raven22;402668 Wrote: > I'm using a SB3 for some time now and because of wife and kids I'm > listening quite often to the headphone out of the SB3. > > My headphone is a Sennheiser HD600 and I'm sure it can do better than i > hear via the sb3. But i have no headphone amp and my preamp has no > headphone out. > > How are your experiences with the SB3 headphone out? And how much do i > have to spend on a headphone amp to make it sound a decent bit better?
Not really knowing exactly what you mean by "a decent bit better" I'll still have go at answering your question. First let's go over what you have: a very good pair of full size headphones, the Sennheiser HD600s and one SB3 - so far so good. Update: I just show your post indicating that you already have an external DAC so what you are looking at is just a dedicated headphone amp and there are plenty of very good ones to chose from. I suggest that you head over to the forums at www.head-fi.org and ask over there for some advice on a good headphone amp in any given price range. Basically your facing two related but different issues: 1) The built-in headphone amp in the SB3 2) The built-in DAC (digital to analog converter) in the SB3 Here's the problem: neither of these "built-in" items is anyway near the quality of the HD600s. So in addition to the dedicated headphone amp you mentioned in your post, you should also consider getting a dedicated DAC so that you you bypass both of these built-in limits. There are several very good DACs on the market as well as many very good headphone amps plus there are also several headphone amps with their own built-in DACs so you have many choices. As far as price goes you're looking at anywhere from $400 and up for either two separate units (DAC & amp) or a combination unit (amp with built-in DAC). I use two different Headroom Desktop amps each with a built-in DAC for both my bedroom and my computer room setups. I connect the digital output of the SB3 (bedroom) and the digital output of the Receiver (computer room) to the digital input of the Headroom amp and everything sounds great. The DACs in both Headroom units provide much better sound than the DACs in the SB3 and the Receiver plus the amplifier section of each Headroom unit provides plenty of power to properly drive my pair of HD600s - they truly shine when played back through this setup. A basic Headroom Desktop amp with a DAC starts at $1000 but you can sometimes find one used for substantially less. I know that there are other very good products available but I'm not that familiar with them since I'm quite happy with both of my setups. I realize that the price may seem a bit steep but using just a headphone amp will mean that you're just providing more power to drive a not so great signal (the analog output of the SB3) so to really solve the problem you should consider using a dedicated external DAC. Plus you can connect the output of the DAC to the input of your preamp and also improve the sound when listening through your speakers. One word of caution: make sure that whatever external DAC you plan on getting has digital inputs which are compatible with the digital outputs of the SB3, in other words, not just a USB input since the SB3 DOES NOT have a USB output. Here's the info on the SB3's digital outputs: Digital S/PDIF outputs * Optical and coax digital connections * Dedicated high-precision crystal oscillators (no PLL, no resampling) * Standard IEC-958 (S/PDIF) encoding * Optical connector: TOSLINK 660nm * Coax connector: RCA, 500mVpp into 75 ohms * Sample rates: 44.1Khz, 48Khz * Audio format: linear PCM, 16 or 24 bits per sample * Intrinsic jitter: less than 50ps (standard deviation) I think that you now have enough info to start googling your way to better sound. -- ralphpnj Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels -> Snatch -> The Transporter -> Transporter 2 'Last.fm' (http://www.last.fm/user/jazzfann/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=60876 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
