Mon do you know of something that performs like the asgaard 3 for a similar price or even for $100 more? Similar output and quality etc. the asgaard just isn’t available in Europe
You might be able to find something like a Lake People G111 used in the 300-350 range for solid state. New, it’s a little over 400 Euro or a little less B-stock. The G105 is just north of 300.
Thanks. I’ve heard of them I think from a z review. It seemed pretty good albeit pricey compared to the asgaard if I’m not mistaken. I’ll check it out on thomann
Yeah, I’ve been curious about that too. The answer is…complicated. It’s not easy to find a direct answer with Google either. It just doesn’t seem to get talked about very much. In VERY general terms, here’s what’s happening…
- Differences in driver design:
Dynamic-driver speakers/headphones convert electrical energy into mechanical energy by placing a wire coil in a constant magnetic field. The alternating current (AC) of a music signal then produces a magnetic field in the coil that will either align or oppose the magnetic field of the speaker’s permanent magnet. When the two fields agree, the cone gets pushed out, when they disagree, the cone gets pulled back in. A planar magnetic driver places a thin diaphragm with an embedded wire trace in a constant magnetic field created by an array of magnets on one or both sides of the diaphragm. When current flows through the wire trace one way the diaphragm gets pushed one direction. When current flows the other direction, the diaphragm is pushed the opposite direction. With the AC signal of audio, the current is changing directions a lot and either the cone of dynamic driver or diaphragm of the planar magnetic driver moves back and forth, pushing on air and creating a mechanical compression wave.
- What causes impedance and how impedance behaves in the two driver types:
Moving any electrically conductive material through a magnetic field will induce a difference in electric potential (voltage) on that conductor. That will then cause electrons in the conductor to move from the high potential to the low. This induced voltage will be in opposition to the signal voltage, and thus will be perceived by the amplifier as a resistive load, which is called impedance. Here’s where the impedance behavior of dynamic drivers and planar magnetic drivers really diverges. In a dynamic driver, the voice coil is just a wire coil, and a wire coil is just an inductor. An inductor’s impedance will increase with frequency. Dynamic drivers will also have a natural oscillating frequency, a resonant frequency, at which they will vibrate when simply tapped with a finger or some other physical stimulus. Dynamic drivers have another impedance spike at and around that resonant frequency. This spike happens because at that resonant frequency the cone and voice coil (which move together) do their most movement, thus generating the largest opposing voltage. Thus, a dynamic driver has an impedance that varies with frequency with a spike at its resonant frequency and then a steady increase as frequency increases. The resonant frequency is often somewhere in the 60-100Hz range. This is why the impedance curves of dynamic headphones will often have a U-shape. The wire trace of a planar magnetic driver is not a coil. Thus the force on the diaphragm is dependent on the length of the wire trace, the magnitude of the constant magnetic field, and the amount of current flowing through the trace. All of these are rather constant which means that a planar magnetic driver’s impedance does not vary much with frequency, having an almost flat impedance curve.
- Output Impedance
Tube amps are current amplifiers while most consumer solid state amps are voltage amplifiers. Tube amps also have a high output impedance. Solid state amps, if well designed, usually have a very small output impedance - often at a fraction of an ohm. A high output impedance is like putting a large resistor in series with a speaker/headphone driver. Doing so means that the “output resistor” will dissipate some of the energy the amplifier produces that could be used for transforming electrical energy into mechanical energy in the form of a sound wave. If the “output resistor” is large compared to the impedance of speaker/headphone driver, it will dissipate a large portion of the amplifier’s energy, leaving less to go toward sound wave creation. Dynamic drivers can really be freaked out by this. Because their impedance is not constant with frequency, there will be some frequencies where the driver has a much larger impedance than the output impedance, leaving lots of amplifier energy for the driver. There will be other frequencies where the output impedance is higher than the driver’s impedance, leaving a lot less energy available for the driver. These variations will cause potentially wild swings in the frequency reponse. Remember that resonance frequency impedance spike in the bass region for dynamic drivers? That’s a frequency range where the driver’s impedance will often be large compared to output impedance, meaning the driver will dissipate much of the amplifier’s energy in that range. That often translates to boomy, bloated, and generally more bass. Planar magnetic drivers are less affected by output impedance because of their near-constant impedance. However, if the output impedance is still large compared to the impedance of the planar driver, the output impedance will still dissipate more of the amplifier’s energy. Where this audibly shows up is in the bass frequencies where it takes a lot of energy to produce bass frequencies at the same apparent volume as mids and highs. In other words, bass will sound rolled off more quickly.
- Why do more expensive tube amps work with low impedance loads?
They have output transformers. These transformers take the high-current-low-voltage signal from the power tube and transform it into high-voltage-low-current signal with lower output impedance. The Darkvoice and other OTL - meaning Output TransformerLESS - tube amps skip that part. Thus, they do behave their best on a high-impedance load. Also, current-drive amps will ramp up their power with increased impedance. Remember the U-shaped impedance curve for dynamic drivers? This power-to-impedance matching is what brings the bass and treble to life on high impedance dynamic headphones like the Sennheiser HD600 series. The voltage drive amplification of most solid state designs will decrease in power as impedance increases. Senn and Beyer started making really high impedance headphones for consumer markets in part because in the 70’s, 80’s, and '90s many people were driving their headphones off the headphone output on their receivers or integrated amps. Those amps usually ran the speaker amplifiers into the headphone output, and then put a big resistor on that headphone output so people didn’t blow their heads up. So Senn and Beyer put out lots of 250+ ohm models to push the impedance way above the high output impedance so that regardless of frequency, the headphone was getting most of the amplifier’s available energy (which was low because of the high impedance of the circuit) to convert into a sound wave.
This was not professionally done, but I hope it helps.
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as professional as I’ll ever understand. Thanks an awful lot for that effort. Really generous of you.
So that explains why planar magnetic headphones can have such low impedance, below 50 ohms, and still need a relatively powerful amplifier to drive them. It’s an entirely different energy economy.
Tha analogue nature of the tube power doesn’t provide the constancy that the linear constant magnetic field requires to maintain balance, whereas the dynamic driver is in itself a much more “analogue” design anyway and would correspond to the push and pull of the diaphragm.
I think that makes sense to me, even if it isn’t accurate probably.
this means that the effect of a tube amp with a planar magnetic would just dissipate into heat if not strong enough or cause a constant a-rhythmic distortion if it is too strong.
or something like that I think
What do you guys think of pairing the sundaras with a schiit lyr?
I can get one used for around 200 euros. 330mw @600ohm and its a hybrid, so it could be interesting, right?
I would also consider it for the dt880’s 600 I think, but I’d like to know if anyone has any experience with it
There’s no reason to think it would NOT work for either the Sundara or the DT880. My guess is it would pair pretty well with the 880. I don’t know how the hint of tube will play with Sundara, but that’s just a synergy question. Out of curiosity, which Lyr is it? Lyr 2? Lyr 3?
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ok, thanks. I just realised that it is the Lyr 1, so probably overpriced. or is it?
Almost in a follow up to Soren_Peregrine
Just found this post. Im already running my Sundara with a XD-05 Basic, and the Bluetooth module.
Is there any point in looking at the XD-05 Plus or the BAL? Regardless of the price, if I l’m going to use Bluetooth are either of those a worthwhile upgrade?
Thanks