Chinese Headphone Amps

[Joolsburger]

I am awaiting the arrival of my second child and have decided that now is the time to invest in a decent headphone amplifier rather than having ongoing battles with SWMBO.
I have been toying with the idea of valves and am quite interested in the stuff available from China which looks pretty good.

Does anyone have any experience with any of the chinese stuff (If not headphone amps just general stuff)?

I have a few concerns about voltage/safety but mostly sound quality.

I use HD580s and they could do with warming up a bit.

Any thoughts?

 

[T-bone Sanchez]

I have two chinese valve amps, ones a EL34 pp made by dynavox and the other is a valve hybrid headphone amp made by Bada. Both are great, amazing value for money. The bada is very very well made and sounds pretty dam fine although it does take a while to burn in. I have the same headphones too. I think I paid a ton for the bada from HK, it took 5 days in total and I didnt attract any attention from customs.

 

[Joolsburger]

Where did you get the Bada I can't find anyhting on the web?

 

[Tenson]

I had a Cayin A-88T with my AKG K1000's and it sounded absolutely superb. If you want a real top headphone rig I would recommend it. No problems with the amp what so ever, but I had to sell due to needing the money. I will have it again one day! If you are into headphones then you must hear a pair of K1000's just for the experience.

Cayin or Spark (both the same I think) also make a dedicated valve headphone amp which IIRC is called the HA-1 and was received very well among enthusiasts. It can do the RKV trick of powering high efficiency speakers too.

Talking of which... the RKV is supposed to be a good.. or even 'THE BEST'.

 

[PBirkett]

The ANT amber is definitely worth consideration, way better than anything I've had before.

 

[T-bone Sanchez]

Where did you get the Bada I can't find anyhting on the web?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3280&item=5770921479&rd=1

There are quite a few English companies selling them but they seem to go pretty quick, I know edenlake did have some.

 

[amazingtrade]

Erm £80 that is quite affordable, I am looking to make a bit of an upgrade and I listen to headphones all the time, I am like Paul in that respect. At the moment I am using the headphone output either in my Marantz amp or Rotel RC870BX pre amp.

Would that little pre amp make a big difference in sound? I suppose they will be easy to sell on if I didn't like it.

 

[Tenson]

Thought I would post a few pic's

Here is the Cayin HA-1

The one from Edenlake

Opera Cyber 20

and a pic of my Cayin A-88T with K1000 in attachment

 

[T-bone Sanchez]

AT, the Bada would be a MASSIVE improvement over the marantz or rotel. Trust me, I use to use the head socket on my 6010KI and TBF its perfectly acceptable, but going back after the bada shows how far apart they are. Im not a lover of headphones, I prefer the openess of speakers but maybe I need better headphones.

 

[amazingtrade]

I need headphones for practicle reasons I have high frequency hearing loss so in able to hear the higher frequencies I have to listen to music fairly loud otherwise I cannot hear anything past 16Khz.

My headphones are not that great (Beyer DTX900s) but better amplification won't do them any harm.

The only problem is how to I wire the thing up? My amp has no outputs apart from the record level, if I run everything via the Rotel there will be quite a long signal path by the time it reaches my Marantz.

The only reason I haven't already upgraded my headphone amp is I couldn't afford the £200 price tag the Jap's and Europeans are asking for their stuff.

The only other problem is the one that has already been mentioned, are these things safe?