Hi, I appreciate this is a bit of a "how long is a piece of string" question, but hopefully I can get some help narrowing down some choices.
I decided to upgrade my headphones from older Sony to HD650s. I will use them with an Arcam Alpha 9 CD player, but the headphone out on the Alpha 10 amp has quite a high amount of background hiss (with speakers too, just isn't noticeable. BTW I traced it back to the volume controller/pre-amp). So I've decided to run the second set of audio outs of the CD player to a separate headphone amp.
I ALSO want to use an external DAC on my Mac computer to drive these same headphones. For the latter scenario I'm thinking of a Zero DAC, but I've read the headphone amp is especially crap in this unit, so basically using it just as a DAC to a separate headphone amp.
Sooooo what I'm after is a headphone amp that's to a pretty high standard. I used to be an electronics tech for many years, but with all due respect guys, after all those years at a bench rolling my own from scratch just doesn't have much in the way of novelty value for me! I'd still consider a kit or a basic commercial unit that offered modification potential though. Just wondering what's being suggested at the moment?
Pete
I decided to upgrade my headphones from older Sony to HD650s. I will use them with an Arcam Alpha 9 CD player, but the headphone out on the Alpha 10 amp has quite a high amount of background hiss (with speakers too, just isn't noticeable. BTW I traced it back to the volume controller/pre-amp). So I've decided to run the second set of audio outs of the CD player to a separate headphone amp.
I ALSO want to use an external DAC on my Mac computer to drive these same headphones. For the latter scenario I'm thinking of a Zero DAC, but I've read the headphone amp is especially crap in this unit, so basically using it just as a DAC to a separate headphone amp.
Sooooo what I'm after is a headphone amp that's to a pretty high standard. I used to be an electronics tech for many years, but with all due respect guys, after all those years at a bench rolling my own from scratch just doesn't have much in the way of novelty value for me! I'd still consider a kit or a basic commercial unit that offered modification potential though. Just wondering what's being suggested at the moment?
Pete