However, in true reality, a stereo receiver is also a dessert topping and a floor wax too.
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Like you, I saw that the night it first came on.
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If you canât tell us WHICH model youâre talking about, itâs all pointless.
âIFI signature dac/ampsâ could be any of a bunch of models, since they donât have one specifically called that ⌠and the things that could be fit among those terms range anywhere from $200 to $3,000+.
Either be specific, or stop asking.
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That iFi DAC/Amp is pretty nice, itâs got significantly more power than my iFi xDSD which was sold in the same period. I have not heard that model, but @Lothar_Wolf speaks well of it, and says it shares the iFi house sound as does mine.
Based on its ratings it would be a much better match for most headphones. I found that my iDSD is a little weak for power hungry high impedance headphones including the HD-6xx, which your model should drive well. I canât speak to the headphones you are considering but @Torq can. By the way, you sound frustrated, itâs not worth letting the process of finding the right chain be annoying, itâs learning and discovery.
If for you as for me, price is an obstacle, learn to be happy with a solution that is 95% of what you want. Mostly.
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Nope. That was before my time. I did see this one on first run:
However, itâs not really satire because many sauces are mostly corn syrup. Take away the color from BBQ sauce or the yellow from honey mustard and Karo is whatâs left.
You can use this tool, one of several I created, to determine whether a given amplifier or DAC/amp has the power to properly drive a specific headphone. You just pick them from the lists provided, and itâll do the rest.
Hereâs what you get with the iFi micro iDSD Signature/Tungsten(DS):
What youâre looking for, at a basic level, is that the dB/SPL number for SPL w/ 20dB Headroom is at LEAST your normal, average, listening level. Easiest way to approximate that is to get an app for your phone and use it to measure how loud the output from your headphones is when listening normally (take them off, put the phone between the cups).
For me, that average level falls between 80 and 84 dB, so the iFi would just squeak in. However, personally, I like to see the Max SPL figure somewhere around 120 dB/SPL, as that means the amplifier isnât running flat out (where performance tends to suffer a fair bit) to hit various musical peaks.
So, in this case, I wouldnât personally pair this iFi unit with the Tungsten.
With the DCA E3 itâs a different matter entirely:
Thereâs plenty of headroom, and the amplifier isnât going to be working that hard even when it hits the biggest, extended, peaks and crescendos.
NOW ⌠regarding the iFi Micro iDSD Signature here ⌠ALL of the calculations above are based on iFiâs quoted/claimed power output capability for this unit. However, it seems that with the Diablo and Diablo 2 (which seem to be very similar to the Micro iDSD Signature), those power claims are not using industry-standard RMS measures.
You should read what @GoldenSound has to say about this, here.
At the actual measured output power, using the standard RMS methodology, the Diablo and Diablo 2 have less than half their quoted power. If the power output for the Micro iDSD Signature is quoted using the same method, then it would fall well below whatâs needed to properly drive the Tungsten.
I canât say for sure without either iFi clarifying how they get their numbers for ALL their products (and then publishing numbers using an industry standard approach), or measuring them (which Iâm not going to do - as I donât have them available to measure and have better things to do with my time anyway).*
*I may pull all the iFi products from my tool. It assumes an industry standard RMS measurement to do its calculations. If thatâs not how the quoted power numbers are derived then it is very misleading - and I donât want my tools showing things will work for X or Y when the reality is they either wonât, or wonât work as well as they claim. And unfortunately I canât just throw in what numbers I think should be there - thatâs inviting way too much hassle. Weâll see if iFi can/will clarify if their other products are quoted the same way or not and go from there.
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Not really⌠
The new Fosi Audio V3 Mono, which is a D-Class amp using the Ti TDA3255 chip, is using a PFFB filter, which includes the normal output filter within the feedback loop and thus is supposed to be independent from the effects of the output filter + load impedance as described by you.
Additionaly most headphone adapters constructed for headphone use directly on power amps, I know of, use load resistors, which decouple the headphone load / impedance from the amps load (âvirtual speakersâ), which is held usually stable at ~6 Ohm impedance. This naturally can be used not only on Class A/B amps but also on ânormalâ Class D amps. This makes even the load factor of the amp mostly independent of the headphones load, which then falls in the ânormalâ load range of a standard power amp.
The issue with the headphone impedance adapters are that whilst they do work in terms of presenting a more normal impedance load to the amplifier, thus allowing things to work fine on tube/class D amps that would otherwise perhaps be problematic, they also defeat much of the point of using a speaker amp in the first place and limit the power you can get out of them.
Take a 100W @ 8 Ohm speaker amp for example. Connecting a 32 Ohm headphone to this and following Ohmâs law that gives you 25W at 32 ohm. Great!
But if with this particular amp you need to use an impedance adapter, the available power will be much lower.
If for example your adapter has say a 10 Ohm resistor in series, you now actually only have more like 14W available. And this is before any consideration of how much power the adapter itself can handle.
If using a Modhouse tungsten for example, this is a headphone that genuinely for some listeners may need up to 30-40Vrms.
Putting 35V through a 25 Ohm resistor in parallel to that headphone means that resistor needs to dissipate 50W of heat. That is a ton, and as a result youâre probably just going to burn it out:
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Found a new class D headphone AMP lists on eBay, this product may address the issue of treble boost. With a modulation frequency as high as 1.8MHz, the cutoff frequency can be very high, meaning the LC filterâs interaction with different impedance loads is unlikely to affect the frequency response within the audio band.