It is my first post on this forum, so I want to start with saying:
Hello Everybody! I am thrilled to be here.
Please donât be too harsh about my English, but also point if I am making some stupid mistakes.
To the subject though.
Considering the most recent âelectrifyingâ review done by Z the mightiest, and leaving aside all the comments above (I have read them, but some of them are like over a year old).
I must admit, I am a bit hyped about them after Zâs review, and I would love to try them myself; Although I cannot see myself doing that at the moment due to the current situation around the globe.
I have a question:
Would you rather: (considering you donât have any equipment yet)
Mod the dt880 600ohms into balanced, and use them with any decent amp (please add some examples of what would you see it paired with)
Get yourself a small nuclear power plant-like amp to drive the dt880 600ohms? (also, please add some examples of what it may be, I know Z added a note that an old speaker amp should do, but I still donât know many of those that would actually work + I would like the equipment I buy to be as versatile as it can be)
The reason for the question is. I am a newbie to the subject and despite me always wandering around the topic of high fidelity audio, I never actually had such equipment (just recently I bought a Koss portaPro, and despite them not being to comfortable after long listening I currently look at getting Yaxi Pads and getting some KPH30i). But the time changes and I want to buy something that wonât be just expensive.
I want to buy something that plays well enough so that I can gain more experience on the subject, grow myself a good ear and grasp what is going on.
You should not need to run them balanced. I would encourage modding just for the sheer entertainment value.
You can run the 880 600 ohm off of any of the standard recommended beginner amps. No need for a nuclear powerplant. You can ignore the stuff about the Atom and the other competitor amps not powering it properly. They wonât drive it to extremes, but they will function and not sound like shite.
If you really want to / are concerned about power, grab a Gilmore Lite Mk2 or an Asgard 3 and a dac of your choice. Should drive them just fine. If youâre reallllly concerned. Mod them to balanced and get a Monolith Liquid Platinum lol.
Get an intro amp first. Donât go full bore until you know you need it. Some people on this thread are way overexaggerating about power requirements. Theyâll sound fine without a nuclear powerplant. Remember, you can always upgrade if you want. First purchase is not be all end all. More power will make them sound better, but unless you want to spend upwards of $500 it wonât be night and day. If itâs your first step, do <$200 on an Asgard or Archel.
I said âit might be extraâ in an earlier post. I watched a few YouTube videos about removing the pads, and the foam disks, and they didnât the black foam glued to the driver. Beyer may have updated them and the video may be older versions of DT880.
First off, welcome to hifiguides! Secondly, your english is actually really good so no worries!
Going to agree with pr3ss here that you can indeed run them on lower end amps, usually in the $100 region, and it will indeed run just fine. However, it will not sound its âbestâ. DT 880 is a nice headphone to have for someone wanting to venture more into bright headphone territory but not too bright like a dt 990. I wouldnât say to go ahead and balance them as balanced is a much heftier cost typically.
to add to those amps I would say pick up a magni 3+ or a Liquid Spark as a good budget amp they both work well with the beyers especially liquid spark which can help smooth out that treble quite a bit. Asgard 3 would sound a lot better but this is $100 more. Balanced I cannot agree more with the liquid platinum like Pr3ss mentioned as I have one myself and fell completely in love with the amp.
Since you are still new to the higher end audio perhaps finding your local audio store or a good return policy and auditioning some headphones to find what you enjoy the most. I know theres some audio shops that have amps in stock will allow you to bring your headphone in to test out the amps to find your ideal sound. Amps and Dacs will offer a different sound with amps being the biggest difference of the two.
@Pr3ssAltF4, @Falenkor, Thank you very much for confirming what I thought the best way of proceeding for a newbie like me is.
Following the saying, that I heard not long time ago: âif you want to get into anything, just start with the small spoon and make your way up through it.â
I was thinking about the DAC/Amp combo, the IFI Zen to be precise, but from your comment above, I found that it may not be the best choice for those particular headphones. I also love the design of the JDS Element II or the Topping dx7pro but here again⊠The price
I know that this may go slightly off-topic, for what I apologise right now. But I guess some people that may get here like me may find themselves wanting something they donât actually want if that makes any sense for you Guys.
Do you consider the dt880 with a reasonably decent budget amp a good starting point to get yourself a taste for what the music should sound like out of the headphones?
The reason I am asking is that I think, most of the people donât really know what decent sound sounds like. What I believe to be even more important, I want to learn how to differentiate the bad from the good, and later the good from the very best.
Taste? We will get there too
I canât wait until all audio shops get open so that I can freely dive into them and get to listen to all those fantastic things.
Can you guys propose some more Amps, maybe Dac/Amps if you consider them to be the right choice at the beginning?
Ideally, and currently that it is the plan, I want to build my own Amp myself in the future, but for that, I first want to get into what it should roughly sound like.
@theArchitect To add to the guide just listed above this post. heres a guide on amp/dac combos that may help you within budget and explainations that was written by Zeos.
Well, yes and no. To explain is that some people just donât like bright headphones due to being treble sensitive or deeming them as âsibilantâ. In the dt 880s case some people may find it lacking in bass or, like said previously due to the treble, the highs can be viewed as uncomfortable. Itâs a great headphone and, if you can afford it alongside a cheap amp dac setup, In my opinion is a great introduction to the more brighter headphones alongside the dt 770, closed back but more bass less treble, and dt 990, the sharper V signature. A good, yet less demanding of an amp, alternative would be something like an Shp9500 this will be cheaper and is said to not require an amp despite being a bright headphone as well. Both are good although I do prefer the dt 880 due to it being more flexible. If you can afford to support the 600 ohm variation it sounds better the better your setup is.
Theyâre recommended by a lot of people for great, inexpensive, neutral-sounding headphones. You just donât have to be treble-sensitive â but with the 600 ohms version, apparently, even if the treble is there, itâs never harsh.
DT177X Go are probable the only âBeyersâ that could sound ok for people who are treble-sensitive, but theyâre also 400 or 500$. If youâre treble-sensitive, avoid beyers.
Again may original post said âthey might have an extra piece of foam.â You arenât the first to respond and tell me the same thing. I watched some guides on how to change the pads and theirâs did not have the foam. Thatâs why I said âmightâ because maybe in the long history of this headphoneâs life, they may have had a revisionâŠ
Yea. I would go with the 250 Ohm option however for an intro headphone. Only because even though the 600 ohm option is technically âsuperiorâ, the 250 ohm is cheap, easy to upgrade, scales well, and is very easy to drive. So yes, the 880 should be fine. However, my 250 to me is the bare minimum for a dedicated headset. Donât grab the 80 ohm version
My personaly recommendations are the MDR 7506 and the Sundara. MDR 7506 because of the sheer enjoyment I get out of them (and theyâre relatively cheap) and the Sundara because Sundara (go look up reviews for it) (I really like my pair).
Thatâs fair. I think a big part of audiophilia is the journey. Start small, grow big. The speed at which you go is dependent upon budget and desire to improve your experience. I would say start small (this coming from a guy who in 3 months went from DT 770s to Eikons, Clears, and >$1000 cans). You appreciate the improvements more when coming from budget gear. Itâs worth it to spend as little as possible at first.
So very best and good are definitely subjective in this hobby. The gear you like is the gear you like. No one has a definitive âbetterâ or âbestâ metric. I love my mdr 7506s and Pm-50s. Are they flawed? Hell yes. However, because I enjoy lisetning with them, theyâre worth it.
Iâll reiterate, start small and work your way up. Itâs worth it.
Me and you both man
My ideal starting stack would be Geshelli Archel 2.5 pro and Enog 2 pro. Then again, there are many other staring stacks out there. Your choice. None of them are really bad tbh afaik.
Iâm just getting into this (cmoybb kit just arrived). My suggestion (with my extremely limited experience) is to grab the cmoybb kit and work up from there.
Long story short. Get the DT 880s at either 250 or 600 ohms. Go with whatever <$200 amp and <$200 dac (from the normally recommended lists on this site) you like the most aesthetically / feature-wise. Work your way up from there. It might not be âaudio blissâ, but itâll give you an idea of what you want to aim for as you progress.
I suppose there is a non-zero chance Zeos is not crazy and this headphone sounds amazing on that particular amp. If youâre willing to put forth your money for science and test it out, I for one would appreciate it. $250 for the amp would be worth it if itâs as good as he makes out to be. But I think itâs more likely heâs just over hyping it like he often does or maybe the DT880 is just perfect for his preferences
I am going to have to go with this one here on the reasoning. Much like Ant over there absolutely adores the Helios you get that one headphone that just completely suits you and pairs perfectly to your tastes.
Thereâs really no such thing as a bad starting point if youâre open to the prospect of investing time and money into this hobby. If you want to just get one good setup and be done then itâs worth spending some more time before making a purchase figuring out what you might like.
Especially at an entry level, different headphones will tend to do some things well and other things less well. Headphone voicing (frequency response) can affect how well headphones work with certain music types. A neutral tuning like the 880s is probably a pretty safe bet for getting started.
I personally got started with a Sennheiser 650 and still like the Drop 6xx or 58x as a starter headphone. Whatever you choose, there are plenty more good headphones to pick up next that will cover any âweaknessesâ of your first headphone.
The Atom DAC just came out. Youâd be hard pressed to beat that plus an Atom amp as a starter rig. Schiit makes some good stuff, too.
True. Not only that, but you need a couple data points to compare before you can even orient yourself from âgoodâ to âbetter.â If the goal is to find out what âgood audioâ is all about, start with something affordable, then get some advice from the community to figure out what to try out next. Itâs only over time and a lot of different listening experience that the whole big picture of what audio can do really starts coming into focus.
I very seriously considered doing that, but I donât foresee myself having a use for that amp beyond satisfying my curiosity with the 880s (and the T1.2s). My Violectric V280 ships July 1 (should be here in ~ 1 month). I will definitely post thoughts here re: 880s on that amp when I get the chance to listen.
I also still owe someone here a comparison of my various Beyers. Iâm inclined to wait for the new amp before prematurely posting thoughts on the 880s, or the T1s, for that matter. My early impression was that I like the 1990s quite a bit and T1s were sort of a letdown, but T1s are also a 600-ohm model (vs 250 for the 1990s). I have a feeling that amp pairings may be coloring my experiences, and Iâd like to check out that theory before posting too much.
If I were you Iâd go ahead and post your thoughts on the 880 and T1 anyway. Iâd definitely be interested and hardly anyone on the forum will have a V280. I would think the RNHP would be at least a decent pairing for them.
BTW why the heck do you own 2 789âs and 887âs? XD
once modded for it to be balanced, which blanced amps would be suitable for it? emotiva a-100 with the jumper mod, with 600ohm load, produces 0.6mW. Something like topping a90 and smsl vmv p1 produce 0.6mW, thx 789 produces 0.4mW. anybody tried configuration like this?
Watching Zâs review last night inspired me to spend a little more time with my newish 880 600s. Yes, they are hungry, hungry headphones, but no, they donât take a modded speaker amp or a $5,000 handmade German headphone amp to drive.
These Beyers are indeed meh out of my SMSL stack and Audio-gd R-28, but they are great on my Archel2 Pro and Cavalli tube hybrid.
My listening session tonight was on the Geshelli on high gain, fed by a Modi Multibit. Gramatikâs music is predictably compressed, and I didnât get much higher than 9:00 on the volume knob. Still good stuff though. I listened to some jazz tracks and was suitably impressed - I really engaged with the music on these headphones. The biggest improvement, as suggested by Zâs review, was with acoustic music. Iâve struggled a little with the album Flute Waves, played by the 14 Berlin Flutists. On other setups, the inner parts usually get swallowed by the mud, and the lowest parts almost disappear altogether. The Beyers really fixed this problem, improving timbre, separating out all the parts, and revealing the details I was missing before. This recording has never sounded better!
I should mention that this exercise was probably tainted by one of those little games that we as audio enthusiasts play. When we change our expectations and biases, we listen more carefully and pay closer attention to various aspects of the music. By expecting great things from these headphones, driven well, I basically convinced myself I was hearing great things. Still though, I love these headphones!
I am thrilled to be here.
