Can be if you’re not careful. People mostly use them for very-hard-to-drive headphones.
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Thats not something I’ll be doing. Its designed for driving speakers and thats what I’ll be using it for.
You dont need speaker amps to do that either though…
Sennheiser HE-6, one of the hardest to drive hps out there and even then you only need half a Watt to go to 90db (+20db headroom)
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I mean, I’m not really interested in getting into an argument about scaling, but you can find plenty of people online who can tell you how their speaker amp sounds different/better than their headphone amp. Edit: I’m also not interested in getting into an argument about subjective vs objective evaluation, blind testing, etc.
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Well in my case I don’t use the Gjallarhorn for most of my listening sessions since I have a Mjolnir 3. Most of my headphones sound better on the Mjolnir 3 or even the Vali 3. The big difference is the bass for only two of my headphones (and the Mjolnir 3 drives them well too).
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Couple things to be careful of with these calculators.
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Impedance is not always equal across the Frequency band. Could be 50 ohms at 1k and 300 ohms at 100hz.
Example:
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Bass levels on some tracks can reach significantly higher than the average db level of 90db. Our ears are also far more tolerant of high db at lower frequency as well. When you combine that with the uneven impedance response of many headphones, then you might be able to see how these calculations are not always so straight-forward, and you might need more power to get proper performance out of some headphones.
Basically, for a headphone like the Clear in this example, you’ll probably want enough headroom to push the headphone up to 110+db (I’d say even maybe 120db) at the 342ohm figure, as opposed to the 55ohm figure that’s advertised on the spec sheet.
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So before the power conditioner arrived (last night) I did some testing and adjusting with the two Vidar’s. The buzzing sound is faint but I could hear it while standing near it, or in my sitting position if the environment was quiet enough.
I took the the amps out and tried the stock power cable, the thick chonky Pangea cable I use with them, different power strips, different outlets, different circuits, plugged directly in or through power strips and still heard the same buzzing. Also, I disconnected the speakers and the preamp.
I moved the amps back and forth and side to side in the rack and I noticed a change in the sound of the buzzing. In some positions it got quieter, and others no louder than I have been experiencing.
What I’ve determined is that the buzzing is just a part of the normal operation of these amps, and like I mentioned, it’s very low and quiet. So I what I figured out was that the last time I rearranged the rack, the shelves and whatnot, I moved the amps from the bottom shelf to the one above it, and used the shorter legs thus decreasing the space between the shelves. (The move from the bottom shelf is because I rearranged the room and there is a heat/AC vent right behind it and I didn’t want it blowing directly onto the amps) This rack has legs that are all the same length, except for one set which are a few inches longer.
I figure the buzzing was reflecting off of the shelves in such a way that it amplified it to where it became noticeable - just barely. When I slide the amps back a few inches the noise almost disappeared from hearing. I slide them back forward to where they were before and I could hear it again.
What I did to remedy it was to place a couple of acoustic panels beneath the amps, reconfigure the rack putting the longer legs on the shelf they reside on, thus increasing the ceiling height above them and reducing the reflection of the buzzing sound, and sliding them back an inch or two from the front. Now, I have to strain in a very quiet setting (i.e. the refrigerator in the other room isn’t running, and the road noise outside is low) and then I can just barely make it out.
So I probably didn’t need the the power conditioner to fix this problem after all. Though it is a nice piece of equipment and I’ll keep in place because who doesn’t want clean power?
The red lines I added are the longer shelf legs.
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Most DDs tend to have a flat curve (and also why OI wont do anything to change the FR on them).
But yeah, some odd DDs are uneven like that, I believe the Koss Hps are like that as well.
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