Anyhing up to £1000 headphone amp

TALON1973

TALON1973

TALON1973

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Joined
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llanelli , south wales
Might be better on avforums but I'll try here. Ive got a graham slee srg11 headphone amp atm , just wondering if there is anything that get better it ?

I use sennheiser hd650 for main music listening. I do have 598 and 700.
 
A lot depends on what you really want, what type of sound your looking for, for example what improvements are you looking for from your Slee SRG11? If your mainly listening to Vinyl then I might be temped to go with something like the Jotunheim with the phono module, I personally wouldn't want to pair 'warm' headphones with a warm sounding amp while listening to Vinyl which has a tendency to sound warm, the Jotunheim might be a good middle man.
 
Have you thought about getting the DIY Graham Slee ultra linear diamond edition kit? I prefered it to the SRGii. Although at this point, the differences are very small. So it is hard to recommend something without many references. Last time i looked it was ~£200, but that was a year or two ago.
 
Should also add my phono stage is tom evans micro groove x mk 2 . So dont require anything that side of things.
 
Sc00p007 said:
Have you thought about getting the DIY Graham Slee ultra linear diamond edition kit? I prefered it to the SRGii. Although at this point, the differences are very small. So it is hard to recommend something without many references. Last time i looked it was ~£200, but that was a year or two ago.
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I have considered tge upgrade. But id have to send it away as i got no DIY skills lol.
 
TALON1973 said:
Should also add my phono stage is tom evans micro groove x mk 2 . So dont require anything that side of things.
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It's all very well naming your expensive gear and saying "so don't need that" but that might not give you the sound that you want, all audio gear gives a different sound signature, headphones being the most dramatic, so you might want to consider upgrading them instead if your looking for a big upgrade in sound (hifiman he-560, HD-800S, Audeze LCD-X) but at your level your at a point of diminishing returns imo, at the budget you've stated you really need to audition equipment to see what floats your boat and try to get an idea of what you actually want in terms of sound and what your looking to improve, sound is a very personal thing, just making a thread saying "looking for headphone amp up to a grand" I think it's going to be hard to please you, especially if it's mainly just for vinyl and you don't require a built-in DAC, I suggested two balanced amps as at your level to me that is the next logical step and I think your 650s and 700s would benefit from it.
 
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Spending that kind of money I'd definitely audition some stuff like Lowrider says.

I've had a mixed experience with the 600 series and balanced - while the situations aren't directly comparable - but a few years ago (albeit with a lot less awareness of audio than more recent times) I demo'd a few high end balanced amps at a local audio place and at the time really wasn't that impressed - couldn't really tell much (any) difference to a mid-range single ended amp.

A few months back though I built my own balanced amp for my 600s out of interest and found that results quite favourable with a noticeably more effortless response and more fluid sound than any single ended amp I've ever heard from low through to ultra high end. (Not sure if it because this design has an active, with gain, ground channel for each audio channel which I don't believe a lot of balanced amps use where the ground either isn't active or has no gain).
 
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