Can I drive a 250Ω headphone on my PC without an amp?

[KyberKylo77]

I've been looking to get the Beyerdynamic DT990 pros for quite sometime but I can't seem to find the low impedance version on any local retailers. I usually have my volume turned up to only about 40% so would I be able to get away with it?

[Albert F]

if you want to experience the full sound quality of the headphones you need to get an amp. unless your mobo's sound IC can drive 250Ω.

I've tried running a pair of high end Sennheiser headphones (can't remember which model exactly) with my phone and at full blast they were barely giving any sound (it was mostly a wind fuss concert)

[Energycore]

As an audio noob that just started getting into the audiophile experience, I can tell you that you don't NEED the amp, unless you have volume problems, to have a good sound experience.

 

A DAC and Amp can enhance the experience quite a bit, but if you jump to that now you miss the step of enjoying the quality of the headphones themselves first.

 

I own a pair of Sennheiser HD 6xxs that are 300 Ohm, and I enjoyed them a lot for a year before even thinking about an amp. Then I got a decent dac/amp though not great one (The Monoprice 111567), and I LOVED the difference.

 

You need to already enjoy listening to details before an amp will become a life changing purchase. That's what I think.

 

P.S.: I actually think the effect of the DAC was more awesome than the effect of the amp for my 6xx. Their color was already nice when I used them without an amp, and the change in the clarity of the lows was noticeable but not as eargasm inducing as the MASSIVE improvement in stereo image that a higher quality DAC can give you.

 

Again, this is all info I've gathered myself over a relatively short time. Hope it helps.

[rice guru]

2 hours ago, KyberKylo77 said:

I've been looking to get the Beyerdynamic DT990 pros for quite sometime but I can't seem to find the low impedance version on any local retailers. I usually have my volume turned up to only about 40% so would I be able to get away with it?

If this is a Beyer you can sort of get a respectable volume level but amps on motherboards at skins of weak wand will.be prone to distortion and weak oruddy bass. With that volume lever yes you could get away with it though but I will still reccomend nan amp even then not cause of volume but just to ensure quality. If you are concerned about driving them just get a beyerdynamic tygr it's a headphone that performs just as good as a 990 in gaming, bumetter tuned for most people and designed to be able to run off a mobo.

 

[rice guru]

1 hour ago, Energycore said:

As an audio noob that just started getting into the audiophile experience, I can tell you that you don't NEED the amp, unless you have volume problems, to have a good sound experience.

 

A DAC and Amp can enhance the experience quite a bit, but if you jump to that now you miss the step of enjoying the quality of the headphones themselves first.

 

I own a pair of Sennheiser HD 6xxs that are 300 Ohm, and I enjoyed them a lot for a year before even thinking about an amp. Then I got a decent dac/amp though not great one (The Monoprice 111567), and I LOVED the difference.

 

You need to already enjoy listening to details before an amp will become a life changing purchase. That's what I think.

 

P.S.: I actually think the effect of the DAC was more awesome than the effect of the amp for my 6xx. Their color was already nice when I used them without an amp, and the change in the clarity of the lows was noticeable but not as eargasm inducing as the MASSIVE improvement in stereo image that a higher quality DAC can give you.

 

Again, this is all info I've gathered myself over a relatively short time. Hope it helps.

Weirdly enough a 300 ohm 6xx is easier to drive than a 990 or 880 250 ohm due to both sensitivity and stupidly hard to drive midbass. If you look at this resistance measurement you can see where it is actually 250 ohms is where sensitivity is measured at 1khz making this a decievingly harder to drive headphone than you would expect.

[Stahlmann]

I had to use my 600Ohm DT990 for a few weeks because my sound card died. It didn't get as loud as i wanted it to be and the soundstage was very "shallow". Idk how to describe it really but listening to music just wasn't as satisfying.

[Energycore]

7 hours ago, rice guru said:

Weirdly enough a 300 ohm 6xx is easier to drive than a 990 or 880 250 ohm due to both sensitivity and stupidly hard to drive midbass. If you look at this resistance measurement you can see where it is actually 250 ohms is where sensitivity is measured at 1khz

Ok, that explains why tbh. I'm not the first person I hear say that they enjoy their 6xxs on the phone even. The improvement using a DAC/Amp (especially the DAC) will be a LOT more massive for the DT 990 Pros huh.

[rice guru]

20 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Ok, that explains why tbh. I'm not the first person I hear say that they enjoy their 6xxs on the phone even. The improvement using a DAC/Amp (especially the DAC) will be a LOT more massive for the DT 990 Pros huh.

It will be noticable.  It the 6xx is known to scale very well with amps and people run multi thousand dollar gear using the 6xx as the headphone

[Energycore]

18 minutes ago, rice guru said:

It will be noticable.  It the 6xx is known to scale very well with amps and people run multi thousand dollar gear using the 6xx as the headphone

That's nice to know. It's nice to know that as I start looking at more premium stuff (Eyeing a Schiit Magni Heresy for next year), I'll still get performance out of these old cans. I honestly love the fact that they've sounded great at every single upgrade point. The stereo image using a DAC that works is SO MUCH wider it makes me drool.

[rice guru]

44 minutes ago, Energycore said:

That's nice to know. It's nice to know that as I start looking at more premium stuff (Eyeing a Schiit Magni Heresy for next year), I'll still get performance out of these old cans. I honestly love the fact that they've sounded great at every single upgrade point. The stereo image using a DAC that works is SO MUCH wider it makes me drool.

The heresy is a pretty bad pairing imo with the 6xx the magni 3+ is a better pick of the 2 for the 6xx.

[Quackers101]

some can support a wide range of power, but would need a good amp to get what you want.

[Spuriae]

13 hours ago, KyberKylo77 said:

I've been looking to get the Beyerdynamic DT990 pros for quite sometime but I can't seem to find the low impedance version on any local retailers. I usually have my volume turned up to only about 40% so would I be able to get away with it?

I don't know if the volume will be sufficient for you in particular, but the 250Ω model may be better than the low impedance version regardless.

• Every headphone is different so the fact that you normally listen at 40% isn't useful. You might currently have very efficient or very inefficient headphones relative to the DT990. Same with the motherboard; some can produce more power than others (though this spec is usually difficult, if not impossible, to look up).
• For many cheap consumer electronics a 250Ω headphone will get louder than an equivalent 32Ω model, because they are more current than voltage limited and/or they have a high output impedance. One motherboard's ALC889A for instance delivers 1.5mW into 300Ω but only 0.4mW into 32Ω. An ALC1200 can deliver about 4mW into either 32Ω or 250Ω. That would give you about 100dB peak on the DT990 (or about 85dB average for typical music), which may be enough depending on the person.
• The high output impedance on many cheap electronics can cause frequency response issues with low impedance headphones, or even with high impedance ones if the issue is large enough. This can be a worthwhile reason to upgrade to an amplifier even if the motherboard does get loud enough.
• Anecdotally the higher impedance Beyerdynamic models sound better, and they do measure marginally better. If your motherboard delivers comparable power into either, might as well get the higher impedance one.

12 hours ago, Albert F said:

if you want to experience the full sound quality of the headphones you need to get an amp. unless your mobo's sound IC can drive 250Ω.

I've tried running a pair of high end Sennheiser headphones (can't remember which model exactly) with my phone and at full blast they were barely giving any sound (it was mostly a wind fuss concert)

Higher impedance loads are easier to drive than low impedance ones in a technical sense; audio levels are voltages. Chipmakers always spec into 2kΩ or 10kΩ loads because it makes them look good. The difference is that because low impedances sink more power, they tend to produce higher volume outputs (with marginally lower quality) given the same input voltage.

10 hours ago, rice guru said:

 If you are concerned about driving them just get a beyerdynamic tygr it's a headphone that performs just as good as a 990 in gaming, bumetter tuned for most people and designed to be able to run off a mobo.

It's the same sensitivity as the 32Ω DT990; no better designed to run off a motherboard.

10 hours ago, rice guru said:

Weirdly enough a 300 ohm 6xx is easier to drive than a 990 or 880 250 ohm due to both sensitivity and stupidly hard to drive midbass. If you look at this resistance measurement you can see where it is actually 250 ohms is where sensitivity is measured at 1khz making this a decievingly harder to drive headphone than you would expect.

The 6XX is easier to drive because its sensitivity is 6dB higher, equivalent to quadrupling the input power for the same volume level. The HD6XX's impedance peaks at 480Ω; by the metric displayed in this graph it is worse.

 

[rice guru]

4 hours ago, Nimrodor said:

It's the same sensitivity as the 32Ω DT990; no better designed to run off a motherboard.

Correction on my end I meant 250 ohm 990 when I was referring to the 990. The tygr uses the same driver as the 32 ohm 990  just retuned and in a different chassis

[KyberKylo77]

20 hours ago, rice guru said:

If this is a Beyer you can sort of get a respectable volume level but amps on motherboards at skins of weak wand will.be prone to distortion and weak oruddy bass. With that volume lever yes you could get away with it though but I will still reccomend nan amp even then not cause of volume but just to ensure quality. If you are concerned about driving them just get a beyerdynamic tygr it's a headphone that performs just as good as a 990 in gaming, bumetter tuned for most people and designed to be able to run off a mobo.

 

ohh thats interesting, thank you for your input! Also, what starter dac would you recommend if I were to get the 990s?

[KyberKylo77]

9 hours ago, Nimrodor said:

I don't know if the volume will be sufficient for you in particular, but the 250Ω model may be better than the low impedance version regardless.

• Every headphone is different so the fact that you normally listen at 40% isn't useful. You might currently have very efficient or very inefficient headphones relative to the DT990. Same with the motherboard; some can produce more power than others (though this spec is usually difficult, if not impossible, to look up).
• For many cheap consumer electronics a 250Ω headphone will get louder than an equivalent 32Ω model, because they are more current than voltage limited and/or they have a high output impedance. One motherboard's ALC889A for instance delivers 1.5mW into 300Ω but only 0.4mW into 32Ω. An ALC1200 can deliver about 4mW into either 32Ω or 250Ω. That would give you about 100dB peak on the DT990 (or about 85dB average for typical music), which may be enough depending on the person.
• The high output impedance on many cheap electronics can cause frequency response issues with low impedance headphones, or even with high impedance ones if the issue is large enough. This can be a worthwhile reason to upgrade to an amplifier even if the motherboard does get loud enough.
• Anecdotally the higher impedance Beyerdynamic models sound better, and they do measure marginally better. If your motherboard delivers comparable power into either, might as well get the higher impedance one.

Higher impedance loads are easier to drive than low impedance ones in a technical sense; audio levels are voltages. Chipmakers always spec into 2kΩ or 10kΩ loads because it makes them look good. The difference is that because low impedances sink more power, they tend to produce higher volume outputs (with marginally lower quality) given the same input voltage.

It's the same sensitivity as the 32Ω DT990; no better designed to run off a motherboard.

The 6XX is easier to drive because its sensitivity is 6dB higher, equivalent to quadrupling the input power for the same volume level. The HD6XX's impedance peaks at 480Ω; by the metric displayed in this graph it is worse.

 

My motherboard (MSI B350 gaming pro carbon) says it can handle up to 600 ohms of resistance so would that still be an issue? Will i notice a significant enough upgrade in audio quality from getting a budget dac/amp?

[rice guru]

2 hours ago, KyberKylo77 said:

ohh thats interesting, thank you for your input! Also, what starter dac would you recommend if I were to get the 990s?

I would go for a warmer source I would go liquid spark dac and liquid spark amp with it as beyerdynamics seem to pair super well with the liquid spark but if you want to save money dac wise the Meizu hifi dac is pretty good or if you wanna cheap out apple dongle dac is good. I would prioritise amp.

 

[Spuriae]

1 hour ago, KyberKylo77 said:

My motherboard (MSI B350 gaming pro carbon) says it can handle up to 600 ohms of resistance so would that still be an issue? Will i notice a significant enough upgrade in audio quality from getting a budget dac/amp?

Motherboard outputs are generally pretty bad. There's no measurements of that specific model anywhere, but since MSI generally terminates its motherboard headphone outputs with 100Ω and the ALC892 delivers 1.2Vrms unloaded, I estimate:

Load Impedance (Ω)	Output Voltage (Vrms)	Output Power (mW)	SPL assuming 94dB/1mW (dB)
16	0.17	1.71	96.34
32	0.29	2.64	98.22
80	0.53	3.56	99.51
250	0.86	2.94	98.68
600	1.03	1.76	96.46

As far as power delivery goes it doesn't matter that much what you pick since decibels are logarithmic. The values in the last column are maximum rms levels; subtract ~15dB to account for dynamic range to get average listening volume. If you never listen to music above 80dB the power should be sufficient.

 

I would once again recommend against using low impedance headphones with the exception of particularly efficient planars due to the high output impedance. It is rare for a codec-only motherboard output from that generation to have less than 75Ω output impedance, and this is sufficient to cause ~1dB midbass boost in the 32Ω DT990.

[rice guru]

2 hours ago, KyberKylo77 said:

My motherboard (MSI B350 gaming pro carbon) says it can handle up to 600 ohms of resistance so would that still be an issue? Will i notice a significant enough upgrade in audio quality from getting a budget dac/amp?

As someone who has a MSI b550 tomahawk that also has the same claims and a 250 ohm 990 I will say it can't really handle the headphone and when loud it starts to distort.