Yamaha CA-2010 for Headphone Use

[rus1980]

Does anyone here use this amp for headphone use? If so, can you offer opinions on its performance? I'm presently using a Fisher 400 (which seems to work nice), but I have an opportunity to buy a CA-2010 and it got me thinking. I used to own one, but never used it for headphones. I posted a similar thread on the Fisher forum, but haven't got any bites. Thought I would ask here as well. I'm using Audeze 2.2's.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

 

[avionic]

Its Yamaha..Of course it sounds fabulous..

 

[avionic]

Yes it does sound very good..

 

[LutherG1]

I have a CR-2020 and it sounds fine for headphones. To muddy the water - the one that in my opinion sounds fabulous for headphones is the C-60 or C-80 preamp assuming in decent shape.

 

[fernarias]

Any integrated from that era that doesn't use op amps to power the head phones sounds really good to excellent. They are better than anything being sold today especially modern headphone amps. The yamaha would have to be rebuilt for longevity and sound quality. I have been buying high end headphones and finally settled on the Fostex TH-900 and the sound fantastic with vintage gear.

C-60 and C-80 have op amps so they do not have the watts to drive a serious headphone and they're not going to do this:

.

 

[avionic]

Yamaha C-4 has and awesome discreet headphone amp.

 

[stoutblock]

The C-4 and expecially the C-2x all have excellent headphone amps. I assume the older recievers do also.


With that said, the Audeze LCD 2.2 will work well but needs more power to perform to their best. Typically a dedicated tube amp like a Decware Taboo will really make them sing.

 

[sssboa]

Do vintage receivers from early 1970s have something we could call headphone amplifier? Or is it same signal going through 600ohm resistors?
I came to vintage from world of headphone amps and I found vintage gear like Yamaha CR-1000/CA-1000 sounding much better than SS headphone amps like my now sold $1000 SPL amp or Lehman Cube. Only tube headphone amps are on par with vintage gear.
I had modern Yamaha receiver and amp, they sounded so so/ok-eyish through speakers but utter horrible on headphones, worse than iPod.

 

[Oilmaster]

FYI, 99% of all power amplifiers (integrated units or not) derive the headphone output straight from the amplifier outputs, by simply putting a 200~600 ohm resistor in series.
Therefore, those amps will drive any headset without any problem as they have the full power amp available driving a high-ohm load (series resistors + your headphone impedance).
And for that sake it really doesn't matter if your headset is 16 ohm or 600 ohm; the series resistors already crank it up.
The sound is very much the same as comparing those amps via speakers.

As where separate pre-amp units may have a dedicated headphone amplifier circuit (how else would they have the power to drive headphones), the differences can be big as they can use either IC's (opamps with limited current drive) or discrete circuitry (which can be nice)

If you wanna go far in the experience, you could fiddle around with those series resistors by replacing them by other type/brand (Takman, AudioNote, Ohmite, etc).
Report back if you find any audible improvements