[tolmie]

Hi everyone, I've been reading about headphone amps, I presently have a cambridge audio azure 640a and sennheiser head phones (495 or 595). I presently think the sound from my phono on my amp is superb thru my headphones but i've heard so much about headphone amps, would I see a good improvement over my present setup or are headphones amps not that good

Cheers

[TameRacingDriver]

At the level you are at with your equipment, and given your comment about the headphone jack on your existing amp, I would not pursue a headphone amp.

I have extensive experience of a multitude of headphone configurations, and I'd say with a reasonable set of headphones, and a reasonable stereo amp like yours, you are going to get a fairly satisfying result, as you already suggest.

Cheap headphone amps do not realy give much, if any improvement over the headphone sockets on decent amps.

You really have to be spending upwards of £150 to start noticing improvements, and even then, you really have to be heading into the upper-echelons of headphones too.

You sound reasonably happy with what you have. If you have money to burn, by all means experiment, but just do not waste your time with cheap stuff. Research and choose carefully. Take your time. Chances are, with any decent headphone amps you wont be able to audition because the best are always found on the net, not in hifi shops.

However, I would suggest you take your headphones to a shop and maybe try something like an X-Can v3 to give you an idea as to whether you think the improvement is worth it.

When I was experimenting with headphone amps, I used Beyerdynamic headphones and compared my headphone amps with a phone socket on a Rotel integrated. Compared to the Rotel, many of the amps did sound a little cleaner for sure, but also thin and lacking bass. It wasnt until i got an amp of the caliber of the one I have now where it was a clear improvement. That was a £220 RRP amp. Even then, i'd say it was mainly just a cleaning up of the sound, improving clarity, dynamics, detail and timing over anything else. Even then, you have to have a pretty decent source too.

In summary the cheap amps to me were a waste of money, and were only of any use if your components didnt have headphone sockets to start with. The better ones are better, but you have to have the headphones and source to match, and also realise there is dimishing returns here.

[tolmie]

No problem, thanks for your advice, the sound just now is superb but just thought if there was better out there I would love to hear it. Any idea how much I would need to spend to get my speakers as good as my headphones, I have monitor Audio B2's which are great but not as good as the headphones.