Headphone Amp: why & which?

[insanarchist]

Alrighty, I browsed/scoured/searched the forums for the information I'm looking for, and although there is some decent stuff in here, I would like to know more than "they make stuff sound gooder". Although I am not what you may call an "audiophile", I can and do appreciate good quality sound (being a musician and all!). I have grown tired of the standard soundblaster/sony "best of best buy" combo (which I've always known was the best of the worst) and am looking for the next step up. As with anything I do, I would like to know as much about this stuff as I can before purchasing, as going by any other method always leaves me with mediocre, non-upgradeable crap.

Now to my questions:

1 - I have heard/read about a lot of people getting headphone amplifiers to "increase the sound quality" of their rigs, but I've never heard a very accurate/complete explanation of why amplifying the sound makes it sound better. Perhaps I've just never had headphones that required amplification (the best I've ever had were the silver something700's from best buy). I would like to know more about this, and also if my Yamaha receiver would give me the same benefits as a stand-alone headphone amplifier.

2 - I would like to start making semi-serious recordings on my computer and, as such, I'm trying to decide whether or not I should go with decent headphones or decent speakers first. I'm currently using the z-680's (as I've been doing mostly gaming/movies/music listening up until now), but I know enough about music recording to know these are very, very far from amazing for recording. I would still like to have these hooked up for games/movies, but I would also like a separate set of stereo speakers for recording. I don't need my recordings to be good enough to mass produce/sell, but I would like to be able to send material to labels & such, so decent quality would be nice. I will be recording only a max of maybe 3-4 tracks at once.


So far, what I'm thinking is I could get the m-audio 2496 to my yamaha receiver for music recording/listening, and some sort of separate soundcard with optical/digital coax out to the receiver, which I could then plug both some studio monitors and my z-680's into. Does this seem like a sensible setup, or am I fooling myself thinking my non-expensive BB receiver would fulfill my needs?

As for a budget, there is no hurry on this stuff, and I would rather get something that will last me awhile vs. something I can afford "RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND!! AGH!"

Any comments / suggestions welcome!

 

[ivandal2]

I'd say take a look at the m-audio delta1010 (my personal pref, but there are many other top notch sc's) and then get yourself a nice set of studio monitors for basic recording. The 1010 should have enough ins/outs so that you should only need 1 card and it does serve as a a good platform for upgrading later if wanted. Headphone amps imo are something you get not simply to increase the sq of the headphones, but more to allow the headphones themselves to provide their best sound. I mean a 250ohm/600ohm headphone simply isn't going to be recieveing proper power off of a headphone out on a reciever/soundcard like a 25ohm set would. Granted most every set will show improvment with proper amping, but a good set of cans simply requires a good amp in order to give its best.

 

[AdamW]

as far as I understand it, the reason amps change the sound quality is because they power different areas of the frequency spectrum more evenly. apparently, standard speaker / headphone outs might provide enough signal to make the headphones overall sound loud enough to hear, but they don't actually provide much signal particularly at the extremes of the spectrum; the typical setup when you use a headphone amp is to reduce the volume of the original source as low as possible and have the amp's volume as high as possible. this way the source gives the amp a reasonably level signal, and the amp is capable of amplifying every part of the signal properly and thus gives a much better sound to the headphones. of course, it works best if you can use a true line-level output, but a decent 'speaker' out on a soundcard with the volume down low is OK.

disclaimer - I am not a physicist and I haven't researched this in detail and I may well be wrong. You might want to read the amplification forum on head-fi for reassurance.