Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Is it worth getting a headphone amp

This month I will be changing to a swing shift. So as not to disturb my apartment neighbors with late night listening I bought a pair of Sennheiser 600 headphones. They sound great but subsequent research indicates I might benefit from a dedicated headphone amp. The reasoning seems to be that to keep prices of some AV receivers down manufactures skimp on the headphone amp.

So is this snake oil or might it be real? This is the best place I’ve found for AV reality checks so any suggestions.

So far I haven’t found anyone who has one to demo. Played hell just finding a retailer with a nice set of headphones.

Thanks,
Dean

If I were you I would give the Denon headphone out a try before I buy. It will be quite apparent if you are in need of a separate headphone amp.

Should have gone with Grado , they're easy to run at 32 ohm

Dean, I have a pair of Senn 650s and I didn't like running them off my old HK7200 receiver. Just never seemed to have enough oomph to drive the cans. I felt like I had to crank up the gain to get any kind of life into the sound.

Now I use the headphone section built into my tube preamp. The sound is much more to my liking with this. My preamp is said to have a pretty beefy headphone portion, and my ears agree. I now get liveliness and dynamics without having to crank up the volume.

Because Senns in particular have a high impedance I think they benefit most from a separate headphone amp, or a component with a heavy duty headphone input.

Headphone amps are not snake oil. They do enhance the sound. It is up to each person to decide if they want to spend about $200 or more on a decent headphone amp to get better sound.

Headphone amps give more detail, soundstage, bass, and liveliness to your music. I'm enjoying my Little Dot MK III amp and for the price of $200 or so, I think it's worth it. My integrated NAD amp has a headphone jack but doesn't give the quality of sound that comes from a dedicated headphone amp.

My headphones are Grado SR60s and Sennheiser HD595, both easy to drive. However, each has shown improvement in sound when plugged in to the LD MKIII. I'd think your Sennheiser 600 will also benefit since it is a harder to drive headphone.

Here's a link to a review of the LD MK III
http://www.compudio.ca/2007/06/little-dot-mk-iii-exclusive-review.html

There's also many other good amps. Just browse head-fi.org where there are lots of knowledgeable users.

Interesting question. I have no experience with headphone amps or headphones in general but I assume it would work in the same principle as a reciever/amp powering a loudspeaker. I would also assume a good headphone amp would not colour the sound in any way nor add any background noise (hissing, buzzing etc) and would be able to power an in-efficient headphone with ease with the headphones themselves being the biggest factor in the overall quality of the listening experience.

My only impressions is that they are niche market in the audiophile community and is riddled with questionable claims. Many claim headphone amps need breakin and this amp has a chocolaty midrange etc. This raises a big red flag to me personally.

I am glad you asked this question here. I hope Mr. Lofft can chime in. I love Axioms objective opproach to questions like yours. I hope to learn something with you.

I don't think anyone said they were "snake oil". I have a few headphone amps myself. A Creek OBH 11 with an Elpac power supply plus a SOHA hybrid. Both have a bit different sound sig, I like both, plus a couple of portable Cmoys. I run all my headphone through separate amps.

I always suggest that one should try what the have first to see if it is up to their standards. If not then by all means look into a hp amp.

Dean, when I occasionally use headphones I simply plug them in to the receiver phone jack. The requirements for driving most headphones are so simple that it's difficult to see how the phone jack provision attenuating the amplifier output to a level suitable for headphones could be "skimped" in an audibly significant way.

John, just wondering if you have heard a headphone driven through a dedicated headphone amp yet? For me personally, I just trust my ears rather than the numbers. It's difficult to put sound quality into numerics, but if one can hear the difference and like what one hears the numbers don't matter.

I don't know John. When I had the AKG K501s, the same as you I believe, I found the separate headphone amps to be far better with this particular set. When I tried them out of the Onkyo receiver they seemed to muffled to me. Plugged into the Creek of SOHA amp they really came alive.

One might say the headphone amps in receivers aren't as competently designed as the primary amps since they don't have to rate them.