Yes, especially depending on how much the impedance drops around bass areas for certain speakers, because if you are playing loud and it drops to like 1 ohm you may have some issues if your amp isn’t rated for it lol
I’ve been splitting line outs for years, I tend not to go over 2 and its been fine. Currently I have the RCA on my SDAC-Balanced split between a passive preamp (Shiit Sys) to my Monitors Speakers (JBL 305) and my Darkvoice 336se tube amp, while the XLR run right into my SMSL SP200 (anyone notice with other THX amps we refer to them by number, 789, 887 and this on the 888 we still refer to by SP200 :-/ ) and I’ve noticed no real reduction in noise.
On a funnier note, I have the DV336 feeding back into my SP200 (RCA), which amping an amp is generally a “NO, NO!” but I was interested in trying it from when @ZeosPantera originally did it in one of his videos with his old Panda stack. It actually turned out real nice and works well with planar.
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My guess is you’re running the DV’s pre-out back into the SP200 (yes, agreed on the different naming conventions). That is perfectly fine and not strange at all. What that pre-out (or is it lineout?) is is essentially one half of an internal “splitter” built into the DV.
I have an SP200 (do we have a mandate to call it the 888?) on the way as well and plan to do similarly with SU-8 balanced to balanced and then RCA through a tube buffer to inject the tube sound into planars and other low impedance cans.
I think people will figure out what its the sp200, unless they think of the benchmark hpa4 lol
No, its just funny that all the other THX are referred to by their chip except for the SP200. And yes, I do understand about the halving, as I said, I’ve done that for years.
Yep 
The educator in me was coming out. Just wanted to make sure that potential future new audiophiles don’t read this and get confused about “amping amps” and “splitter” and such.
Do you like what the tube sound does for your planars? How would you compare it to what the DV does directly driving a dynamic headphone?
Generally I only really notice it in echos and can take the sharp edge off of songs that I don’t generally like (as Z puts it, a more relaxed sound). Before I knew about the DV336 being bad for planar I use to use my T50rp and M1060 on them regardless and running them through the SP200 I really don’t notice too much of a difference from running them off the DV336 directly, I even keep the volume knob on both at the same level of ruffly about 10-11 o’clock with the SP200 on low gain.
It’s not necessarily bad for planar and other low impedance headphones to be run off of a tube, but it can make them sound a bit wonky and not preferable and you might lose some bass impact because of the lower power output. The typical high output impedance of a tube amp can mess with the FR of headphones, and also with stuff like planar they use more current, where tube amps typically are better with more voltage at higher ohm loads. You can use some planars on tubes and they are relatively ok, but others might sound seriously off. The elex also gets very strange (and not that great imo) on a tube because of the lower impedance
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So I just got my SP200 in today and I am noticing a buzzing sound when I turn the amp up past twelve o’clock. I have my D50s DAC plugged into the RCA inputs and the noise goes away if I unplug them. I tried a few other DACs and I get the same result. I previously had my JDS Atom plugged into the same DAC and never had this issue. Any one else experiencing this as well?
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So, all of your DAC’s are producing this noise in the SP 200? Do you have any balanced DAC’s?
Shane D
You may have a ground loop, perhaps try and move to a different outlet or unplug the dac from your pc and see if the problem persists
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No unfortunately I do not at this time.
Ok yep… think @M0N might be right. Just plugged in my phone with a 3.5 to RCA and it is not buzzing
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Yes, so you want to isolate the dac and see if that fixes the issues. So perhaps try a different outlet if you can
Alright, so I can’t really move to another plug, but… I did switch from using the USB connection on the DAC to using the Optical connection and that solves the issue.
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Thanks for you help @M0N… was about to return this item thinking it was an issue with the product itself.
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He’s a pretty handy guy to have around, advice wise.
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Yeah stupid things like ground loops can be pretty irritating
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Never!!! My image of hell is being welcomed by putting on Audeze headphones.
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Ha. Sounds like Friday evening to me.