Trying to get into Headphone Amps

[subzer0]

Greetings!

I own a nice pair of Sennheiser's, and I've started to get interested in headphone amps. For reference, I use a laptop with a tinny soundcard. I've been looking at the:

FiiO E7 USB DAC and Portable Headphone Amplifier

and the

FiiO E9 Desktop Headphone Amplifier and Dock

This is going to be a really stupid question, but I don't understand the E7 and E9 relationship. What is the point of mounting the E7 on the E9? It seems like the E7 is pretty great by itself, no? What is the benefit of having both of them?

I'm sorry if I'm yet another amateur that has come along and is ruining the forum. Thanks in advance!

 

[subzer0]

great forum, huh?

 

[its phillip]

Upset because you don't get instant answers? lol.

Anyway, you already stated the difference between the two - the E7 is a portable DAC + amp, and the E9 is a desktop amplifier (no DAC) with a dock for the E7.

If you would just look at their specifications, you would see that the E9 is a much more capable amplifier than the E7. If your headphones aren't all that power hungry/high impedance/low sensitivity, you should be just fine with the E7 though. Which model headphones do you have?

 

[bikemig]

The two make a nice combo; the E7 is the dac and the E9 is the amp when the two are paired. Here is a review of the E9: NwAvGuy: FiiO E9 Headphone Amp. What are the Senns you own? Some headphones are more difficult to drive than others and can use the E9. If not, the E7 will be fine. Fiio has a huge line up of amp and dacs. The Fiio e10 is a very competent amp/dac combo for less than a $100: The Latest Must Have: The Fiio E10 USB DAC/Amp -updated- | Headfonia.

Edit: another good and inexpensive possibility is the cMoy; the one made by JDS labs is very well regarded and runs $60: http://www.jdslabs.com/. If you contact John Sieber at CMS and tell him which cans you own, he'll optimize it to work with your headphones. I've been thinking of getting one because I have a pair of cans that are relatively difficult to drive (Beyer DT 880 250 ohms). The Beyers sound fantastic with my home theater system because my AV receiver has a good headphone amp but they don't sound very good with my desktop amp (N-22). I have other headphones that sound great with the N-22. The point is that you need to match the headphones with the amps which can be more difficult than matching speakers to a receiver. The Cmoy is interesting (if you aren't freaked out by the altoids can it comes in) because its cheap and you can get it tweaked to work right with your headphones. If you want to add a dac (and you probably do because you don't like the soundcard in your laptop, the HRT music streamer II at $150 is really, really good.

 

[baniels]

I had the Nuforce Udac2, which is both a usb DAC and headphone amp. It was a very real upgrade from powering from my laptop, as well as compared to an M-Audio firewire interface I have.

I ended up returning it, however, due to channel imbalance exhibited at lower volumes. Anything lower than 9-sh on the volume dial had a noticeable imbalance.

My headphones were ATH-AD900, which are relatively easy to power. If one is using harder to power cans, which the Senns presumably are, the level that exhibited the imbalance would probably be too low for listening anyway.

And yes, it is a great forum.