• The move to the new server is done. There are some software and database maintenance updates in process. This has us passing the hat around to help out. We appreciate any donations. Seriously, even a dollar helps. The payment page may be found here - https://www.audiokarma.org/support.html

Sony STR-V3 Headphone impedance?

Khemikool

Khemikool

Member
I apologize, I am not sure if this belongs on the headphone forum instead but I figure the people here will be more knowledgable about my receiver.

I have been using an old Sony STR-V3 that I found in a thrift store for the amp in my stereo system and I want to purchase a nice pair of headphones to use with it at night when my roommates are sleeping but I need to find out what the output impedance of the receiver is for the headphone jack. I tried looking in the manual on HiFiengine but all it said was that any "High or Low" impedance headphone would work. Given that this is an older receiver I am not sure if high and low impedance headphones are different by todays standards. Does anyone know what the impedance should be for any Headphones I try to use with this receiver?
 
Register to hide this ad
On most receivers such as this, the headphone jack is powered by the power amplifier...the same amp that drives the speakers. A limiting resistor is added in series with the signal to drop some voltage, and then the signal goes straight to the phones. On the V3, this resistor should be 470 ohms 2W. The upshot is that there's enough voltage available to drive pretty much any headphone you might possibly come up with.
 
EchoWars said:
On most receivers such as this, the headphone jack is powered by the power amplifier...the same amp that drives the speakers. A limiting resistor is added in series with the signal to drop some voltage, and then the signal goes straight to the phones. On the V3, this resistor should be 470 ohms 2W. The upshot is that there's enough voltage available to drive pretty much any headphone you might possibly come up with.
Click to expand...

I was told elsewhere that I need a damping factor of 8-1, so doesn't that mean I would need to find a pair of headphones with 3760 ohms to be able to work from a load of 470 ohms or is there something I'm missing?
 
Sorry, Just to clarify the above, what I mean is that I don't believe they make headphones with that high of an impedance, so is there something I'm missing about the impedance you listed? Did headphones of the same time period as my receiver really use such high impedances? I don't believe I would be able to use any modern headphones with those specs
 
You are wayyy to concerned with impedance. When driven from the output of a power amp designed to push 4 and 8 ohm loads, this whole impedance thing gets fairly meaningless. Buy the headphones you want...any impedance you desire. Plug 'em in, and things should be fine.
 
The problem you might experience is that through some headphones the amp's background noise (not problematic through speakers) will be very pronounced. So you might hear noise during quiet passages and gaps between tracks. But other than that all headphones should work fine. I used headphones from 8 to 1000 ohms with no problems.
 
Thanks guys, that's good to know. For some reason I thought that if the impedance wasn't matched properly it would overwork my headphones or my amp and ruin one or the other.

Also, I'm not too worried about background noise, especially when there will already be surface noise from my records, I guess that means I'm not an audiophile or whatever but who cares
 
Just remember that amp's headphone jack has much more power than your average portable player, so you can blow your headphones' drivers with too much volume, especially if you use headphones designed for portable devices (most 32 ohm headphones). It's like using 20W speakers with a 100 WPC amp - you can do it, just don't try to push 100 watts through them.

As long as you don't crank it up to insane levels you'll be fine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom