Headphone amp advice

[Ewoody]

just bought Sennheiser HD650 headphones, I've read from people on these forums that high-end headphones are best suited to a headphone amplifer.

Never heard of these amplifers before, my question is do I connect the headphone amplifer to my home cinema receiver, if so how do I go about it.

thanks

ewoody

[alexs2]

Originally Posted by Ewoody

just bought Sennheiser HD650 headphones, I've read from people on these forums that high-end headphones are best suited to a headphone amplifer.

Never heard of these amplifers before, my question is do I connect the headphone amplifer to my home cinema receiver, if so how do I go about it.

thanks

ewoody

Your receiver should have a headphone socket which you could use in the first instance.

HD650's and similar do generally benefit from a dedicated headphone amp,as the outlets on many amps and receivers are poor quality op-amps or of poor quality in any case,although this doesn't apply to all.

If you search this forum,you'll get an idea of what people are using,from the very cheap,to the very expensive.

[NicolasB]

Connecting a headphone amp to a home cinema receiver may be difficult. Headphone amps (just like speaker amps) are designed to be connected to line-level analogue outputs, typically the red-and-white "phono" sockets. To connect one to a home cinema receiver the receiver will have to have line- or pre-amp level outputs, you'll need to switch the receiver into stereo mode, and you'll need to find a way of deactivating the speakers while you're using it.

A better option might be to plug the headphone amp into the analogue outputs of your DVD player (if it has any).

There's quite a wide range of devices and price ranges when it comes to headphone amps. I use HD650 'phones and a Graham Slee "Solo" amp ( http://www.gspaudio.co.uk/headphonea...eamplifier.htm ), and I think it's a great combination, but you may not want to spend several hundred pounds.

I would strongly urge you to audition any device you're thinking of buying and compare it directly to what you have; you may be lucky enough to own a receiver or amp that already has good headphone output, in which case the improvement with a dedicated amp may be rather small. As I said, I use a headphone amp myself, and I think it's a worthwhile investment, but I also think there's a tendency among audiophiles to exaggerate the importance of using one; the improvement may be quite subtle (unless you're comparing it to something that's powered by batteries).