Any recommendations?
I'd recommend the Musical Fidelity X-Cans. I've had a pair since the year dot (1998 to be precise) and they've never let me down.
If I could justify the cost vs. usage I'd go for this: http://www.avtalk.co.uk/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=18713&start=0&rid=4491&SQ=1151335017 I've heard nothing but good things.
Rega Ear got a lot of good comments over the last couple of years. They seem to be fairly cheap to buy s/h.
How cheap does it need to be? I'll have a recased A.N.T. Audio "Amber" going sometime soon but I'm not sure what range you're looking at.
Just picked up xiang sheng 708b......£50ish plus £20 or so shipping sound on arrival .....almost none, total hum city. but noticed that the RCA jacks were very dirty/ verdigress so cleaned and treated with deoxite. Then on a whim whipped out and cleaned all the valves pins.....switched back on and no hum just music. This is not the best headphone amp I've heard .....but its better than the all the project units and a couple of others I've tried over the years. Theres a hint of distortion/edge on some of the treble that needs further investigation but the sound is fast and fluid. I've got a set of beyer dt990's [old] and dt911's, so not really difficult to drive headphones but pretty revealing. This unit is the one with the valve in the window .....on investigation I assumed that this was going to be the splitter or similar....but no this valve provides the dc to power the amber leds .....that you guessed it light up the valve in the small window at the front! the working part is one 6n3 / ecc88 and 2 x 6n11 / ecc82. The case is folded steel[?] with a 10mm alu front panel. The vol pot was a 100k horror that was swapped for a 50k log alps blue asap. I've also swapped the 0.1uf film caps on the input side for a pair of pio 0.1uf 400v jobies. This has really helped relax the sound, killing the edgeness on the treble. I'm also going to fit a decent 1/4" jack too but thats for later. Oh yes the unit took two months to arrive and the vendor was http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Feedback-UpUpUp-99p-WinWinWin_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm Item number: 5881601328 the same as this one, but this from another dealer.
I just got a pair of AKG K401 headphones as the talk of that Cayin amp and my old AKG K1000's made me miss headphones! Now I have a pretty good external soundcard, an Edirol FA101 so I wonder how much difference a dedicated amp will make? The K401's are supposedly pretty current hungry so I wondered if it might be possible to use the Sonic Impact T-amp as a headphone amp. What do you guys think of this idea? How would it react to 120Ohms?
Dunno, but I've got a T amp knocking around the place somewhere. Would you like me too stick a dummy load onto it and fire up?
Rob if you can that would be great! By the way how does it sound? Not worth much as a headphone amp if it doesn’t sound good but as I understand, for low power systems it is up there with the best once it has a good PSU and better caps etc...
if your headphones have a common earth you will need to seperate this .....as I'm told the tamp will not have it other wise as its already bridged. but if yo can run both drivers seperately you may be onto a winnner ....
If by any chance you see an old Audio Alchemy headphone amp - grab it. I've had it for almost 10 years now, it was about £250 new, and the the best I ever tried.
I'll find it later today and try it. I have a box full of nice stuff including some smart black metal cases to build a 'Super T' but never got round to doing it. I ran the T amp from a Pioneer 575 into my Kans for a few weeks and it worked well, surprisingly so.
x-cans v1 are great, also in difficult ohms load, going cheap s/h. just play around with the valves, try watford valves, great guy does all the valves for top rock bands,