HD650 or HE6

No, but I'm sure it will get loud enough for you. Just don't expect to hear the HE-6 at it's full potential. It would be the equivalent of putting a speed limiter on a Ferrari at 70mph. Sure you could have fun most of the time and get an idea of what the car can do but you'll never see it's what it's truly capable of.

 

Entirely agreed with this - usually the non speaker amp people are speaking in terms of loudness and yes, a headphone amp will make the HE-6 louder than you can tolerate but that doesn't mean that it's being driven well.

As an aside, in a few weeks I'll probably revive this thread or make another concerning amping with the HD800/HD650 and HE-6. I'll have a Pioneer SX-1010 for HE-6 duty and a ZDT for the HD800 and HD650s with a Yggdrasil sounding dac and a tube buffered dac so essentially, optimized rigs for both. The point of the discussion will be to establish if one is better off building a headphone rig around a non HE-6 headphone and getting the HE-6 (i.e. running the HE-6 from the ZDT) vs getting a HE-6 rig and using that to power other headphones (the hp out of the SX-1010). Essentially addressing the question of is a TOTL rig for the HE-6 a TOTL rig for something else and vice versa.

 

I'll have the Sim audio moon 430had here this week to try with the he-6's. Just curious how this 3.5k headphone amp will match up to my low budget speaker amp

 

I thought the Moon 430HA was absolutely fantastic. I couldn't personally justify sending that much on an amp/dac, but if I had that kind of "spare" money lying around...

Lyr1? Yuck, give that a pass.

 

Fortunately I was selected for the loaner tour. Could never afford one myself. I'm really curious as to how much better this amp is going to sound compared to my budget speaker amp.

 

The Lyr 2. And why yuck?

 

These must be some unicorn LCD-2s

 

Have you tried the non-Fazors for an extended time vs HD650/HD600?

 

No. I had the 2-F and the 3-F for a week. Stories have been told about Fazor being slightly worse on average.
Anyways these had nothing to offer next to HD650. Grainy, empty and super dull. Even with trance, techno and metal these managed to bore me to sleep.
I had the amps with guts and shit, so there is no worhy argument here.
I even prefered K701 with a faulty driver and MSR-7s to these LCD-s. Next to HE-6 these were hillarious.
It's dirty to quantify sound, but these non F-s better be 5x better to beat HD650 at anything.

At the old place there were rumors about a few unicorn LCD-2/3 that beat the crap out of pretty much everything, so I got curious.

 

Grainy highs? That's the second most obvious thing the 2.1's did better in my case vs 650. Highs were more open and clear with the Audezes, so the Senns went.

 

I had a Lyr1 on loan for a while, along with an LCD2. I thought the Lyr sounded good with the Audeze, but it was just a shouty mess with the HE-6. It was plenty loud enough, but it was akin to using a sledge on a finishing nail. Just brute and no control.

 

This is a good point regarding the HE-6. The ability to play them loud should not be confused with playing them well. Properly amped they will have precise imaging, a wide and deep stage, tight and fast response across the spectrum. The Rag IMO doesn't even quite get them there. Speaker amps or forget about it from what I've heard thus far.

 

I'm surprised to hear the Rag doesn't even quite cut it, because it literally is a 60W speaker amp, even out of the XLR out. So does this imply the type of speaker amp also matters a great deal, if Rag isn't a good match? FWIW I think the HE-6 sounds awesome out of Mjolnir 2 (5W at 50ohm, rag is 10W), but haven't heard out of a speaker amp myself, so am trying to figure all this out

 

I have. Was an owner of a non-fazored 2 for a year before I replaced it with a modded HD650. The HD650s clearly have the upper hand in resolution in the highs, whereas the Audezes exhibited some roll off. The HD650 (in my opinion) just did everything better. Audezes might have a slight upper hand in bass extension and clarity.

 

It doesn't sound terrible out of the Rag per say, but the imaging precision is a bit lacking, the bass impact isn't on par with a high wattage solid state amp and it's kind of strident/spitty in the treble still, even with good mods in place. As far as "why", that's a good question, but that's just my take after running that combo for about a year. I currently have an Adcom GFA-555II that I bought for $400 as a stand-in amp while I save up for something better, and it does a superior job in virtually all regards compared to the Rag. I run a separate amp for my HD650.

 

Is it possible to use a Yamaha HS10W subwoofer as a speaker amp for the HE-6? I'm thinking no.

 

It's hard to really explain how much better the he-6 is with speaker amp. you have to actually experience it. It's definitely a holy shit moment for sure

 

Dub. Tee. Eff. ???

What are you gonna do, pull the amp plate off and use that to drive the HE-6?

 

You've been such a big help.

 

I seriously don't even know what you were asking here. How in the world did you intend to hook a headphone up to a subwoofer? Even if you ripped out the plate amp, those things are typically mono, with a low pass filter built in.