Gustard H10 with Sundara?

[RunOutGroove]

I have a pair of HiFiman Sundara phones. They sound good, but I wonder if I could make them sound even better with the right headphone amp? I had a Schiit Vali amp that sounded good with a pair of Sennhieser HD600 phones that I had, but it sounded underwhelming powering the Sundaras, so I ended up plugging them into the headphone jack of my Marantz 2270 receiver, which worked far better for these things. I see this Gustard H10 amp for sale locally, for a really good price and I wonder if that might be an improvement over the Marantz receiver for powering these phones? Am I likely to hear a dramatic enough difference to spend $150 for the Gustard amp? I've read good reviews of that thing...

 

[Caveman Carl]

Like all planars the Sundara is power-hungry. Check the power rating of the Gustard, Sundara requires about 3,000 mw to sound their best. $150 is a very good price for that specific amp.

 

[RunOutGroove]

Like all planars the Sundara is power-hungry. Check the power rating of the Gustard, Sundara requires about 3,000 mw to sound their best. $150 is a very good price for that specific amp.

Yeah, I wasn't able to find that one spec on it, but I did read other stuff that says that this amp is particularly powerful and works well with harder to drive phones like planars. The headphone jack on my old Marantz amp does make the Sundaras sound pretty good, but I can't help feeling that I might be missing out on some of the magic by using a more ideal amp to drive them. Everything about the Gustard sounds really good as it's powerful has separate amps for each channel, variable gain settings, low noise floor, etc, but I guess that I was looking for even more conformation before buying the thing... which is silly because it's cheap enough that I should just buy it and see for myself. That's ultimately what we all have to do when we buy any piece of gear, or at least one that we haven't auditioned really thoroughly. I would be a bit more primed to buy the thing if I could sell a set of speakers that I've had on the block for a while... but that's unlikely to happen anytime soon, so I may just jump on it anyway.

 

[Caveman Carl]

Yeah, I wasn't able to find that one spec on it, but I did read other stuff that says that this amp is particularly powerful and works well with harder to drive phones like planars. The headphone jack on my old Marantz amp does make the Sundaras sound pretty good, but I can't help feeling that I might be missing out on some of the magic by using a more ideal amp to drive them. Everything about the Gustard sounds really good as it's powerful has separate amps for each channel, variable gain settings, low noise floor, etc, but I guess that I was looking for even more conformation before buying the thing... which is silly because it's cheap enough that I should just buy it and see for myself. That's ultimately what we all have to do when we buy any piece of gear, or at least one that we haven't auditioned really thoroughly. I would be a bit more primed to buy the thing if I could sell a set of speakers that I've had on the block for a while... but that's unlikely to happen anytime soon, so I may just jump on it anyway.

I would have snatched that amp a long time ago, don't wait until someone else gets their hands on it it