!remindme 1 day

I will be messaging you in 1 day on 2022-11-28 10:07:19 UTC to remind you of this link

CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

^(Parent commenter can ) ^(delete this message to hide from others.)

I can't say I know how or why, but I can tell a difference with and without an amp for my headphones. It just makes it sound slightly more filled out, like the music has depth and life to it.

Your headphones probably would still sound good without an amp, but using a proper power source just unlocks their full potential really.

It just means their hearing impaired ears need more power for the headphone to reach comfortable listening levels. But that aside you want an amp that can supply enough voltage swing into so you have more headroom for loud parts and thats it.

As long as you achieve comfortable listening level you are good to go. Do not worry about what audiophiles say. It is mostly their imagination and copying the marketing department.

That does make sense. thanks

What does it mean? Well, if you have an audio shop near you, try and audition the exact same pair of headphones, with the Apple dongle and then with a dac/amp, and you decide for yourself (: If you detect no difference, that's your money saved (or put into a new pair of headphones more likely, knowing us)

Personally if you ask for my experience, I tried this with an Edition XS. At pretty similar volume levels, with the Apple dongle (and blindfolded at home where my headset was plugged into my pc's motherboard) I noticed the sound was pretty congested. Everything's still happening, just blurred into each other as compared to with my ifi zen dac v2/questyle m15.

Short and semi-wrong simplification: a small amp, like a phone-amp, can produce effect peaks that are sort of technically sufficient to blast your ears off even on a pretty high impedance driver (like on the hd600). But sustaining a more complex sound-picture, and still creating the dynamics (i.e., the differences in volume that are, presumably, in the recording of what isn't an electronic metronome) needs a longer and higher effect threshold (that on normal listening volumes might not be very high, but still significantly higher than a phone-amp).

So.. when you test the physics of it, you could get results on a very light amplifier - and that would even correspond to your listening experience - where the amplification required to produce an accurate enough tone for a short amount of time is extremely light. I've done some testing that is similar to what produces the effect-curves and frequency responses you see on some of these tests - and for short enough intervals on reasonable volumes, a massive effect threshold isn't necessary. At all. Like a 4W laptop amplifier competes with a Chi-fi star from Marantz that happily drives two large front-speakers on 2x100W until the glasses ring in the cupboard.

But if something more complex happens in the music (and the source you're playing back has a higher density in the actual recording - and not that it has been "upscaled" to 320kpbs mp3 or something like that - so that you're even going to be able to hear anything here other than the boom on the lower tones, and various other things that are just not produced in the actual speaker-driver) -- then the tones/music will change once you have a sufficient effect threshold to draw on.

It still doesn't need to be very high, which is why a decent enough carryable amp is enough (and why Chi-fi is a thing - the level required for more than decent enough playback is not actually that high. And the design-need to put in incredibly high ohm speakers also isn't really there, because people don't have power-grid noise or things like that that really cause noise - we're not at that level in recording or monitor sensitivity on your typical home-product that plays back, at the very most, 320kbps compressed audio, sent through any amount of noise-filters on the way). The idea that a cd-recording, that was compressed down to a cd-format in the first place, that then was washed through the cd-player's horrible variable codec, that then produces a signal that is washed with a noise-filter before it's amplified, and then also reduced slightly again through the amp -- needs a million Watt amplifier from Klipsch or Hegel to sound good on a pair of normal-sized speakers in a living-room is beyond ludicrous.

But basically, on the first step, you're looking for an effect output that can make the headphones work consistently. If you have to turn the volume/effect very high up to get much of anything, you can hear the effect very easily when you play something else than a test-tone, in that the difference between loud and quiet is basically not there, or that you're missing reproduction of some frequencies when there are other things happening as well. I.e., you get the test-tone, but while doing two, there's a variation in the output.

The second step is getting something that has a high enough threshold so that in complex parts of the recording (some people notice their blip-boop music not having a great enough bass-crunch while the keyboard is tapping an a-tonal horror that would make Schoenberg flutter in delight) will be the same when you add another element to it. On classical recordings you could have the same effect because of noise around where the recording was made, for example. So that - if the recording wasn't leveled through a press and then cut out in an a4-shaped cutout - that noise from the chairs and various echo-bits and resonance would actually sound fantastic on a good setup (as much as the recording equipment allowed). But when played back on a kitchen-player (the gold standard for "modern" digital formats), the recording would sound inconsistent, unpleasant to listen to, and dry and empty.

That effect-threshold for reproducing something with dynamics on a 300ohm headset is not very high. But it is higher than a phone-amp's, which is typically reaching peaks of the effect the power-supply can handle or is designed to handle at around 20ohm. The "gold standard" for mobile phone headsets, as with bluetooth headsets, is basically then to produce headphones that are in the 16ohm range.

That doesn't mean they suck, it's just that higher impedance speakers would sound like trash on that system (in certain situations). To make things worse, though, some of these large headsets also work, and are designed to work on lower effect. So you don't get muted or garbled tones on an under-amplified system (which again brings with it an endless amount of design-for-most-common-usage drawbacks). It's just that you're not getting out what the headset can produce.

Which admittedly very often isn't an actually high level. For example, if you can have a sustained effect without drops through, say, 5 seconds, on a very low effect amp (such as a phone-amp - they do exist), you can actually get away with that on low volumes on fairly high ohm speakers. Because what you were looking for was not to produce peak effect on all frequencies, in some astonishingly modern music recording that is unfit for human consumption -- but a lot less than that.

Or put in a different way, the difference between "hi-fi" and "crap" was actually the amplifier's ability to output the desired, still very low, effect for 1 second, instead of having a drop-off after 0,3 seconds. And that then retained all the dynamics at a humanly listenable volume, produced all the detail, etc., even though the amp is not going to melt your ears (at least literally). Note that you also have these effect-drop offs on more expensive amplifiers, just in a different range.

This comment might get downvoted, but It's mostly true.

Wow this got quite long, but here you go:

I own a FiiO K5 pro and the Xduoo TA-26 and use both, but to be honest here, my onboard audio can handle the HD 6XX just fine. I tested it a few times and I really would love to say it was worse, but it was honestly fine and, as far as I remember, not much different.

I've yet to plug my headphones in some amp-dac setup and say: "wow, what a difference!", so there's that.

My setup is more for looks and the feeling it gives me. Warm, slightly glowing tubes, dedicated volume knobs, all of that is very nice, but I'd be lying if I would tell you that these amps blew me away in comparison (the TA-26 is just solid state sound that's slightly fuller, like 10% difference at best). I also believe that dacs barely differ from each other if their goal is a neutral soundprofile. The FiiO works just as well as a 1k dac I've tried at a friend's place. He was quite shocked, which I found very entertaining lol.

But take this with a sprinkle of salt. I am sure that not every onboard audio solution is as good as dedicated dacs and amps. It's just my motherboard that works fine and others might not. My phone with the EU Samsung dongle doesn't get loud enough and the bass is actually reduced and my Nintendo Switch also seemed to be lacking in some aspects.

In the end it's up to trying things out. A and B testing with matched volume, finding out by yourself if there's a need for amplification. Heck if money isn't an issue then go nuts, it's a great flex, but on the other hand there are many on here that want the best bang for their buck and that's totally fine.

So we should stop lying and tell them the truth: it always depends if you actually need thing xy, so try before you make your wallet cry. Heck even I'm a little bit biased because all of this stuff I purchased was expensive for me. But I am really trying to swallow my pride here and tell you what I've actually experienced.

As and example: my last few weeks consisted of swapping tubes like some lunatic only to be sitting there, sad and alone in my room, trying to deal with the fact that there's barely any perceivable difference between all of them.

TL;DR: I sometimes wish some devices made as big of a difference as some people claim. In the end you have to try things by yourself and decide. I personally wasted some money (on tube rolling) that could've been used for something else.

Edit: oh btw, I didn't talk about things like hissing sounds from some aux ports or USB ports picking up GPU sounds and such. Some dac-amp solutions might help here, especially optical cables (these fixed the issue of my tube amp picking up random noise from my PC).

I see what you mean. Thanks for explaining!

100%

[deleted]

>I’ve heard some say that properly powering a headphones adds bass/treble.

Funny enough, it's the opposite. If headphones are properly powered, they have LESS bass/treble. Because it usually means that amp and headphone are impedance matched. Which is not the case with Sennheisers like HD800s - their high impedance means they'll sound good out of any source straight away.

[deleted]

The OP is asking for a short yet technical answer.

No one seems to reply with such criteria.

It’s a… complicated topic

My phone can power my HD 650 to volumes louder than I'd like, but even as an audio noob I can tell it sounds very off as if it's kinda "dead" or missing details. Add a simple amp and it shines at similar volumes.

!remindme 1day

With dynamic driver headphones, where the impedance changes over the frequency response, the output impedance of the amplifier determines the final frequency response that you hear. It is for this reason that sometimes people run for example the HD800S on tube amps, along with more second order harmonic distortion which produces a more "euphoric" sound. The high output impedance however is not unique to tube amps and can be reproduced by simply adding a resistor to output section of a solid state amp.

Powerful amps give you more headroom. I'm going to give a simplified example. Let's say in a certain song the drums are 10 dB louder than the vocals. Since dB is logarithmic, you can perform addition and subtraction on the numbers and maintain the difference in relative loudness. An under powered amp tops out at 90dB for a given headphone. If you turn the vocals up so that they are 90dB, the drums are still going to be 90dB because that is the limit of the amp. If you've got a more powerful amp that can drive the headphones up to 110dB, it will comfortably reproduce vocals at 90dB and drums at 100dB.

Amplification is a very complicating topic. You may come across SINAD for example, but they don't tell the whole story. But in general if you get an amp from a reputable brand which delivers high power you are good to go

What headphones? I tried my sundaras plugged into my phone and I couldn’t really tell a difference between the phone and my amp apart from not getting quite as loud as I’d like.

For every frequency, headphones have slightly different impedance and sensitivity (power needed to product a certain volume). In principle if an amp is underpowered the headphones can sound loud enough but the frequency response is distorted, particularly towards the extremes, because the amp can’t power those frequencies. This is why people say the bass and treble are lacking.

Very generally, I’ve found that if a pair of headphone produces “listenable volumes” but are not actually loud when the phone volume is at max, then they’ll perform better with a more powerful amp.

I tried

Planars have a flat impedance graph

I don't know about this...

My first pair that cost more than $100 was the Beyerdynamic DT 770 250 ohms. Didn't have amps. Used it over 2 years just fine. Decided to upgrade to the DT 880 600ohms after discovering how much better it sounded but everything was too soft when I used it at home.

Decided to spend the minimal on an amp to see if it makes a difference and bought the O2 amp. Not only did the DT 880 sound exactly as good as I auditioned it, I discovered the DT 770 which I've listened to for 2 years without an amp and was super familiar with its sound and was totally fine with, sounded much much better with amps.

Tried a few more times with and without amps to make sure it wasn't some hallucination and bias and there's definitely a huge difference.

I became a convert in the efficacy of amps from then on. That's what made me plonk a considerable sum for an endgame amp ( the Drop THX 789). But I have to admit I couldn't tell there was much difference between my dingy O2 and the 789.

So I'll go so far as to say there could be some snake oiling when it comes to super high end amps but I still swear by the difference between any amp and no amp at all for high impedance headphones.

It's not really about adding bass and treble with an amp or making it louder, it's more like if you buy a really good and expensive pair of headphones, you can listen just fine without an amp but you're probably not going to hear all the detail the headphones is capable of producing without an amp.

Right, although the sensitivity still varies. The Stealth Arya are a good example of this, they’re too quiet and mediocre driven from a iPhone (or even an unbalanced cable from my DAP) but come to life with a stronger amp.

My R70x sounds thin and piercing on my laptop. It gets loud, don't get me wrong. But the louder it gets the more piercing it become. On my Topping DX1 or LG V60 the R70x sounds like it should be, neutral-warm with a relaxed treble.

For sure. Way more headroom on a strong amp

Oratory1990s comment on r/headphoneadvice is worth a read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HeadphoneAdvice/comments/rsvir3/what_does_an_amp_really_do/hqos93o?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

I always hate the terminology of “properly power” simply because it implies that many amps cannot do it. Which isn’t true. Many amps are capable of powering most headphones, but not all amps deliver power as cleanly as others at certain settings. I actually had this question recently and got a very lovely short essay from GoldenSound. It basically came down to, “just because an amp can technically do it, doesn’t mean that it does it well.” I think the best example that I can give is my Element 3 vs my Apple dongle when powering my 250 Ohm DT 770 Pro. With the Apple dongle there is a ton of high end hiss that that goes beyond what the 770 is known for. It’s palatable, but definitely not pleasant. But with the Element 3, none of that is present. Different topologies allow for some amps to work better at lower gain settings. Hence why the Apple dongle has sizzle and hiss, but the Element does not. Ideally, you want to introduce as little gain into your signal as possible since gain will color the sound before it even reaches your headphones.

^ Please read this.

My Diokos when plugged into my phone sounds like it has half the subbass it should've had as well as not having the same sense of airyness or soundstage I get when plugged into my moondrop dawn dongle. Sure it is at an listenable volume when plugged into my phone but my Chus literally sound better than the Diokos without the DAC dongle

Granted my phone is a 2018 Xiaomi so the hardware certainly isn't the best, but I'd recommend OP to go to a local audio shop and try out how does his headphones sound like with an amp first, if it still sounds the same to him then his source is good enough

It simply depends on what you count as "listenable" volumes. Sure an iphone can power hd600's to a low level of volume which may be perfectly "listenable". The issue is power required to raise the volume is not linear, each extra decibel requires a larger increase in power than the previous one.

Now lets say you're not listening to highly compressed professionally produced music which has a tiny dynamic range, lets say its amateur produced with a massive dynamic range. Suddenly you need 10x the power to get to that same "listenable" level.

Then there is the question of what is "listenable"? If you're trying to recreate the experience of a concert you may be looking at transient peaks of 100db, that will take way more power for the hd600's than an iphone will deliver.

At the end of the day though, the question is are you happy with the volume you're getting in all scenarios? If yes, then there's no problem.

JDS Labs (they make the Atom and Element series) once put a blog post discussing this: https://blog.jdslabs.com/2015/06/power-is-volume/

Not this again

Wow that sounds interesting! I would like to know the size of the effect. Are there frequency response and distortion graphs of the 770 with the apple dongle and with the element 3 (or literally any other headphones with an apple dongle vs anything else)?

One thing that this subreddit almost always ignores, (including it seems to some degree, even wonderful headphone acoustics guys like oratory,) is that at very low output in the 1-100microwatt range, particular amps can start dipping into the range where where THD+N start becoming mildly audible. Especially for low impedance headphones, say 32ohms or lower. But it could happen with 50 ohms too, I just don’t have charts to reference like we for a 33ohm load on ASR.

This is demonstrated by ASR’s own charts and audibility thresholds. Of course most people don’t understand the electrical physics and math and effect on perception beyond a huge 2 volt unity gain signal like a 1kHz tone masking all the THD+N tones… but we don’t listen at 2 volts. “Transparent” doesn’t matter if it’s 120dB, it’s not always “transparent” for the below example at real world levels of <70dB to 80dB

2 volts into an AKG K371 is 120dB at 1kHz. Actual music at below 70-90dB (90 is very very loud, mind you…) in the range of <5mV to ~55 mV (millivolts), as shown by ASR charts for many amps do fall into a zone of audibility for these types of THD+N.

1 volt into 32 ohms at 1kHz for 114dB is 31.25 milliwatts. This would damage your hearing. Down at 60-80dB the THD+N is basically the same but the 1kHz test sine wave signal isn’t dominating the scene.

This is the faulty analysis that ASR and the whole subreddit subscribe to.

Any DAC output at 1 to 2 volts or more (with whatever THD+N qualities) is attenuated with the potentiometer, etc. to the end of gain on current for headphones by the amp but at a massive reduction in voltage from the source level.

This is lost on most of this subreddit, but it is based on the laws of electrical math and the analysis here is based on Amir’s own work. His charts and the thresholds he and nwavguy put forth.

Many just fail to ever see or hear this point and have hand-waved it away whenever mentioned.

I like HD650 with an iPhone dongle, 1 volt is good for 103dB… but prefer a professional level DAC/amp with ~7v SE and ~14v balanced for them along with that units much cleaner pro level +4dBu signal and for the ZMFs too.

300 ohm and other high impedance headphones are less susceptible to the THD+N thresholds even at microwatt range, but the nicer amp isn’t doing “nothing” beyond an Apple dongle…. Which, as I said, is quite listenable and sounds good for most headphones.

It's just volume. Mismatched extreme cases of impedance can slightly alter the sound, usually for the worse by adding slightly extra bass. My powered Roland workstation's headphone jack is an example, it gets incredibly loud easily and makes some headphones bassier. Not desirable and an extreme case out of dozens.

Out of all the audio interfaces, amps and even dongles I've used in shops, studios and from home, they basically sound the same, just can deliver different volume.

Soundstage widening, extra detail, cleaning up frequencies, all of that I don't get and even if that was true, it's going to be a result of it altering the frequency response of headphones which is a bad thing. I don't want a coloured amp, I want an accurate amp.

Save your money in this marketing speak dominant hobby.

Just wrote this in reply to a comment linking to some of oratory1990’s thoughts on amps. I am linking here so OP can see.

Amps generally are reducing voltage for headphones from line level (since they are mostly very sensitive or efficient) - the amp is outputting less voltage than it receives but is increasing current to be able move and control the physical driver membrane via the alternating electrical signal applied to a dynamic driver’s coil and magnet system. Same goes for most types of drivers, with various quirks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/z5wwmn/comment/ixzbgik/

The apple dongle’s THD+N at 10 μW into 33ohm is at or below the audibility threshold.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-apple-vs-google-usb-c-headphone-adapters.5541/

[deleted]

Well, plenty are much lower levels than 10 μW… for example, campfire andromeda 2020, 7.01millivolts or 3.84 μW (these are 12.8 ohms) is good for 94dB at 1kHz. So the distortion numbers go up even more for lower impedance usually and lesser voltage/power.

Then you get into the impedance curve of a headphone or iem with dips below nominal impedance which have even more distortion levels still.

A little distortion isn’t the end of things and can actually soften the sound sometimes. People often don’t even really understand what a harmonic spike even is for a 1kHz tone. Distortion bad! But why do certain tube amps sound so rich and natural and alive?

For andromeda 2020 if my quick calculations are on track, 88dB is just below one μW

78dB is ~ 1/10 of one μW

All rough math since rounding tiny numbers compounds.

The Apple dongle being what it is, is not the point. It is good, but you can do better for many loads. Many amps that have been deemed “transparent” at 2 volts are simply not when it comes to actual power levels. And that isn’t a bad thing, but it does allow for the possibility of amps to impact performance within the threshold of audibility.

But then people come along and say none of that matters anyway. Can’t have it both ways; but the subreddit does, somehow.

And in those edge cases where you can audibly hear the distortion and noise, it would be worth getting a lower noise source. For all other cases it doesn’t matter

The effects of the device are measurable, and it is calculable if the device will provide a sufficiently low distortion signal. Nobody is listening to music on a hd600 at 10µW, yet there’s endless, baseless discussion in this thread of how much (immeasurably) better their not-ultra-high-sensitive headphones are sounding from whatever amp.

Also, if listening low, at say 60 or 70dB peaks or below, many loads with certain amps will have the possibility of THD and a noise floor becoming audible, especially when the music dips below peak, sometimes by 10 or 20dB+… depending on the DR and nature of the music. Intros and outros.

The THD+N of a DAC at 40dB down signal and the character of an amp at low levels into sensitive low impedance loads all add up.

And just as before, we then have people say things like, “well, the distortion and noise level that ASR says is the threshold actually doesn’t matter you can’t hear it anyway.” Have your cake and eat it too type of thinking.

Electrical math and performance are hard facts for circuits… looking into it properly for a more informative analysis is a lot more involved than a 1kHz test tone at unity gain and a couple levels sweeps for THD+N at 33 and 300 ohms.

The chart for the Apple usb-c dongle doesn’t go to 1 μW for some reason anyway. But we can extrapolate decently.

(I often listen to speakers at 60dB max c-weighted peaks, fwiw)

Yeah, but $2k dac/amp would provide even more "full potential", right?

> And in those edge cases where you can audibly hear the distortion and noise, it would be worth getting a lower noise source. —-> For all other cases it doesn’t matter <—-

Dissent in the interest of knowledge and in common hobby with all of you:

Purportedly. Or if it sounds good, you can embrace it. Whoa, what is this sourcery? (Sorcery) “Get you a topping DAC amp and it’s the best it will ever sound.” Maybe. It depends?

Just as the prevailing notion for years and often still is that lossy 320 kbps doesn’t matter vs FLAC for most listeners is purported… since, usually drawing false conclusions from fact based datasets provides the easy false consensus to win arguments with zero honest discussion en masse and sustained in a tick tock manner of forum discourse over time.

Very similar and same are not synonymous. With the tendency to exclude all cases that buck the tailored talking point that “none of this matters… “audibly” and for anything within the constraints to make it easy to defend, at that - is a convenient way to dominate the conversations on the internet at large. Forever. Perceptually is a better term here, and all listeners are not the same. Perception is not consistent, changing the parameters of the listening changes the outcomes.

plain and simply, though close in sound quality, the atom amp is not identical to an O2. For me and my hardware. Not for all potential listeners that don’t demonstrate ability to discern fine differences between mostly alike signals on blind tests with statistics will notice anything at all.

Considering this to be based only in placebo or bias is the easy and quick surefire way to discount and nullify any anecdotes that are, for an individual, assessments that are actually based in reality. “Prove it!” Is the cry. Since the social psychology of forums has perpetuated this type of discourse and made it worse with downvote and upvote buttons.

There is no IRL universal comparator hardware rig like with for music files at ABX.digitalfeed.net to allow swaths of hobbbyists to “test” in a consistent and rigorous manner to even find out.

It is the MO of this subreddit to approve and support tests of something like a D10 and a Modi DAC that do not find any difference. Despite that the methodology is so poor, why bother. Even the best posters’ methodology that mention they did notice something almost always gets dinged for their levels matching or whatever can be used to discount the test, no matter how well people try.

So unless we can have everyone that tries to look into have not only a perfect method with blind or double blind testing proctor, along with a dummy load and a high precision multimeter or an analyzer with an o-scope and levels displays to whatever factor is needed to match the voltages/power levels precisely, then also have seamless and silent instantaneously but blindly controlled switching, that has to be totally non destructive to the signal to try this out at a large enough scale to even matter statistically and remain consistently rigorous; what are we even doing? One or five songs on one day is not a meaningful test. People that pass lossy vs FLAC tests can fail with a couple mistakes despite accurately reporting what they heard.

People that are of the mind that none of it matters need not even actually try to pass the test. Click no difference. Click. While people that do notice fine differences in other tests would have to listen and pick carefully. Why bother to try to prove to people that won’t believe you anyway and will bury even the best and most rigorous testing with the tides of text in a matter of three days. Fail and they mock you. Pass, for real, they mock you. It couldn’t be so, I don’t notice anything type reasoning in what is on an individual listener/music/hardware basis a variable equation.

if this is the demand of the pro “mildly different sound profiles exist” camp but not of the “none of it matters” camp this isn’t good science. Especially if we restrict and exclude all these verifiably different scenarios in place of a mindset which is limiting the consideration to hardware that is supposed to be “transparent” and act on a “very similar is equivalent to same” assumption with the demand of proof on the opposite side, it creates a lazy and uninformed majority to defend all this. One that also demonizes anyone who demonstrates why it matters, even with amps that if you look at the SINAD, most would say it’s all transparent and same = same. It depends on a lot of factors.

I mean you’d start getting diminishing returns pretty quick

Monolith m1060s with jds labs atom amp

maybe, maybe not. only the most hardcore and informed listeners should be thinking about buying gear that pricy.

everyone else can get 95% of the way there with a cheap entry level stack for like 250 or less (Schiit Magni/Modi are great, can drive pretty much anything).

I was playing around with low, mid, high gain, with varying 0 to 5.5db bass shelf. No matter how much I eq'd the bass on low gain it sounded like an iem, in my head. High gain gave me subwoofer like slam. This gets even more prominent with speaker amps which is what all rich people who have spent years searching for end game buy hundreds of amps end up with even if its moderately priced. Please note this is just for hard to drive planars and earspeakers. High power usually means more noise and is not ideal for sensitive headphones.

Just got the R70x. Have to say it's a great sounding headphone. Definitely a difference listening on my Schiit stack vs my Sonata HD. Also the Sonata was actually getting warm driving them, that can't be good.

Not really. Difference between pc/phone direct output and 100$ DAC will be a much bigger difference then between 100$ DAC and 2000$ DAC.

And me personally cannot understand why anybody spend bug money on headphones and plug it directly into laptop/phone.

people associate it with "more power = more better" rather than better quality design and components = cleaner sound....but yes

That question is kind of an oxymoron when it comes to audio lol

This can be a science if you want it to be. Has a double blind abx test ever shown a difference for solid state headphone amplifiers? What difference do you perceive? Is there a way you could imagine measuring such a difference?

I’d love for there to be some way to compare amps together if there is such “unmeasurable” differences. Imagine abx testing an amp against known ranked amps to decide the rank of the new one. An amp hierarchy could be made!

Let me explain this phenomena on a larger scale with speakers. I have Martin Logan ESL’s (electrostats) and I was running them both from an integrated tube amp. The sound was great but I saw that my local audio guy had two emotiva mono blocks on sale for $750 a piece (normally $1100 each) After setting them up properly, which did require removing our sub as the adapter caused one speakers to be quiet) I found that I really didn’t even NEED a subwoofer as they were being sufficiently powered (given a full strong signal.) The highs and clarity and dynamics and even soundstage were improved. These mono blocks must weigh around fifty pounds each and boy let me tell you I do not want to move them again but they supple class A or class A/B power with a switch. Try out better amps, but you might want to get better speakers down the line too!

The hard part of this is that explaining sound can only be done with funky words like sparkly, bright, muddy, sibilant, etc… The best thing you can do is give a proper amp a chance and compare those same headphones out of an iPhone and out of an amp. Trust me, you WILL hear the difference (hd600s are great for this cause of the 300ohms resistance).

Best explanation I found as to how / why it truly matters is that if you're at 90% Volume on a song because your phone can't power your headphones all the way.

Say you're listening to a song with a very high dynamic range like something classical or some Jazz.

The soft portions of the song that are very quiet all the way to the loud booming portions could have a difference of 25db.

When you're at 90%volume, your headphones can't put out more than the Maximum, and so you lose out on all that extra detail and range the song has.

And when your headphones aren't powered enough to bring that low small whisper portion of a song into an audible level, and then be able to bring the louder booming portions into it as well, then you're losing out on either the sound from the quiet tones or the more loud higher details. And when it's not properly powered, that's the issue you struggle with and face.

There may be some flaws with this, I'm not an engineer. This is my understanding after reading a fair amount on it and asking some similar questions.

I have the Lcd x, a headphone that can be powered by a childs wish. The difference between a Qudelix 5k and an RME ADI 2fs is : Literally the headphones go from “huh, sound pretty good” to “jesus christ are they performing behind me??”. In this case the headphones sound fuller, more detailed ( silly but you can actually hear things more separated from another ) and persuasive

[deleted]

If you actually check, tons of people listen at 68dB-73dB on peak, not average… the lower range there is pretty much close to 10 microwatts.

HD650 is close to HD600. 650 is ~98dB/mW, so -30dB is 1 microwatt. (68dB SPL)

I listen at this level often. I listen to speakers at 1mW often too. People over estimate power SPL factors into many loads.

89dB/1000mW speakers French Be tweeters, ~flat, 10mW is 69dB is on the loud end. 1mW listening is common. This has a ton of sound power. Headphones are often 10000x more efficient or more.

So no, people do often describe listening at 1/100 of 1 mW. Or 10microwatts on HD600 on forums. 70dB is commonly reported. Cranking it is 76dB or 80dB. For many listeners.

Hearing is significantly less discerning at low SPL. If you’re listening at 30db on open back headphones, I promise you will not notice 0.05% THD+N. In fact, I’d imagine it’s starting to get hard to hear the signal at 30db over the environmental noise. The room I’m in currently is 45db of background sound.

If 1microwatt is 30db, 16microwatts would be 42db, and still below the audibility threshold of THD+N, and your signal is still likely lower than environmental sounds so THD+N is likely not top of mind.

Lastly, your baseless condescension isn’t appreciated

Edit: typo, thanks for pointing it out in a non condescending way /s

so… what you’re saying is you’ve only ever listened to your Sundaras via headphone out and you don’t like it much?

Awesome, enjoy your pair! They really are underrated. It doesn't help that most reviewers out there prefer to rec the Sundaras or even the 6xx' over the R70X'.

>Definitely a difference listening on my Schiit stack vs my Sonata HD.

What difference did you hear? I'm curious.

Listening at 30dB huh? Ok. Well, have a good one then. Your math is way way way off.

Didn’t condescend to you, nor did I give any “condensation.”

Take it easy man.

Correct it please. I got the 30db from your post, you said you often listen at those levels. If you listen higher, it uses much more power and we’re back to being far away from audibility of THD+N.

It means nothing; it's just a way for people to justify amp preference with something that sounds technical.

-30dB meaning minus 30dB, not 30dB.

I just edited in the SPL marker when I realized you misread the factors and thought I meant listening at 1uW is 30dB- it’s ~68dB fwiw. 98dB/mW minus 30dB (a power factor of -1000x = 1uW)

With a stepped attenuator and signal meters on a pro unit, it’s easy to figure out with math that I am listening at the range I described, around 1-16uW and it is totally clear with HD650. Not everyone listens this low, but many do. When it’s even later I listen even lower. Again, Tons of people report topping out at around 70dB on many a listening session.

Aha I did misunderstand. Going from the spec of 100db at 1mW, it would be 52db at 15microwatts. I still think that’s acceptable, maybe you don’t. Certainly on the threshold of audibility and at low spl.

[deleted]

1 microwatt is 1/1000 of a milliwatt. So spec of 100dB/mW divided by a power factor of -30dB or minus 10^3 is 70dB/uW not 52dB at 15 microwatts, which would be around 82dB SPL for that load.. give or take.

Can I help you with the fundamentals of the decibel (in relation to power output) which is a logarithmic scale? -3dB is half power, -6dB is 1/4 power, -10dB is 1/10 power. And vice versa for positive factors. 2x, 4x and 10x.

-6dB is a halving of voltage

-12dB is quartering voltage

So you can take any efficiency at dB/mW and figure out the equivalent at a microwatt by subtracting 30 decibels. 10 microwatts is subtracting 20dB from the dB/mW rating, etc.

Be mindful of dB/Volt ratings

Technically, dac amp or dac + amp able to achieve 100dB SINAD at 1mW will mean it can drive properly.

For HD600, dac amp capable for 1Vrms output is good enough. 2Vrms is even better. Anything more than 2V will just deteriorate with increased in noise.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/366774/twice-the-audio-source-3-6-or-10-db-spl

Not once did I mention mV. I haven’t confused them. Double the spl is 6db additional. You might be confused about perceived volume vs power.

I didn’t say you did. I said be mindful of headphones rated in dB/V since it is different than dB/mW - IE - HD650 ~98dB/mW or 103dB/V

You might be confused about the output power levels we are discussing (in relation to the amp’s distortion and noise at these levels) and how the decibel scale reflects power output factors of amps and therefore SPL… factoring for certain efficiencies at certain nominal impedances and the associated decibel levels they produce.

You’re tripping over your shoelaces correcting me, when my math is spot on.

Edit: I am wrong! See below

here’s a calculator, let’s try. https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/splfull.php#gsc.tab=0

Enter 100db/mW sensitivity, 300ohm, and 0.0001 mW load on amp gives 60db. 66db at 4microwatt, 72db at 16microwatt. By 70db, the THD+N of the apple dongle is audible transparent. If you’re listening less than that and can pick up noise over background sounds on your open back hd650s, then you can surely justify spending more than $9 on an amp.

Remember we’re talking about THD+N of 0.05% which is 66db below the fundamental measured. You’re not gonna hear that at 70db signal with open back headphones.

It’s a ~6db change for double output power (as I hope you found by using the calculator!) 10db is a doubling of perceived volume. Please read the link, I think it would bridge this gap. Instead, you assumed that I don’t understand logs lol. This won’t go much further, but I do encourage you to at least read it. Fun talking with you.

To make them loud enough

I’m done arguing with you. You are either trolling or stubbornly confused.

+6dB when referring to amps and power/voltage as we are here and have been, is a voltage factor of 2x, which is a power factor of 4x. Hard fact. Period. Written in stone. +10dB (when talking about power factors of amps) is a factor of 10x power. Again, hard fact. Period.

Arguing points on something we aren’t taking about which is SPL in the air you are bringing up, aside from what the peak output level will be from a given power level serves nothing except to prop up your broken talking points and bad math.

You typed in 0.0001 mW rather than 0.001 mW

0.0001mW or 0.1 uW is at a power factor of ten less than a microwatt, again, a microwatt of power into this load makes for 70dB SPL output in this example. 100nanowatts is 60dB.

So, if people want to believe you, they are free to. But you are mistaken about we have been discussing, well, trying to. While I’m sitting here listening to a mastering converter with amp at no more than 4 uW and down to about 0.25uW or 250 nanowatts on this song that is averaging about -12dBFS with HD650. All known variables.

You know how I know this? A Stepped attenuator with 1dB steps, a known power output and also professional dBFS meters with peak values and average values. Along with the actual math needed to figure all this out. Even ~approx calculation is possible for a one dB step with an easy to remember power factor.

So, when I say to people, yes, an Apple dongle can drive most headphones pretty well… I mean it. I use one too. With many headphones. But it doesn’t mean it sounds exactly the same as a mastering oriented pro voltage level DAC/amp, especially when listening rather low.

4uW for 74dB peaks isn’t that outlandish is it? It’s like 33dB ambient right now.

Have a good one man.

Oh my goodness it’s true! I mistyped it! It is 70db and you were right my bad. Yeah I could imagine at low levels THD+N could be high then. I am sorry, I was thrown off by the tone rather than content

Legitimately, thank you for helping me better understand real world listening level distortion.

🍻

It happens, no mean tone intended.

So for all you know it might just as well be the case that you don’t like the Sundaras?!

The Sonata really seemed to be struggling with heavy bass. It sounded like there was distortion and that along with the dongle getting warm was enough for me to stop using it pretty quickly. I have not noticed this behavior on my ksc75s or he4xx.

[deleted]

Maybe try to understand about powering headphones and how much power is needed. It can be calculated.

But yeah, why bother. Just get dac/amp and be safe.

But... but more "full potential"? right? more "full potential".

I don’t know what you’re asking, but it sounds like you already have your own opinion about this

What open-backs have good bass around 300 bucks tho? ATH R70x and DT 990 pros all need the help of an eq to get a good rumble.

I want to upgrade into good bass but the closest is Hifiman Edition XS (also with EQ ofc).

I'm talking about DAC not about amplifier. Why bother to read comment? Just reply. right?

You would be surpised how many people here think that DAC is DAC/AMP combo.

I see that you mean DAC as DAC, not amp. In that case you right!

It's poor sarcasm.

Yeah right.

A lot of people does not distinguish the DAC and DAC/AMP combo and very often refers to DAC but meaning AMP.

I would advise you to try the 1770 Pro, it’s bass-heavy and the most fun headphone i’ve tried so far. It sells in Europe at around 400€. Or maybe the 177x from drop?

but based on what you said you don’t really have the data to back that up? if you’ve never heard them with an amp, how do you know a powerful amp would fix your issues with it?

If you really want to delve into it, look into the "equal loudness contour". It's a nuanced topic, but you can always start with Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

TLDR; The human ear is most sensitive to the midrange, so you need significantly more SPL for bass and treble frequencies to be perceived as equally loud.

(Side note: Without developing careful critical listening skills to be able to perceive these differences, this debate always devolves into a pointless pissing contest, from both sides.)

Equal-loudness contour

>An equal-loudness contour is a measure of sound pressure level, over the frequency spectrum, for which a listener perceives a constant loudness when presented with pure steady tones. The unit of measurement for loudness levels is the phon and is arrived at by reference to equal-loudness contours. By definition, two sine waves of differing frequencies are said to have equal-loudness level measured in phons if they are perceived as equally loud by the average young person without significant hearing impairment.

^([ )^(F.A.Q)^( | )^(Opt Out)^( | )^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)^( | )^(GitHub)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)

Unfortunately closed-backs don't really work for me as I have some T H I C C glasses. Sadge

I don't follow. What does the one have to do with the other?

Because an answer that fits that bill does not exist.

In my response, I suggested that OP tries A/B-testing so he can hear the difference - that'd be the least wordy answer, because if you wanted to really nerd out about technical details we are going to go on forever lol

Closed/openbacks dont make a difference on that front, I'm also running some chunky/thicc glasses myself.

I'm not much of a basshead - more so than sheer volume and quantity of bass I like mine restrained and NOT bleeding into the mids or bloating, so on days I'm craving for bass my XS + bassboost button on my ifi zen dac v2 makes me very happy. The Sundara is a slightly warmer presentation, with bass slightly less tight/controlled IME.

Np. But sorry if I sound like I'm .. really mad at someone, or something... But there's just so much bs floating around.

I guess I should have added something about where the amplifier even comes in. Sometimes you might just have a power-source and some digital transfer standard. I think most of the time, this is what you have now. You have a laptop and a usb-c, or a phone with usb-c. You might have a similar setup with hdmi. So what you're really requiring in that case is a) a very small dac that produces something reasonable (what's needed here is a 1 cent chip). And b) a very small amplification of that converted signal.

A good amplifier will do both of those from the digital source, and have noise-filters in that process, along with some equaliser voodoo, very often. This stage is typically where the actual differences in sound "feel" comes from. For example, when you listen to something from Hegel, you are not just getting the raw signal (if there is such a thing), you are getting something that they feel mimicks the feel of an orchestra-lounge. And that comes in the conversion stage for the most part (when you map out the entirely non-analog signal), and in the noise-filters after it, and then finally in the ranges the amplifier will work best at against such and such speakers.

So imagine a different scenario where you have a leveled output from an analog source (like a casette player, or a cd-player with it's own conversion stage), and now your amplifier is supposed to magick this signal into something that can produce richness and beauty on a huge rig -- this isn't trivial at all, and sometimes not really possible. Now you're suddenly talking about having a sound-feel from the amplification that sometimes very clearly and obviously is going to favour a high impedance speaker setup where the sound coming out is "cleaner" and "crisper", than what you would get out of it if there was noise being amplified, if there weren't noise-filters, if you didn't sacrifice some of the input to get a good spectrum out, etc., etc. This stuff is the realm where a lot of the really knowledgable people who know sound come from, and in that realm you can hear the difference between a good and a bad amp. And it is not just subjective, there are very specific things being done to the noise and signal here in that amplification process that causes signatures and "feels" that may be good or bad, or whatever.

But since we have a digital source now, and can skip a lot of these issues, first of all, it is possible to get really high definition audio output without garble, right? There's less and less need to level recordings, people have dacs that do that. That's huge. Should be, at least. Because not only could you get the actual sound of the source at much higher definition, you can level it against whatever your target is right there.

So what we are really looking for is just a dac that does minimal things to the audio input, and then an amplifier that just amplifies that analog signal a tiny amount without causing too much distortion. Like...

https://www.adv-sound.com/products/accessport-lite

And you suddenly have an analog signal from a phone that is going to objectively be a billion times better than what a 10k Euro amplification theater system would have been fed just 15 years ago. And on top of that, you have amplification drawing on the usb power source, getting you potential effect peaks that can comfortably handle low volume on semi-high impedance speakers.

Can you do better than this 29 dollar thing for an amp? Yes. Can you do worse? Yes, absolutely, there are cheaper ways to do the same thing. Can you do /significantly/ much better than this 29 dollar thing, though, in the context I mentioned with the amplification of a record-player or a cd-player with it's own dac, when outputting to a headset? In the sense of.. could you capture more of the sound-picture by switching to a gigantic amp? That is actually questionable. XD