I have the hd650 and am thinking about buying a denon 3805 receiver, but is it good enough for the hd 650 or should a shell out on a headphone amp? I have no knowledge when it comes to headphone amps, so how much would that cost me. If the 3805 is not good enough. Thanks

You'll find that there's a fair deal of debate on the value of headphone amps when used with a decent amplifier. The majority of people seem to feel that a seperate is essential to high end cans like the HD650s. However, I'm not sufficiently experienced or knowledgeable as a audiphile to be able to distinguish audio bull poo from audio jargon or audio fashion.

I use Sennheiser HD580s with an Ant Amber headphone amp on a Denon 500SD system. I could have bought the HD650s for considerably less than I paid for the HD580s plus headphone amp. My headphones are very comfortable and sound great to me through the headphone amp, but just to check this against your question, I plugged the cans into the Denon and I really don't notice much difference between the two. Anyway I've set my system up to use the headphone amp so it stays, but given my experience, I would try the 650s without an amp first. If your happy with the sound and can bear to be without that extra box, you could save yourself some money. Happy listening.

[NicolasB]

Denon equipment I think often has quite respectable headphone output, so it's likely that using a 3805 + headphone amp on the line outputs wouldn't sound significantly much better than using the 3805 headphone socket. However, it is quite possible that using a higher quality source than the 3805 with a separate headphone amp would sound better.

I use Sennheiser HD650 'phones with a Graham Slee Projects "Solo" headphone amp, fed directly from my Arcam FMJ DV27A when listening to music by headphones, and I'm fairly sure that, if I wanted an upgrade, I would be better off upgrading to a superior CD player rather than better 'phones or a better headphone amp.

[monkeyboy69]

I ran my 650 initially just via my processor arcam AV8, which sounded ok but a bit weak.
picked up a woo audio amp and took the 2nd zone out into the headphone amp , which became a lot nicer, much richer
Then just tried source to headphone amp and altogether a completely different experience, by far the best way possible, richer , deeper and more soundstage, while I rate the AV8 when combined with the p7 it kills headphone output when using 650's