I picked up a set of Grado headphones a little while ago. I auditioned quite a few, and although I found the Grados to exaggerate the highs a bit more than I like, I chose them because they offered the most bang for the buck. When I was trying headphones out I had a chance to A B a set of Sennheiser 580s with a Creek headphone amp connected to a current Rotel receiver. I plugged the headphones to the Creek and then directly to the Rotel. I played a cut from the latest Peter Gabriel CD over and over and never could hear any difference in sound quality. The lows were as low, the highs as clear, and the transients as sharp. So...now I know that either the Creek headphone amp is unneccesary, or the Rotel has a good one built in. This got me thinking about the quality of headphone circuits in older (affordable) stereo preamps.
This raises some questions. I primarily bought the headphones to use at my computer. I have the original Klipsch Pro-Medias (without a headphone out) which are still impressive, but there are times when the family is watching in the livingroom and I want to listen to something on the computer. I can purchase the upgraded preamp from Klipsch with the headphone out, or I can pick up an older NAD, Adcom, Hafler or similar preamp and jack the headphones into that. Does anyone have any experience with those sorts of preamps? What sort of sound quality and reliability issues are likely to arise?
