![]() ![]() I also agree that for a OTC tube amp, you can’t use a high impedance headphone without something like a parallel resistor. The Bakoon 13R is effectively a speaker amp that can also drive it’s full output out of it’s headphone jack. I can’t think offhand of a headphone amplifier that can produce that much power into 64 ohms. My XA25 is actually measured at 80W into 8 ohms per Stereophile. So it’s not as extreme as you might have thought.Īlthough I wouldn’t go so far as to say that headphone amps “often” are more powerful. So a 25W amp at 8 ohms will only have about 3W at 64 ohms. A solid state amp at 8 ohms will probably only have about 1/8 of it’s power at 64 ohms. To be clear, I am not advocating this for typical conventionally or very sensitive HPs.Īs mentioned, power is reduced at higher impedances. Using a speaker amp provides performance that is so clearly superior (IMO) to what I have experienced with conventional headphone amps. The Susvara is particularly inefficient for aheadphone (83db/mw, 60ohm) and is particularly power hungry. I use a custom adapter that goes from spades to XLR female. I’ve been flip flopping between class A or not since my speakers do require a good amount of juice.Īs I mentioned in my post, I’m talking about an XA25 speaker amp fronted by an XP-12 preamp. I’ll have to look into the other ones you mentioned though. I’ve seen other people have success with the AHB2 as well but I’m just a little hesitant with that one due to Benchmark’s signature of being extremely clean and transparent. Since I’ve been heading down that road, if I can stick with one amp, then that’s what I would prefer. I think people have found a good amount of success using a J2 or XA25 with the HE6 or Susvara. However, I think we can both agree that there are much better amps than the Jot 2. Based on specs, Jot 2 is literally all you ever need. I do feel like with harder to drive headphones, the power supply plays a bigger part than just the specs. I was hoping to consolidate my amplification since it seems to make more sense to spend money on good amplification rather than spread my money around to multiple amps. I do understand that more sensitive headphones won’t make a whole lot of sense with speaker amps but it is a pain to have to spend a good deal on a headphone amp that only powers headphones while I have speakers on my desk as well. *I’m referring to their actual speaker amplifiers, not the MHA100/150/200. The Anthem, Classé, McIntosh* and others all had too much hiss for the job at hand with anything shy of the HE6, Susvara and Abyss. ![]() The Chord Étude, Linn AK2200/AK4200 and Benchmark AHB2 were quiet enough to not yield audible noise with my general array of headphones. So, notwithstanding that its not a particularly good way to drive normal-sensitivity headphones as a “just because”, I’ve tried it with most of the speaker amplifiers I’ve had in my hands recently. Particularly when you consider that an amplifier that had 10mV of residual noise would result in hiss at 76 dB in something like Focal’s Clears or and LCD-4z. Unless you get can the manufacturer’s noise VOLTAGE level ratings (usually expressed in millivolts, with a few super-quiet models being in microvolts), it’s a crap shoot. That’s going to be a factor with the vast majority of speaker amplifiers. Then there’s the noise issue you’ve run into. Use a 300 ohm headphone, and that drops to only 0.1w more than the Jotunheim 2 would deliver.Įven when you do have a much bigger power margin, the headphones will only draw so much, and once you’re past the point where the amplifier is still its sweet spot in terms of load/performance while giving you, say, 100% headroom on the power they can draw, there’s nothing to be gained from having more power available. For example, at 50 ohms a 50w power amplifier would give you just double the power in to the HE6 that a Jotunheim 2 would yield. Then, as the impedance of the headphones goes up, the smaller the “benefit” of having speaker-amp power levels becomes. Same with forgetting to zero the volume before starting playback. You’re at much higher risk of a power on/off transient (or “pop”) outright destroying your headphones. some of the more potent dedicated headphone amplifiers). However, there are more downsides than benefits for headphones that have more reasonable sensitivity ratings (and even the Abyss doesn’t benefit much vs. I’ve used a variety of speaker amplifiers to drive “more demanding” headphones (a very small number of very inefficient models, such as the HE6, Susvara and Abyss) to good effect. ![]()
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