Got my crown amp set up to my Beyerdynamic dt880 600 ohm, and without anything other than 230V AC connected I hear a low hum noise in my headphones, without any regard to the amp volume, I don’t have an available earthing in my sockets, is that why I’m getting that hum? And is there then a way to remove that low hum noise?
I mean there could be other reasons for the noise, if there’s a lot of super bad switch mode power supplies on the power line just killing the sin wave.
Thought of getting an isolating transformer 230 to 230 to try and kill some of the noise from an unavailable grounding, I am an electrician so I’m very aware of the dangers of using such a transformer, just not that sharp on the finer things when it comes to electronics, so any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for reading!
Daniel
PS. I know it’s overkill but those headphones need so much power <.<
PPS. :
Yes I am aware that the headphones are sensitive, but we’re still talking about a theoretical 600 Ohm load
The grounds have the same potential, works even across monoblock power amps
If somehow the positive got in direct contact with the negative, we are talking about a digital amp with digital and physical protection against it so not worried about that
What I really am just curious about is how to reduce the noise that I’m hearing, if a filter or some resistor config could kill the noise floor
This really isn’t a good idea imo, I wouldn’t suggest doing this. These headphones do not need this whatsoever, and the amp is not designed to see a load like this. The crown amps are also going to be very noisy as headphones are much more sensitive than speakers so it will pick up the noise floor of the amp better. Imo just grab a good headphone amp and go that route and you would have a more satisfactory experience
They really don’t imo, if you want something in the 100 range, the liquid spark does a great job if you want something warmer, and the magni 3+ if you want something neutral and slightly smoother. If you have 200, you can grab something like an asgard 3 which is a great match imo
If you absolutely needed to make this work, don’t run it directly from the speaker taps, you would need to make a conversion box that would present the amp with a reasonable load like 8 ohms and work off that, kinda like the hifiman speaker adapter. This being said, I personally still wouldn’t suggest this as a headphone amp unless you had to
I mean the 880 600 ohm are fairly sensitive, not really hard to drive. The he6 would do well on a crown amp but then at that point you would just want higher quality amplification to get the most out of it
Think it might just be the sensitivity, is there a way to combat that issue? cause they do definitely need at least 50w a channel to make go properly, like the Emotiva BassX with the mod, as to get the proper response out the headphones, cause I do have a drop 789, which makes them go but they need more power to not distort the amp, hence the 1502.
I am planning on making them balanced in the future, just currently not set up for that
I really personally don’t think this is the case, the 789 is subpar on it’s single ended output, and also a mismatch overall in terms of sonic signature even if you did convert to balanced. The basx a100 is ok, but it’s not very refined and not really impressive for the price with a headphone amp compared to other options imo. I would seriously suggest trying out something like the asgard 3 and if it doesn’t work out in your opinion, they do have a 15 day money back.
Oh god why?
You are aware you may see extremely high voltage (upwards of 100V) on the headphones, yes?
The hum is always there. Could be grounding, could be the amplifiers internal circuit. When you hook up something as sensetive as headphones, you make the hum audible.
Crown usually has very good protection in place.
Note:
If that amp was a class A, you may have dead headphones in your hands, you know?
I do know about the dangers, but we’re still talking a 600 ohm load and would only result in about 0.166mA of power through them, but that’s why I had zeos from z reviews hook his dt880 upto two emotiva power amps before testing it myself, and even that worked perfectly fine, I’m really just curius about the noise that I’m getting.
You also have to consider that the amp isn’t designed to operate much over 16 ohms, and you are presenting it with 600 ohms. It will still most likely work, but it won’t really sound good imo, you will have some really strange issues happen that change the sound in a negative way imo. I have run my 880s with a speaker amp, and it really didn’t sound all that great compared to a more suited headphone amp imo
It’s been proven by many members here that the Liquid Spark powers the dt880 600 ohm perfectly, and is also a great pairing for them in general. I’d highly recommend you forget about the speaker amp thing, grab yourself a Liquid Spark, and enjoy. There’s no reason to go through all of this effort honestly. There’s no benefit, only detriment.
That is correct yes, don’t see what this fact changes?
Don’t have an oscilloscope, but did put a multimeter across the terminals, if anything there’s 1,9mV across positive to negative, but that’s really not an accurate measurement
