Sennheiser HD 6XX

[dome3731]

10 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Either will work. But what matters more is what you are using as your source. If you are using MP3s then they aren’t going to sound amazing.

I'm looking at the O2 on massdrop, they're selling it pretty cheap and there's a drop for even less that might be active soon.

[dome3731]

20 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Either will work. But what matters more is what you are using as your source. If you are using MP3s then they aren’t going to sound amazing.

I'm using my PC.

[Max_Settings]

19 minutes ago, dome3731 said:

I'm looking at the O2 on massdrop, they're selling it pretty cheap and there's a drop for even less that might be active soon.

Get the Magni 3. Much better than the O2 for $5 more.

[GamerDude]

While the HD6XX doesn't have a wide soundstage, it does have excellent imaging so it's pretty good for gaming (for me anyway). I have a bunch of higher end, wider soundstage cans but the HD6XX easily holds its own against them. Would suggest you try the Magni 3 and see if you hear a difference, just expect the often exclaimed hyperbole "day and night" difference. You should hear an appreciable difference though....

[Tz000]

2 hours ago, dome3731 said:

I'm using my PC.

He means what is the source of the audio file your playing?

 

If you are using Youtube or some compressed mp3 streaming platform the file/audio its going to sound like crap no matter what you play it on and a good set of headphones will only reveal these downfalls even more.  Ensure you are playing audio straight from an original CD or high quality streaming platform such as Tidal Music.  I recently tried Spotify premium and its "High" quality is very acceptable as well.

 

No matter how good your equipment is, If your have a shit source nothings going to help other than changing what your listening to.  This is just as important as buying the nice set of headphones, AMP/DAC etc etc... whats the point of all that if your going to run garbage through it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GamerDude]

3 hours ago, dome3731 said:

I'm using my PC.

Oops, missed this....but as Tz000 has pointed out, it's more to do with your audio source, MP3? FLAC? WAV? DSD? Enquiring minds wanna know....

[Tz000]

2 hours ago, GamerDude said:

Oops, missed this....but as Tz000 has pointed out, it's more to do with your audio source, MP3? FLAC? WAV? DSD? Enquiring minds wanna know....

Should we bet on it? haha

[an actual squirrel]

6 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

Get the Magni 3. Much better than the O2 for $5 more.

i've seen some things that make me think the o2 is better. With a 300 ohm resistor, the magni 3 managed to go as low as .003% thd+n on ASR 

https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/schiit-lyr-headphone-amp-vs-magni-3-thd-vs-power-measurements-png.11401/

 

while the o2 at neurochrome managed to go down all the way to .0005%, which is 6x cleaner

https://www.neurochrome.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/O2_-THDN-vs-Output-Voltage-20-32-50-150-300-ohm-1-kHz-20-kHz-BW.png

 

The magni 3 is much more powerful, but the graph shows the o2 is fine at 2 Vrms, which is already 108 decibels on an hd6xx. People will likely never use more than this. More power is sorta moot at this point imo.

[Guest]

14 hours ago, dome3731 said:

I'm using my PC.

Greetings, @dome3731. You’re using your PC as your source. May I ask you for some additional information?

a. When you plug your headphones (not necessarily your HD6xx [great cans, BTW, I’ve been cautioned to be mindful how I drive them... I’m still using headphones from the HD5** series]) directly into your PC’s headphone jack, do you hear a background hiss?

b. What kinds of audio files do you normally enjoy listinging to... MP3? Apple lossless (ALAC)? AAC? 

C. And, what PC program do you use to run them... iTunes? VLC? Windows Media Player? Foobar2000?

D. Do you like having a simple stereo experience or do you enjoy a unit that allows you to monkey around with the sound?

 

I agree with @Densetsu ... and if you’re willing to share your listening habits, perhaps the dudes/dudettes will be able to give you some ideas.

 

BTW - I’m a 2-year-old Schiit Audio fanboy. Originally, I was hell-bend on going the Dolby-SurroundSound-Creative-Astro-RGB-Blaster route. And then, I jumped into THAT other rabbit-hole.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2018 by Guest
Grammar

[Guest]

7 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

i've seen some things that make me think the o2 is better. With a 300 ohm resistor, the magni 3 managed to go as low as .003% thd+n on ASR 

https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/schiit-lyr-headphone-amp-vs-magni-3-thd-vs-power-measurements-png.11401/

 

while the o2 at neurochrome managed to go down all the way to .0005%, which is 6x cleaner

https://www.neurochrome.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/O2_-THDN-vs-Output-Voltage-20-32-50-150-300-ohm-1-kHz-20-kHz-BW.png

 

The magni 3 is much more powerful, but the graph shows the o2 is fine at 2 Vrms, which is already 108 decibels on an hd6xx. People will likely never use more than this. More power is sorta moot at this point imo.

It kind of blows me away how these dinky little silver (Schiit) and black (JDS Labs) boxes can blow away my 1980-90s era amps/tuners. And not just in raw output... there’s none of that tape-hiss I remember or icy output from the CD player.  I’m REALLY looking forward to plugging in my HD6xx to my ModiMB/Magni3 when they arrive at summer’s end.

@an actual squirrel, thanks for the graphs, eh.

[Spuriae]

On 3/22/2018 at 10:08 PM, an actual squirrel said:

i've seen some things that make me think the o2 is better. With a 300 ohm resistor, the magni 3 managed to go as low as .003% thd+n on ASR 

https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/schiit-lyr-headphone-amp-vs-magni-3-thd-vs-power-measurements-png.11401/

 

while the o2 at neurochrome managed to go down all the way to .0005%, which is 6x cleaner

https://www.neurochrome.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/O2_-THDN-vs-Output-Voltage-20-32-50-150-300-ohm-1-kHz-20-kHz-BW.png

 

The magni 3 is much more powerful, but the graph shows the o2 is fine at 2 Vrms, which is already 108 decibels on an hd6xx. People will likely never use more than this. More power is sorta moot at this point imo.

In other news, the iPhone 5S is cleaner at more reasonable volume levels (100mV-200mV) with a 300Ω load than the O2: 

There are many, many things wrong with this comparison.

[Guest]

@dome3731 ... this thread kind of died out. May I ask what audio file type you listen to?

[an actual squirrel]

On 4/1/2018 at 6:58 PM, Nimrodor said:

In other news, the iPhone 5S is cleaner at more reasonable volume levels (100mV-200mV) with a 300Ω load than the O2: 

 

There are many, many things wrong with this comparison.

This is only looking at harmonic distortion whereas the comparisons I posted were looking at harmonic distortion and noise.

[Spuriae]

1 hour ago, an actual squirrel said:

This is only looking at harmonic distortion whereas the comparisons I posted were looking at harmonic distortion and noise.

Yep. And for a decent amplifier design, the noise floor is going to be determined by the test setup rather than the amplifier itself. THD+N is useful for comparisons within a single setup but not against others. Unless you have a common reference that they both share, neither can be effectively compared.

 

FWIW when the levels are matched (using nwavguy's 150Ω 400mV 1kHz measurement), the iPhone has a higher second harmonic and the O2 is higher from 4H on. Ideal would be comparing matched FFT's, but most places don't have good ones available.

 

Regardless, THD comparisons are dumb. What transducer produces low enough distortion for this to matter? What human processes distortion that low? Only the higher harmonics don't get masked by the downstream components, and the contribution of these is minimized by THD's linear adding.

 

[an actual squirrel]

2 hours ago, Nimrodor said:

Yep. And for a decent amplifier design, the noise floor is going to be determined by the test setup rather than the amplifier itself. THD+N is useful for comparisons within a single setup but not against others. Unless you have a common reference that they both share, neither can be effectively compared.

 

FWIW when the levels are matched (using nwavguy's 150Ω 400mV 1kHz measurement), the iPhone has a higher second harmonic and the O2 is higher from 4H on. Ideal would be comparing matched FFT's, but most places don't have good ones available.

 

Regardless, THD comparisons are dumb. What transducer produces low enough distortion for this to matter? What human processes distortion that low? Only the higher harmonics don't get masked by the downstream components, and the contribution of these is minimized by THD's linear adding.

 

 

Almost always at low voltage, the bottleneck for thd+n is going to be the noise performance of the amp. On that website, the T'HD option appears to be thd+n. I am looking at the -7dbv 15.8 ohm option and comparing it to the 400mv 15 ohm nwavguy results, and I'm seeing the o2 with higher second harmonic and fourth harmonic, but overall slightly lower thd.

 

I agree the THD at this point is good enough in both cases. Originally, I was talking about the magni 3 and o2 at 300 ohms, and in both cases I think they are fine. I was pushing back against the claim the magni 3 was much better for $5 more when a good chunk (and I would argue the more relevant chunk) of its thd+n is worse.

 

[Spuriae]

1 hour ago, an actual squirrel said:

 

Almost always at low voltage, the bottleneck for thd+n is going to be the noise performance of the amp. On that website, the T'HD option appears to be thd+n. I am looking at the -7dbv 15.8 ohm option and comparing it to the 400mv 15 ohm nwavguy results, and I'm seeing the o2 with higher second harmonic and fourth harmonic, but overall slightly lower thd.

 

I agree the THD at this point is good enough in both cases. Originally, I was talking about the magni 3 and o2 at 300 ohms, and in both cases I think they are fine. I was pushing back against the claim the magni 3 was much better for $5 more when a good chunk (and I would argue the more relevant chunk) of its thd+n is worse.

I think it's hard to argue that anything is better than anything else when we have no idea what to measure for. I hate relying on subjective impressions but feel like I don't have any other choice when the measurements for electronics say virtually nothing in most cases (unlike with headphones, where the larger imperfections mean measurements tend to correspond well with how things sound).

 

Hell, tomchr and Amir both used tube amps as their daily drivers.