[Yoga]

Lavricable HD800 Master edition turned up today (6N pure silver, 12 core). 150 hour burn in recommended for it to really open up and smoothen, but straight off the bat it's fantastic! Very good price too, and a fast turnaround.
 

 
Balanced V281 is indeed a different beast. Incredible!

 

[ColtMrFire]

just get a Mjolnir 2 and call it a day

Is this as good as the amps jibzilla mentioned in the previous post?

 

[fjrabon]

Do your research first though. I think the original Mojo, Bha-1 and Beta 22 are all great amps...but with the hd650. With the hd800 they are awfully bright sounding despite the hefty price tag despite them getting their well deserved praises you really need to focus more on amps with ohm output. It's not the ohm output itself but the voicing that usually goes with it that will make an hd800 sing. For the around the same price of the amps I just mentioned you can get a used wheatfield ha-2 or d.i.y. mainline and see night and day differences for the better imo. Take the amp up to a Stratus, Teton or ECP Ravenswood and I honestly do not think there is allot out there regardless of price that can best it from an overall perspective. It is just a really hard headphone to beat from a build quality and comfort standpoint. Get the amp right and it is just really hard to best period.

For the record there are SS amps with no ohm output that drive the hd800 well but I look at them as a bit more all arounders. Burson Soloist, V281, and Gsx-mk2 come to mind. I think that they are all really great amps and would put my new Apex Sangaku among them. Kind of equally good at driving hd800's and hd650's/Lcd-2's/Elear's etc. Very nice but not quite to the level of ha-2, mainline, Stratus etc.

So basically you just want the EQ effect for the bass boost? For whatever it's worth Sennheiser's engineers have said HD800 was designed to be at its best with low output impedance amps.

 

[Yoga]

I used to own Burson amps (Conductor & Conductor Virtuoso), while they are great, they are not comparable to the V281. A top SS with EQ matches top tube amps. Surpasses some IME (Eddie Current). 

 

[Arniesb]

So basically you just want the EQ effect for the bass boost? For whatever it's worth Sennheiser's engineers have said HD800 was designed to be at its best with low output impedance amps.

Sennheiser own amp have high 50ohm output... This is not low number i think.

 

[fjrabon]

Sennheiser own amp have high 50ohm output... This is not low number i think.

It's low enough to not impact the frequency response in the bass more than 1dB. 50 is fine to me, I don't notice any slower impulse response or ringing with 50 ohms. It's as we get to the 100 ohm output amps that you hear both a slowing of the impulse response, a bit of ringing and a mid-bass boost around 120Hz or thereabouts. The bass boost with a 100ohm amp isn't huge, like maybe 3dB. Some people may like this effect, as it can make the HD800 a bit more euphonic. If you don't like the "edginess" the HD800 can have, it's a way to "fix" it. But to me a high impedance amp (75 ohms or higher) does slow down the HD800's technical performance. With a very good low impedance amp, the HD800 can be so fast and have so little ringing, it almost sounds electrostat like.

My approach has been to fix frequency response issues with EQ, so that with the amp I can focus on transparency, THD profile and speed. To me, the HD800 benefits from a bit of 2nd and especially 3rd harmonic distortion, and wants as much 4th harmonic distortion cut out as possible. HD800 also benefits from well loaded current/voltage supplied to the output stage. Putting all that together informs what I'm after in an HD800 amp. I start by looking for those things as best I can and then just listen to them.

Balanced vs. single end, in my experience, depends much more on the amp than being an HD800 necessity. A well implemented single end design can sound virtually identical to a well implemented balanced design on the HD800. I think the idea that balanced is better for it comes from the fact that most amps that have both simply have a better balanced output than single end. So people switch back and forth, hear that the balanced output sounds better on that amp, and then just assume balanced sounds better with HD800 in general. Also, going balanced has historically forced HD800 owners to upgrade their cable as well, to some benefit.

 

[MattTCG]

^^ I agree about the perception of single ended vs balanced. Mostly depends on the topology of the amp. Listening to the hd800 on a good solid state amp single ended with EQ right now and the sound is breathtaking. 

 

[ColtMrFire]

The balanced out on the Jot sounds noticeably superior to SE.  I tested it with the same XLR cable using a SE adapter to swap back and forth.  There difference was impossible to miss.  It being my first and only balanced out amp, I assumed balanced was inherently superior.  I guess not necessarily true.
 
But doesn't balanced out also provide some inherent benefits over SE?  Like something about channel separation?  I'm not at all technically knowledgeable about the specifics.

 

[fjrabon]

The balanced out on the Jot sounds noticeably superior to SE.  I tested it with the same XLR cable using a SE adapter to swap back and forth.  There difference was impossible to miss.  It being my first and only balanced out amp, I assumed balanced was inherently superior.  I guess not necessarily true.

But doesn't balanced out also provide some inherent benefits over SE?  Like something about channel separation?  I'm not at all technically knowledgeable about the specifics.

That depends on the amp design. Fully balanced setup from start to finish obviously limits crosstalk as much as can be limited. But a well designed single end system doesn't have inherent issues with crosstalk either. It's just that for years most headphone amps had lots of crosstalk because they were, to put it bluntly, poor designs. If both outputs are well designed, the difference in channel separation is either nonexistent or inaudible.

Balanced output was designed for long cable runs of 20 feet or more in speaker systems. That's it and most electrical engineers will tell you that's the absolute only point of balanced output. When Tyll designed the first monoblock balanced headphone amp, it was mostly just because amps of that time had lots of crosstalk and lacked power for difficult to drive headphones of the day. Grado was selling a glorified CMoy for like $500 back then. Headphone amplification as an industry was in shambles at that point. So it fixed those issues in one fell swoop. But while balanced is one way to fix crosstalk and lack of power, it's certainly not the only way.

One other issue is that the vast majority of amps that have both balanced and single end outputs, the balanced output is simply slightly louder. So, unless you're obsessive about volume matching with a dB meter, you're almost definitely listening to the balanced output slightly louder, which every test ever has confirmed that people prefer the louder sounding output, all else equal. So, most of the difference goes away if you simply turn down the balanced output.

I've only ever listened to Jot in balanced, so I can't comment. It wouldn't at all surprise me if Jot sounds better balanced, as that's kind of the whole point of Jot, right? To be the cheapest way to get upper mid-fi balanced output. So, it would make sense if it simply had a better balanced out than single end. But again, I never actually listened to its single end output in the couple of times I've tried it out.

 

[Arniesb]

It's low enough to not impact the frequency response in the bass more than 1dB. 50 is fine to me, I don't notice any slower impulse response or ringing with 50 ohms. It's as we get to the 100 ohm output amps that you hear both a slowing of the impulse response, a bit of ringing and a mid-bass boost around 120Hz or thereabouts. The bass boost with a 100ohm amp isn't huge, like maybe 3dB. Some people may like this effect, as it can make the HD800 a bit more euphonic. If you don't like the "edginess" the HD800 can have, it's a way to "fix" it. But to me a high impedance amp (75 ohms or higher) does slow down the HD800's technical performance. With a very good low impedance amp, the HD800 can be so fast and have so little ringing, it almost sounds electrostat like.

My approach has been to fix frequency response issues with EQ, so that with the amp I can focus on transparency, THD profile and speed. To me, the HD800 benefits from a bit of 2nd and especially 3rd harmonic distortion, and wants as much 4th harmonic distortion cut out as possible. HD800 also benefits from well loaded current/voltage supplied to the output stage. Putting all that together informs what I'm after in an HD800 amp. I start by looking for those things as best I can and then just listen to them.

Balanced vs. single end, in my experience, depends much more on the amp than being an HD800 necessity. A well implemented single end design can sound virtually identical to a well implemented balanced design on the HD800. I think the idea that balanced is better for it comes from the fact that most amps that have both simply have a better balanced output than single end. So people switch back and forth, hear that the balanced output sounds better on that amp, and then just assume balanced sounds better with HD800 in general. Also, going balanced has historically forced HD800 owners to upgrade their cable as well, to some benefit.

I agree 50ohm shouldn't be too bad. It means 1/6 ratio might be good enough. My T1 and A20 amp ratio is 1/6 and bass is quite tight (not tightest, but good enough). HD800S bass on the other hand becomes quite one noted and slow cause of 100ohm amp. Bass strength thou becomes quite impressive( i realy doubt you can get more bass power with other amp...) I tried to eq some bass to see how it candle heavy bass boosting and result... It can become bass monster!!! With eq it can have faaaaar more bass than Dt990, Hd650 or T1 and so on. Quite impressive!!!

 

[Ani1000]

Will i be getting 3D sound on Mojo using it's built in amp?
I guess details and sounstage are most important to me, but you guys have monster amps, so this has me worried, i don't mind sacrificing some bass lol but not other stuff, but at 500$ budget i cant be picky.

 

[fjrabon]

Will i be getting 3D sound on Mojo using it's built in amp?
I guess details and sounstage are most important to me, but you guys have monster amps, so this has me worried, i don't mind sacrificing some bass lol but not other stuff, but at 500$ budget i cant be picky.

Mojo has very good details and soundstage. It's as good as anything else in your price range for HD800.

 

[RogerWilco]

Alot of great info from this thread , i enjoy reading 

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

Is this as good as the amps jibzilla mentioned in the previous post?

ask him. my bottom line is MJ2 is better than anything in its price class, but read my review for more.

 

[ColtMrFire]

 
ask him. my bottom line is MJ2 is better than anything in its price class, but read my review for more.

 
Where can I find your review?