this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Headphones

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Please educate an old guy about why I will need a headphone amp (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by purplepat69@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community
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I would never call myself an audiophile, but I know what I like. I told Santa that I wanted a set of the cheap HE-X4 planar headphones for Christmas. I plan to use them for music from my desktop PC. I understand that if my audio card/chip can't deliver enough power to drive the headphones to a sufficient volume level, I'll need an amp between the PC and the cans. But being an old "stereo" guy, is there any reason I couldn't input the PC audio into a home audio receiver/amp and use the headphone output from that to drive the headphones? What advantage, if any, would I get from buying one of these fancy DAC headphone amps? What advantage do more expensive headphone amps have over cheaper headphone amps? At 66 years old, I have no hope of having "golden ears" any longer.

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[–] ConsciousNoise5690@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Found this: https://drop.com/buy/drop-hifiman-he-x4-planar-magnetic-headphones

Sensitivity: 91 dB

Impedance: 25 ohms

Not very sensitive so might need a bit more power than the PC can deliver. Of cours, try it first before buying a headphone amp.

Very low impedance. Important is the damping factor (impedance headphone / impedance headphone out). 8 is considered a minimum. It might very well be that your receiver doesn't have separate headphone amp. This means the headphone out is derived from the power amp but tuned down by a couple of resistors. Hence the headphone out might have a high output impedance resulting in a bloated bass due to insufficient damping.

Technically it is very easy, get a 3.5 to 2x RCA to connect a PC to a receiver.

Another route is a external USB DAC/amp. This might improve on both the DAC and the amp in the PC. Today one can get pretty good solutions at decent price levels: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/tempotec-sonata-bhd-pro-portable-dac-amp-review.47929/

Perhaps stating the obvious

  • Experiment before you buy. If possible, do a unsighted test because we are prone to hear what we believe.
  • Buy only from vendors with a decent return policy
  • Check if there are measurements (ASR is a good source) as more expensive is not necessarily better.
  • At 66 you have age related hearing loss but audio is most of all mid range so you still hear a hell of a lot.