Plan on only using headphones in living room, need a good receiver?

[rukawa11]

Hey guys, i live in an apartment so i just plan on getting nice headphones and connect it to a receiver instead of gettin nice speakers which i wont be able to blast. I was just wondering if sound from headphones will be really effected by a good receiver as opposed to a normal cheaper receiver. I plan on getting the senn 580, 600, or 650 and using it to watch tv, dvds, blu-ray, and for ps3 use, and to stream music from my comp. also if it does matter, what receiver would u recommend in the sub $500 range for such use. thanks

i posted this in the general a/v forum first by accident, meant to put it here.

 

[pbarach1]

I was going to suggest that you could do quite well with a separate headphone amplifier if you **never** plan to use speakers, but you'd have to switch the inputs from one source to another. Many receivers, especially but not only less expensive ones, have terrible headphone amplifiers built in. I have a Denon 3805 receiver which is great with my speakers, but the headphone amp is terrible--tinny and muddy. So I bought a micro headphone amp from Headroom (http://www.headphone.com) and plugged it directly into my CD/DVD player. The sound is excellent through my Senn 650's.

 

[Seth=L]

Basically any receiver should have no problem powering most headphones. I use the Teac in my pictured in my signature, also a review, to power my headphones. It has a very low noise floor, not typical of low end receivers.