trial headphone amp?

[towert7]

Hello all. Someone once said that there was a headphone amp going around these forums... to try out and hear first hand the diffrence it can make.

I belive they said you get it from someone, try it for a little while, then pay shipping to the next person.

Does anyone have any more info on this? I would be interested to see what everyone is talking about.

Right now I'm just amping my headphones though a Denon receiver.

~Thanks

 

[so_cal_forever]

I'd be interested in this too. All I've got at the moment are the HD201s, but I'm dying to hear a difference.

 

[towert7]

I don't know... I have beyerdynamic DT990pro's and I'm a little skeptical about whether or not I can hear a diffrence. Heck, maybe my headphones aren't even good enough to notice a diffrence (after all, you can't add/improve what's not there)

The only thing is there are several people here who say their headphone amps make a diffrence........
And by diffrence i don't mean just coloring the music, I mean improving it all together.

I might be in the position to get a small headphone amp if my receiver is just too big for college or something else comes up. That I'll have to wait a few more weeks to see.

~Thanks

 

[so_cal_forever]

I don't know... I have beyerdynamic DT990pro's and I'm a little skeptical about whether or not I can hear a diffrence. Heck, maybe my headphones aren't even good enough to notice a diffrence (after all, you can't add/improve what's not there)

The only thing is there are several people here who say their headphone amps make a diffrence........
And by diffrence i don't mean just coloring the music, I mean improving it all together.

I might be in the position to get a small headphone amp if my receiver is just too big for college or something else comes up. That I'll have to wait a few more weeks to see.

~Thanks

If you've ever stopped at Head-Fi, general consesus says any pair of headphones will improve with an amp. It's not just the amplification, it's what the OPamp has to offer as well.

I'd love to grab an amp, but I've gotta start saving, planning to drop the dough on a Fluance set!

 

[Jodiuh]

Well, I grabbed up an altoid for 45 a couple years ago. Since then I've been convincing myelf that's all I need...

 

[towert7]

If you've ever stopped at Head-Fi, general consesus says any pair of headphones will improve with an amp. It's not just the amplification, it's what the OPamp has to offer as well.

That might be ture, but then you have to start asking yourself what would yield the better sound for the money. Better headphones alltogether, or an amp with cheaper headphones. And at what price point does it start to shift?

I really like my headphones, at the moment the sound they reproduce is more then fine (im afriad to listen to anything better).
Its just this darn receiver is huge (not to mention the speakers). And to drive them though the sound card would mean I have to turn the volume up to 75%.

So space is a premium... and a headphone amp might help with space.

 

[StoneNewt]

That might be ture, but then you have to start asking yourself what would yield the better sound for the money. Better headphones alltogether, or an amp with cheaper headphones. And at what price point does it start to shift?

I recently rediscovered how good my amp & speaker set-up is after dropping a mixer desk in the middle of my computers & the amps line in, not only that but driving a 15£ pair of headphones through the desks output gives an improvement in quality (as well as finding out how bad they really are!). After a little bit of going back to my audio tech books it turns out that the desk is simply supplying enough current to the amp for it to get a decent input signal, hum isn't this what a headphone 'amp' does? Thus wouldn't a more useful question is would you prefer your headphones to make a bad job of producing an accurate or inaccurate sound? The next question you ask is can you justify that cost in making the accurate signal.