Ok fellow Hi-Fi guides followers, I’m curious to hear your experienced opinions on amplifiers that will provide a warm, sweet, lush and detailed with good separation and depth sound to headphones that are made with high ohm values.
I know these units exist and come in all makes and varieties and I’m looking to see what opinions folks can offer.
my curiosity has yet again gotten the best of me and I’m on a hunt. Price/cost is always that bothersome and irksome value that possibly gets in the way, but let’s leave this thread open to all contenders from the budget friendly workhorses to Exemplary God level units that seem to be made of unobtanium everything
I purposely left price range open, and I believe this sound can be had with both tube and some forms of solid state. Throw em out there slugger. I’ve got many quiet hours ahead of me to research and I’m looking for material please👍
Ok ok, keep it below $5k ± retail or USED market so we can at least pretend to be reasonable. I’m not dropping $15-25k on an amp unless it marries me and brings in some money honey…
So I mean right away the ZMF Pendant amp comes to mind (as it’s meant to work well with the zmf gear). The Feliks Elise MkII is pretty great imo. The ALO Audio Studio Six is pretty sweet. I adore my Cayin HA300. The Manley Absolute Headphone Amp is tube sound to the max (but you pay for that). The Auris Audio HA2 SE is another popular one (but not my favorite for the price)
I’ll throw another twist at you, I’ve been doing a bit of extra reading on my precious “down time” the past 2 weeks and found that allot of old timers liked to drive their high ohm value cans direct off their speaker amps and got excellent results from high end headphones…hmmm? Whatcha think?
I agree with you to a point and have personal experience at home that tells me that with the right combo you can have a sweeet 2 fer one💪 And being the frugal tinkering type that really got me thinking of all options. I like units I can use for speakers too, keeps my blood flowing strong.
There’s some really interesting and absolutely gorgeous products available, some have literally left me salivating slightly. As i read and learn about these fine pieces of what i would call art or sometimes perfectly precision engineered works of love, i find myself really interested in the particular manner they work with specific pieces of equipment. I really seem to be drawn to allot of the niche items that take some work and effort to find the synergy needed to work with each other. The folks that have these types of exotic combinations seem to stick with them for many years… Like i said, i’ve got quiet hours ahead of me to read and enjoy all the information coming from everyone’s and especially Mon’s years of experience…
Not up there in budget, but Zeos says very positive things about the Tor Audio Roger Tube Headamp. For aesthetics alone, I would get it if I had money. https://www.toraudio.com/main.html?v=6#
It looks like it is from a WW2 movie lol. Just beautiful.
Honestly that Ampsandsound Pendant amp was one i was seriously eyeballing.
There was also a Leben integrated that i was reading about that got me to finally post up this thread. There is sooo much out there it’s hard to take it all in without some direction.
