Headphone ohms

C

colinstu

2[H]4U
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Oct 11, 2007
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I've noticed everyone that have DT 770 Pro's have the 80Ohm version... I just checked mine and it says 250ohm.

Ohms seem to affect impedance. And there seems to be plenty of definitions of impedance, but none seem to say if you want high or low ohms.

I'm gonna take a guess that you want the lower ohms and that I got the wrong headphones. sigh :eek:
 
w/o getting technical (and disregarding rare exceptions)- ohms is the amount of impedance. the higher the ohms rating the more power it takes to drive the speakers. an mp3 player or cheap sound card/onboard audio puts out very low power and can drive up to 60-ish ohm headphones ok. a nice sound card (x-fi, razer, etc) can power up to 150-ish cans well. anything above that needs a nice-not portable-headphone amp or decent rack type receiver

higher ohm speakers/headphones are supposed to sound better but only if you have the right equipment
 
So it is good that I got the 250's.... I just need some more equipment :p

So will I just need a headphone amp or sound card + amp? I've been just using the onboard audio unfortunately :(

I know that the AuzenTech Auzen X-Fi Prelude and one of Asus' Xonar cards are pretty good. Which one do you think would be better? Could you point me off in the right direction for headphone amps? I while back I remember someone was recommending a little usb box from emu, you know if that is good at all? The 0404 can never forget that name! Reminds me of a webpage that can not be found.
 
head-fi.org for a wealth of info and opinions on headphone amps. i am an x-fi fan so if you are a gamer than the Prelude is for you. not a gamer?- then there are many choices. you will need a soundcard and an amp. of course you could use onboard and an amp also.
i cant direct you on amps too much. i have tried several portables and none would drive 250 ohm cans. if it runs on batteries it probably isnt powerful enough! (and i've tried nice ones like the ibasso d1)
 
So more or less here's how it goes with headphone impedance (ohms):

The higher the ohms, the more the volume comes from voltage, the lower the ohms, the more the volume comes from current.

Now the upshot of this as far as gear goes is that high impedance phones tend to be "easy" on gear. They don't strain opamps as much, so you get better performance (better bass, less noise, etc) out of a given amp. However, because they have higher voltage demands, they are often hard to drive to a loud enough level. You'll turn something all the way up and while it sounds good, it is too soft.

Low impedance phones are, of course, just the opposite. They are nice and easy to make loud with very little voltage. Really low impedance phones can often get crushingly loud even on really weak portable sources. The downside is that they put a lot more strain on the opamps. The leads to higher distortion, audible hiss, weak bass and so on.

So the net effect is that there is no right impedance. In general, you don't want something that's too high or low or you run in to a situation of needing a specialized amp that can deal with them.

In your case, I wouldn't worry too much about a headphone amp unless you find them too soft. Not that they probably wouldn't benefit, but headphone amps are kinda pricey and at 250 ohms most gear should be pretty happy. So long as they get loud enough for you, I'd just stuck with them.

If they are too quiet, well then you need an amp, because it means your soundcard just can't put out the voltage that is needed to drive them loud.
 
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