[ilikepooters]

I Like listening to my planars and i used to use a Schiit Lyr to drive them which obviously had tons of power but was a hybrid.

How comes you don't often see pure tube amps that can output such power into headphones? I'm talking something that can even power a pair of HE6's and make them sing.


Sorry if this is a n00b question, there's probably plenty out there that can power such cans but whenever i see power ratings for them it looks like milliamps into hundreds of ohms.

I see pure tube hifi amps than can power speakers with 15-20 watts, what's so hard about building one that can supply the same wattage for headphones?


Again please forgive my n00bishness

 

[Monsterzero]

The La Figaro 339 can drive HE-500s and Audeze LCD-2s very well...I would assume many other planars too,though those are the two Ive tried.
Regarding the HE-6...lol,yeah.You might poke your head into the Glenn amp thread and ask if the Glenn 300b amp is what youre looking for...There might be others but im not sure.As a former HE-6 owner do not underestimate the amount of power those headphone demand.

 

[Motocrossman24]

Most otl will not output the power needed for planars, some of the very high end ones can put out some solid power but most Iv noticed use a transformer on a switch to make more power and lower output resistance to work with lower impedance headphones turning them into a s.e.t. Amp rather then otl. If you want otl tube type sound for planars look into single ended triode amps. Something like the bottlehead s.e.x. Or some of the more powerful and more expensive woo audio offerings.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I Like listening to my planars and i used to use a Schiit Lyr to drive them which obviously had tons of power but was a hybrid.

How comes you don't often see pure tube amps that can output such power into headphones? I'm talking something that can even power a pair of HE6's and make them sing.

Sorry if this is a n00b question, there's probably plenty out there that can power such cans but whenever i see power ratings for them it looks like milliamps into hundreds of ohms.

They're not going to be OTL. Output Transformerless amplifiers output their peak power at 300ohms, and typically make less power at 32ohms than at 600ohms. Even the dual mono OTLs like the Little Dot Mk VI are biased for high impedance output.

Not to mention you wouldn't have the same low output impedance as the Lyr. Even the Valhalla2 which has ridiculously low output impedance for an OTL amp still has 14ohms.

I see pure tube hifi amps than can power speakers with 15-20 watts, what's so hard about building one that can supply the same wattage for headphones?

Speakers are 8ohms. Headphones are typically between 32ohms to 300ohms, maybe outside that range but not near 8ohms.

Speaker amps are designed mostly for 8ohm impedance, so unlike headphone amps that don't necessarily drop the output by half every time the load impedance is doubled, often speaker amps will really drop output when you increase the impedance. Many people still use the speaker outputs to drive some headphones, but in some cases even the Lyr2 or now the Lyr3 might be spitting out more power at the headphones' impedance. Just look at how the Lyr itself in percentage terms drops output at 300ohms vs 32ohms compared to, say, the Asgard2. And even then, some headphone amps will drop power output below 32ohms or below 16ohms, which is why you don't necessarily see people spending $400 on a Lyr2 and using it to drive speakers.

At the same time, while it isn't rare to find 300B or KT88 push-pull amps that spit out more than 35watts into 8ohms, speaker amps typically have a higher noise floor than headphone amps. Most really good speaker amps aren't as quiet as, say, Meiers or Violectrics (let alone the O2), except you don't hear the background noise if you're sitting 2m away from each speaker, which you may notice is a lot farther than drivers sitting 2inches away from your eardrums.