General Headphone Audio

I have a problem!

Added the Drop HD 6XX to my line-up even though I already have the HD 650 :eek:

Can't help myself though. Prefer the colour scheme of the 6XX and had to have them. Although I was thinking it might be worth modding these with the Custom Cans bass mod kit. Love this line as they are so light, comfortable and have that wonderful tonal balance of warm and neutral which really appeals to me. I've realised that nearly all headphones (or headsets) irritate me in some way but these don't. They are also a better gaming headphone then they get credit for.

Apart from the Custom Can Mod, a new cable the next step might be to look at my DAC/AMPs. Possibly a tube amp, R2R upgrade or something.

My current HD 6X0 line-up.

YYDqp7ql.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: mrk
The Arctic cable turned up, although I think they sent me the version with the wrong length connectors for each side lol, they are extra length vs the usual, clearly designed for headphones with recessed 3.5mm sockets so they stick out a bit, though they are a nice fit. I've emailed Arctic see what they do, but for now using as they are. The quality and weight of the cable is excellent and the terminations and plugs are very nice quality too. The whole thing feels like it's worth the asking price, preferred over the Tripowin cable for sure. I opted for the Rhodium connectors by the way.

DymQbV9.jpeg
fAj0QOq.jpeg



Edit* Just realised it looks like that they are mono per cup too not stereo? I have not listened to them yet as in the middle of some other work so will demo shortly to confirm.

Edit 2* Arctic said the middle ring/pole being missing is by design as it's not used in this sort of application, tested and yeah all good. The lgnth of the plugs is also by design to cater to the widest majority of headphones, inc those by Mez with deep sockets. As it stands with the extra length, these are about as same as fitment on how they touch my shoulders on these Planars as the Linsoul Tripowin cable.

So all in all nothing really /wrong/ lol.

Excellent quality and craftsmanship here though, to be expected for the price.
 
Last edited:
Just bought a fiio k11 r2r, for the price i thought it was worth a punt to see if I can see a difference between it and my audiolab dac/amp that I've been using for a decade.
 
Just got some Austrian Audio Hi-X15s, better than expected for the money, really neutral... once they've run in a bit, drivers seemed really tight until I put a good few hours on them, and a couple of plays of LFOs Frequencies.
 
Beyerdynamic MMX300, they are a few years old now and I was looking them over at the weekend thinking should I have a change.
 
I use the HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless edition for over 1 year and never really had any problems. I bought them due to the battery life of around 300 hours, great for using on Deezer as I do very little gaming these days.
 
I did own the sennheiser 800s with a Chord Mojo2 - however sold them in pristine and very underused condition as I struggled with headphones for some reason.
 
Just picked up the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless in Copper. They were on offer, which appears to have ended sadly, for just £199 direct.

MOMENTUM 4 Wireless | Sennheiser United Kingdom

Sennheiser MOMENTUM 4 Wireless Headphones deliver exceptional sound, sleek design and advanced noise-cancellation for ultimate listening experience. Explore now
www.sennheiser-hearing.com www.sennheiser-hearing.com

Some quick pics.

Sennheiser1.jpg

Sennheiser2.jpg

Sennheiser3.jpg


Mainly using them for work calls via Bluetooth when at home. Haven't tried music yet. And so far, very comfy. Going to have to add a tad of transparency to them as I can't really hear myself talking with the ANC fully on. So that's a bit weird. :p But audio quality on the calls is nice, and I quite like the natural voice mode where it adds a bit of reverb to the audio. So it doesn't sound flat and gives it a bit of body. Only tried them briefly today, so I'm interested to see if I get ~60hrs of battery as well.
 
Took a punt on some secondhand gear; iFi Zen Signature DAC + Can HD6xx set.

I never even knew this set existed and haven't owned iFi before. It appears when it came out a few years ago it was criticised for being too expensive (at £599) and not being that noticeable upgrade on the normal Zen DAC + Can stack. You can still buy the HD6xx version of the Zen Can Signature however it's £299 and stock is clearly running out. So I found an auction where the seller wanted £285 and claimed it had less than 10 hours use. Offered £265 and it turned up today. It also includes the iFi 4.4mm to 4.4mm cable and two iPower X power supplies. One iPower is brand new/unused. Everything is mint and looks new. I think I've done OK.

Tested today before installing into my office set-up. Sound in comparison to my Fiio K11 (non-R2R) is warmer, more texture (for want of a better word) and has a tad more soundstage and depth. Has more power than the K11. The HD6xx 'bass' boost works very well adding some missing sub-bass. There were other specific headphones models of the iFi Signature Can before it released as a non-specific version with the XBass button. I sense the feature is very similar on all. My only minor issue is that with speakers the set-up doesn't work as well as the K11. If the DAC is set to 'fixed' then I can't adjust volume from the DAC. Switch to 'variable' and I can adjust volume, but then have to remember to switch the Can's volume pot to max and switch the speakers off when using headphones. My solution has been to run RCA from the Can to my old Fiio K5 Pro. Then using that as a speaker volume control and on/off switch. Works well, albeit a bit wasteful. A newer set of Edifiers with a remote would solve this issue. Build wise the iFi stuff is lovely. Maybe even a touch more premium than my Fiio DAC/AMPs, but could be debated and all three are high quality all-metal builds. The volume pots feel great on the iFi though.

A few things learnt tonight. Firstly the K11 is an absolute bargain. It easily goes toe-to-toe with this (much) more expensive set-up, at least with my Sennheiser HD6x0 headphones. The improvements in sound quality from the iFi Signature DAC + Can are subtle. Secondly maybe I should pay more attention to secondhand audio. And finally the K5 Pro RCA's inputs on such a cheap DAC/AMP is a cool feature.

Still looking at OTL tube amps but there are things that continue to put me off; size and heat mostly. And as someone that prefers CD to vinyl sound I'm not even sure the distortion characteristics are for me. Maybe the iFi is 'analogue' enough for me.


zXdeT1sl.jpg
YFVCEgZl.jpg
ltwfRkol.jpg
7tRogEgl.jpg
 
Last edited:
Been on and off giving an IFI Zen series DAC/AMP a whirl - the voltage stats are borderline for getting the most out of the HD600/650 based on my experience.

EDIT: Though the Can 6XX should do it on paper.
 
Last edited:
Rroff said:
Been on and off giving an IFI Zen series DAC/AMP a whirl - the voltage stats are borderline for getting the most out of the HD600/650 based on my experience.

EDIT: Though the Can 6XX should do it on paper.
Click to expand...

Ah OK. Took me a few attempts to understand your point - up too late!

I think these two are OK, in that Fiio say the K11 is 250mW at 300Ω (BAL). The iFi Signature Can is 5.1 V / 756 mW at 300Ω (BAL). Annoyingly the iFi manual doesn't have the 300Ω spec listed.

Did some reading and this site (headphonesty.com) has the HD650/6xx as needing 2v, which it looks to me as though the Signature Can easily clears. Can't find voltage output for the K11 @ 300ohms. I can see mmy Qudelix 5K is doing c.4v (BAL).
 
Last edited:
rids57 said:
As a comparison, my Violectric V222 (balanced) outputs 23.2V and 1.8W @300 ohms - they drive my HD800S and HD650 very nicely
Click to expand...
Yea I'm not competing with that...:)

As a slight aside I do wonder how much volume people are listening to. When you start to go down the rabbit hole of reading about 'how much power a headphone needs'. I know voltage, or watts isn't about volume but even on the 0db setting I've barely been able to get the volume beyond 9 o'clock before it becomes too loud for me.
 
Last edited:
So the K11 R2R turned up over the weekend, I ordered it from fiio.eu and think in total I paid around 125. The only downside is that it came with an EU power cord. I have been listening to it and comparing it in NOS mode with my near decade-old Audiolab Q-DAC using a pair of Dan Clark x Massdrop Aeon flow Opens. First off im surprised by just how small and light this thing is, I know that I am comparing a class A to a class D amp but the size difference is much more significant than I was expecting, the audiolab is around 3kg and this is just a few hundred grams. Of course the build quality of the chassis while nicely finished does feel lesser and more delicate compared to the tank.

I am using the single-ended output not the balanced and i wasnt sure based on the specs if it would be enough to power the aeons as the are supposedly very power hungry but it gets to a comfortable listening volume at around 45% on the low gain setting so it seems that I wont have to buy a 4.4mm cable afterall. Going into this I wasn't sure what I was expecting, years ago before settling on the audiolab DAC I had gone through a lot of different kit experimenting and come to the conclusion that if you were using solid state amplification aside from minor differences that as long as the kit was made properly and had enough output power then it didnt really matter what you used. However I have read a lot from people talking about the "r2r" sound compared to sigma-delta DAC's saying that you should hear a noticeable difference between the signature of the two.

After listening through a range of my library doing AB swaps i can honestly say that the K11 has a nice clean punchy output and is slightly more forward than the Audiolab with the Audiolab been a bit more rolled off and laid back sounding, this could be due to a slight volume mismatch or the filter preset im using on it or the fact its old and has had all its capacitors replaced but realistically there is not any significant difference between them and if I was blind testing then I doubt I would get it right more than 50% of the time. So yea, the fiio is a great bit of kit for its price and size but im none the wiser what this "r2r" sound is that everyone is praising.

iPYNXkY.jpeg
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: mrk
I think it's more down to the sort of sound signature you're used to vs the type of headphones you are using. I've never heard the ones you have and have no research knowledge of them either, but for me I'm used to that old skool NAD analogue sound as I owned NAD C320/C320 Bee amps as big as VCRs from back in the day as well as a really nice sounding Rotel RA series which sadly died on me. That is the kind of flavour I am used to, nice wide warmth and something the later model NAD D series nicely embodied in the D 3020, D3045 and D 7050 that I had.

Throughout that time above I owned multiple headphones but not long settled into the HD650, which we all recognise as a legendary headphone for its smooth timbre and general ability, though the bass isn't as punchy as it could be.

I never tried the 650 or 660S2 on the R2R as they were sold or returned long before I got it, but I did upgrade to the Arya Stealth and has the Ananda Nano and Arya on a couple of amps leading up to it and with the R2R now with the Arya I feel that it's back to that old skool "NAD sound" once more but with the massive bass extension that only large planars have which is very much welcome. The Fiio K7 I had was too bright, the Topping DX7 Pro+ was great but it died in a week and had various UI bugs and volume pot encoder niggles. Only the Topping MX3S retained that same sound I was used to but it's too underpowered for headphones out to large planars as it sometimes goes into protection mode when using any of the planars I had, hence the R2R purchase.

I think it ultimately comes down to those two things, the type of sound you are 100% familiar with, and the headphones you use. For me I am been super picky with headphones, only keeping what embodies that "NAD sound" and selling on or returning what doesn't. This puts only 2 headphones in all the headphones I have heard over the last 20 years that captures my kind of sound, the Arya Stealth and the HD650, I was underwhelmed by the HD660S2 given its price and did not feel it had any wow factor to it over the HD650 other than a slight increase in bass and a little more mid-frontal in stereo imaging than the laid back 650s.
 
I owned the HD650 for a long time and tried them on a range of dac's and amps and they were definitely the sound signature I preferred at the time but agree they lacked in the bass. I also owned Audioquest Nighthawks, a few different fostex, Phillips fidelio's and then the Hifiman HE-500's for quite a while. While the he-500's sound was near perfect for me they were just too heavy and so I compromised slightly and replaced them with the Aeons which aren't quite as good in some aspects but are significantly more comfortable, I do regret selling them though.

I personally think that sound differences between headphones can be significant and the same can be said for tube amps and to a lesser extent solid state amps but differences between DAC's are minimal as long as you are comparing properly designed and functional equipment. Of all the DAC's that I've tried over the years, I've heard minor differences that I've picked out in AB testing but nothing I think I would reliably pick up on in blind testing.Its all very subjective though and others might think that the differences I call minor are much more significant etc

With the two units I am trying now being combined dac/amps its not really possible to tell what difference the r2r dac chip is making vs the built in amp componant, I would have to buy a separate standalone amp to run the line out of both of the units through. Either way its a nice unit that I will likely be using going forward but i wouldnt say its any warmer or more "natural" sounding than my old dac.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom