point in a blind test when there are people who try that at home just for kicks, only to see the iPod maxed out, and in the case of the HD600s not all percussions are audible, the ones that are sound hollow and nothing like what I hear when I'm standing near our drummer, cymabls sound like a 'ziiiiiiiiiiiiiing' instead of it vibrating up and downuntil it loses energy...when the power's out I admit the nice thing about the HD580/600/650 is that they're acceptable without a good amp, but once the power's back on I find myself going, "oh yeah, that's why I have this." An extreme example would be to say a good, 0.001% THD@75watts Class A/B won't do any better on Dynaudio Contour S3.4's than the 2-watt Class B amp inside my computer speakers.
And lest you think I'm fanatical about using amps, I sold my Little Dot MkII because I preferred the headphone jack out of my Marantz CDPlayer; I use my SR225 straight out of an S9, and preferred the Edition 8 without an amp; and I'm one of those who wouldn't strap several things on to each other just to listen to an inefficient IEM whose main selling point should have been isolation. The CD60-HD600 set-up was great until the transport stopped reading my CD-R's, so I got an iPod 5g, only to realize that the Wolfson 8994 isn't as good as the dedicated Philips chip in the Marantz (which is the same as in the E9 I think.) Oh, and there are people who aren't susceptible to price-placebo here - if the Meier Cantate was more widely available, I wouldn't be surprised if there would be a lot of people who'd immediately say they prefer the E9+E7 over it. The debate then is what constitutes "high fidelity" or "faithfulness to the recording," but at the very least there are people who will let their idea of what sounds good - regardless of the length of the debate you get out of that - come first before letting price determine that for them. In any case, I do agree that there's a certain dynamic here, but all that proves is the tendency to either 'bandwagon' or equate price to performance, if not both, not specifically that all amplifiers do nothing beyond psychological.
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Also, I've seen many of my musician friends who didn't care about Hi-Fi (why spend that much on listening gear when you're spending it on gear that MAKES themusic?) going wide-eyed when they put my HD600 on, then ask what the heck is wrong because it didn't sound the same when they hooked it up to their Blackberry, so I'm confident I'm not hearing things. They didn't even know there were such things as headphone amps, let alone portables, and since Social Science methods have already concluded that saying "this is a test" already clouds the subjects' minds (the observer makes what is observed, as we say in sociology), that unintended test was as good as a "proper" (that is, staged and belief-charged) blind test. And while we're on research methods and betting, I won't be surprised if someone does a blind test and when the results are contrary to your belief, your conclusion is it was absolute "B.S." far beyond a healthy level of methodical skepticism stemming from your strong theoretical skepticism.
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