I own a WA6-SE headphone amp. It is a wonderful natural sounding amp. But not at all suited for HEDDphone D1. You need a very high current amp. These are very hard to drive. Look at this:
Slowely Upping My Game
Hey Goner's,
A while back, out of necessity, I decided to venture into headphones. At this point in the journey, I'm running Audioquest RCA interconnects from the tape outs on my ASR Emitter II power amp to a Schiit Lyr 3 with a Linlai Elite 6SN7. Somewhat of a mismatch I know! The headphones I'm currently using are a modified version of the Aurorus Audio Borealis.
About two months ago, I purchased a pair of HEDD Audio HEDDphone D1's that are still on Back Order. I'm hoping to get these at the end of this month, we'll see. In a couple of weeks, I'll purchase a pair of Audio Sensibility Statement SE copper interconnects to replace the Audioquest Colorado IC's.
So the D1's impedance is at 32 ohm's. Pretty much anything can drive them. Which brings me to wonder whether replacing the Schiit Lyr 3 with a more expensive headphone amplifier can be justified. Looking around at various OTL headphone amplifiers, leaves me with the impression that a Feliks or Woo Audio would make sense for headphones at 300 ohm's but would be overpowering for a pair of 32 ohm headphones.
So the endgame is to maximize the fidelity that's coming from the power amplifier. To test the clarity of what I currently have, I placed a Herbie's titanium tube damper on the 6SN7and I do notice a slight difference. My hopes are high for the D1's but admittedly, this post may be premature, given that I haven't had a chance to hear them yet. Onward through the fog.
Thanks!
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@ghdprentice I have no idea what your talking about. I could drive the HEDDphone D1’s with my phone. |
Yes to be clear, the D1 are incredibly easy to drive, like almost all dynamic moving coil headphones. It’s because the efficiency is a sky high 100 dB from only 1 milli-Watt of power (and this is quite typical for dynamic coils). It doesn’t matter that 32 ohms is low impedance, when so little actual current is required to drive them to ear shattering levels. 32 ohms would draw a lot of current only if it was less than 80 dB sensitivity. And that’s where the planar-dynamic headphones (HifiMan, Audeze, etc) come in the conversation, with powerful amps (like small speaker amps) required. Those headphones are typically ~ 50 ohms with MUCH lower sensitivities. Even though D1’s are super easy to drive, you’ll still hear them sound different from OTL tube amps (warmer, bassier) because of their high output impedance. Dynamics headphones are so efficient because they can pile a lot of coil turns into a very small space. The downside of this is that they have MUCH more moving mass, and the diaphragms are necessarily much smaller. I mostly stopped listening to dynamics after starting with electrostatics. Dynamics tend to give me listening fatigue, even if this doesn’t show up in measurements. Maybe it has something to do with those fat coils and thick, low area diaphragms slapping around right atop your ears. |
@mulveling This is from the HEDD Audio website regarding the D1 disghram; The D1 is the world’s first dynamic headphone with a Thin-Ply Carbon Diaphragm (TPCD). Developed with Swedish company Composite Sound, specialists in advanced audio diaphragms, the D1 combines HEDD’s 40 years of acoustic expertise with advanced material science. The D1 is apparently the first and only headphone to incorporate this material. I wish I could comment on how it sounds but I’m still waiting for it to ship. But as far as electrostatic headphones are concerned, I have Quad 2905’s. So as much as I like my electrostatic speakers, I’m looking for something different in a headphone. As I mentioned before, I’ve yet to hear a planar that doesn’t sound agressive. Hopefully the D1’s will work for me. |
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