Xonar Essence STX and Sennheiser HD650

These just arrived today and OMG!

The sound quality is absolutely STUNNING!!!!

I can stop listening to my record collection, but the problem some MP3's are not standing up to the scrutiny!!

WHat is best to re-rip audio collection? FLAC or AAC on itunes?

Cheers

flac !

have they sorted out gettign flac to work with windows 7 64 bit yet ?

FLAC didn't work with W7 64bit?

Been using FLAC for some time. W7 64bit, no issues.

yeah Flac is working for me, i'm on win 7 64 bit

well i keep gwtting a an error mesage when loading it.... and frontend wont work

Are you using an amp with the HD650s?

It's been a good week for me for headphones. Sold my loathed AKG K701s and my barely used HD600s and bought a pair of HD650s and some DT880s (which are pretty good).

Essence has a headphone amp.

Yes, but I didn't mean a toy one.

HD650s are some of the hardest to drive headphones, but also meant to be some of the best scaling in terms of pairing with high end amps and sources.

flac works fine in w7 64bit, use eac or foobar as the frontend instead.

the 650's are great headphones. very hard to drive though, you need to spend 2-3x times more on an amp to do them justice. something i havent coughed up for yet but i'm looking to build one anyway, ive been looking at building a graham slee novo, but i'm not sure. either way i dont have the money atm

FiiO E5 is toy.

Fair point though. There are some criticisms that the Essence amp is just not good enough for £200 headphones that require a headphone amp. I can well believe that.

People with high end cans and no real dedicated amp to speak of are really missing out. It's an easy thing to overlook TBH, but well worth investigating.

Decent amps start at about £150. The sky is almost the limit.

Depends what one has experience of. Some one with no experience of high end HP's, will go wow when they get HP's such as the 650's, and an Essence sound card. I guess it's only when one has experience of a higher quality amplification, that one can appreciate the Essence's amp is not up to the job.

The Essence is still a great sound card though, but it seems it best used with HP's that can benefit from a HP amp, but don't require one.

I think at a later date, the OP could add a decent quality HP into the equation.

I think probably I will invest in a Headphone amp at some point, but at the moment they sound great to me! I have them on the middle gain setting 64 - 300ohms, has anyone got any links of decent HP amps?

Before you run out and spend 2-3x the price of your cans on an amp, have a read through this thread. It's 11 pages and if I was less lazy I would quote some posts worth keeping in mind. But eyes peeled for what Catharsis has to say.

Certainly worth a look if you are going to be chucking a few 100 bucks at something.

Catharsis's posts (the ones that seem relevent) seem to revolve around power requirements but the probably isnt a lack of power, its that 650's are difficult to drive. you can certainly drive them loud enough with just about any amp, but to give you just one example, there's a huge difference between my onkyo 805 and my old JVC amp driving my 650's - my JVC is a good deal better and more composed at the bottom end, yet the onkyo is more accurate and cleaner at the top end. they are both far from perfect, but neither of them have a lack of grunt, per se.


All people are saying, and rightly so, is that the 650's are expensive. expensive to buy and expensive to drive properly. It's difficult because the essence isnt bad at all. for the money actually its brilliant. but it can be bettered, pretty significantly, with better amplification. That's both a pro and con lol

The hd650 like many have said scales very very well.

Try out amps if u can before u buy. Everyone has a different perception of what sounds good.

Thanks for all the info guys, I will read up on it, I was looking at the Graham Slee Solo SRGII anyone have this amp? A lot of places seem to sell it with the HD650's so they must go well together?

ntemples1 said:

Thanks for all the info guys, I will read up on it, I was looking at the Graham Slee Solo SRGII anyone have this amp? A lot of places seem to sell it with the HD650's so they must go well together?

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I have had this amp. Very good amp with the hd650.

I found the bass was more natural and pronounced, and gave them a more natural sound.

I regret selling it.