Headphones, which one do you recommend?

[olblueyez]

A black Woo WA6 and the JVC DX1000 would be an amazing rig in that price range. You could even do a little tube rolling if you like. If I were in need of a rig and 1500 burning a hole in my pocket I would get my credit card so quick you wouldn't even see my hands move.

Spending 1200 on a Donald North Sonnett amp and going with something like the 650s would also be nice.

I think the first combo makes for a situation where your getting more out of a better headphone though. Not that there is any thing wrong with the 650s. The 650 is very light weight, cool on the ears, and has a removeable cable so you can buy a better cable. You will want a new cable too assuming you have amplification taken care of. Stefan Audio Art makes one called the Equinox that compliments the 650 extremely well, its about 3 bills.

 

[eljr]

I would definitely suggest a dedicated headphone amp for whatever you do,.

:scratch2: without knowing the specs for the headphone amp in the CD player I have to wonder why one would make that statement, electrostatics excluded?

 

[vuntruong]

That's is a damm nice Cd player. Do you know if the headphone jack/amp in the Cd player is balanced? wouldn't that be nice. And no interconnect to deal with. the only prob with listening to heaphones through the cd player would be volume control. If the cd player has a volume attenuators, then you are golden. spends your money on heaphones and power conditioner.

 

[Permanent Waves]

I would definitely suggest a dedicated headphone amp for whatever you do, I've had about 4 vintage receivers, and now have a integrated going to a power amp driving my headphones and it's still not as good as a dedicated amp. If i had up to $1500 to spend on a headphone rig, I would dedicate $600 to a Woo Audio 6, that amp will drive just about whatever you throw at it and sound TERRIFIC.

Ditto. An external amp makes all the difference, even with my easy to drive and mid-fi (Grado 225i's) or high low-fi (Senn HD 595's) can experience. No contest between even a "cheap" one (my x-head) and any vintage receiver headphone out or even my Cambridge Audio azur out.

I've heard great things about the Woo as well.

 

[Tedrick]

Love my AKG 702's driven with a Little Dot Mk III. That combo would leave you with lots of money to roll tubes and/or buy more music.

 

[vuntruong]

I have been using RSA XP7, and i found the headphone jack out of intergated amp (not preamp) to be pretty dam good. As far as tube headphone amp, we are talking about a whole different sounds. if one decided to go tube, one might as well get a bottlehead headphone amp, and build it yourself ($200) for a tube headphone amp, Hmm. prob beat the woo to death

 

[DS21]

Ditto. An external amp makes all the difference, even with my easy to drive and mid-fi (Grado 225i's) or high low-fi (Senn HD 595's) can experience. No contest between even a "cheap" one (my x-head) and any vintage receiver headphone out or even my Cambridge Audio azur out.

A headphone amp only really matters on phones that are hard to drive (e.g., Senn HD580/600/650). Besides that, the primary benefit of a good headphone amp is that it will include a crossfeed circuit to move the sonic image out from in the middle of one's head. HeadRoom's are all pretty good. I can't hear any difference on any of my headphones (Senn HD580, Denon D2000, Apple dual-driver IEM, Ety ER-4S, Ety-made Altec iM716, Senn PMX100, Koss KSC-75 with KSC-35 earclips) between my cheap old Total AirHead and my Portable Micro Amp. Though the PMA certainly looks and feels much nicer than the plastic TAH.

Because of the crossfeed circuit on better headphone amps, I would recommend that everyone use one. Unless you have a preamp with a good crossfeed circuit built in. The only such preamps of which I know are the old Sonic Frontiers Line-series.

Then again, I'm one of those people who sticks to the science of audio and doesn't dabble in nonsense like wires or expensive versions of commodity parts like digital sources or amps.