[GotNoRice]

I just picked up a Yamaha C-4 Preamp and plan to make extensive use of it's headphone amplifier. This is a Preamp, not a receiver, so it has no speaker outputs to piggy-back a cheap headphone output off of, it has an actual headphone amp inside.

I've used a Yamaha C-80 preamp previously with such good results that I ended up retiring all 3 of my Little-dot units. I never could find specifications for the the headphone amplifier in the C-80. The C-4 however, does list it's headphone specs in the manual.

For "Output Level / Impedance" it specifies "18V / 330 ohms".

I don't know if 330 ohms is referring to it's output impedance, or the headphone impedance at which it can output 18V. I also don't have much point of reference to know if 18V is a lot or a little. I'm trying to get a feel for if it prefers higher or lower impedance headphones. It does sounds quite good with my 250ohm DT990-Pros though

 

[MDR30]

I just picked up a Yamaha C-4 Preamp and plan to make extensive use of it's headphone amplifier. This is a Preamp, not a receiver, so it has no speaker outputs to piggy-back a cheap headphone output off of, it has an actual headphone amp inside.

I've used a Yamaha C-80 preamp previously with such good results that I ended up retiring all 3 of my Little-dot units.

No wonder it sounds good. That headphone amp section was designed to drive the quite inefficient and current craving Yamaha orthodynamic headphones (pure resistive load) and those excellent planar phones could swallow up to 10 watts! The drawing in the manual looks like the YH-1000, Yamaha's top of the line headphone at the end of the seventies. Impedance: 100 ohms.

More info in the orthodynamic roundup thread and Wikiphonia.

 

[GotNoRice]

Interesting, thanks for the info.

Comparing my 250ohm DT990-Pro and my 80ohm DT770-Pro, it seems to be able to deliver significantly more power into my DT990's. This is identical to the behavior of the C-80. It leads me to believe that it prefers higher impedance phones, but it might just be something unique to these two headphones.

 

[Herueyes]

Yippiee Kai Yay!!!!!!! I knew there had to be a reason why my car wouldn't start! So I start looking for my battery charger and I can't find it but stumble across some dusty old Yamaha Natural Sound Components.... The Receiver and CD player I remember but a C-4 Amplifier?????
I never knew there was one in the house!!!!! Must be my brothers - Don't know how all of these bad boyz got lumped together in the back of a coat closet.... She's missing some knobs but I'm gonna dust her off and run the teac NP-H750 and the burson DA-160 through her to see if she has what it takes....
 
found the manual      http://www2.yamaha.co.jp/manual/pdf/av/english/SepA/C-4.pdf
 
should help a little but will see what happens and report back in the near future....
I'm hoping with this C-4 some Schiit Happens!!!