Improving Headphone Sound


Hi; We’ve recently moved to a MUCH smaller house and I now find myself pretty well restricted to the use of headphones for most listening. I use a PC source out to a Benchmark DAC1 USB and directly from the DAC to a pair of Sennheiser 650’s equipped with a 10’ Cardas cable.

Given that I have no alternative to using the ‘phones, can anyone suggest ways that the sound might be improved. It’s already “pretty darn good” (at least to these 63 year old ears), but I’m guessing that there might be room for improvement.

As a start, I’m considering replacing the Cardas cable with a Moon Silver Dragon (Version 2), but any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks & Regards,

Bob Holmes
steerpike

Showing 1 response by bobmajor108

If you haven't already invested in power conditioning then this is a must. I've used various devices which all had some good results. The cheapest was a Brickwall audiophile surge suppressor ($240). I wasn't expecting much power conditioning since I bought it because I lived near the top of a mountain in North Carolina and wanted to leave my equipment on all the time since this improves performance significantly. The Brickwall was pretty good at cleaning the noise from the power supply.
Better was a PS-Audio Ultimate Outlet (about $200). Unfortunately the two outlets on it are not isolated from each other so often digital gear will put noise back into the power line which can feed into your amplifier.
Other options which are still not too expensive include power strips built by Bolder Cable which include Bybee Quantum Purifiers to isolate some of the outlets from each other while at the same time as filtering the power as it comes into the strip by the use of the Bybees. I'm currently using separate power cables which have Bybees on both sides of the line.
The first time I used the Ultimate Outlet I was stunned with the increased clarity cause by cleaning up the power.