Headphones suggestion for listening to a reel-to-reel

[nycarrival]

Hello all,

This is another dumb question, so please be patient with me. I am getting a reel-to-reel and I am wondering if there is a difference between headphones used for listening to DAC/AMP and streamed music versus two channel stereo delivered from a reel-to-reel machine.

I will appreciate some suggestions - I do not want to spend much but do not want to compromise on sound quality either.

Thanks in advance!

 

[staticV3]

Can you post the specific model of your R2R? Depending on its internal headphone amp, you may need to adapt your choice of headphone.

High sensitivity, high impedance is the safest bet with old audio equipment of unknown quality. A good candidate: Sennheiser HD 560S.

Alternatively you could get a dedicated headphone Amp and plug the R2R into that. That way, you wouldn't be restricted in your choice of headphone.

How much do you want to spend?

 

[Jimshoe]

Out of curiosity, what will you listen to on the r2r? Will you be buying boutique pre-recorded r2r tapes (tiny selection, super ££££)?

I'm baffled otherwise why anyone would pursue r2r today - unless its just for how they look.

 

[Joachim Herbert]

1. No.
2. How much do you plan to spend?
3. Why, oh why?

 

[DVDdoug]

If you are plugging directly into the tape machine it probably has a 1/4-inch connection so depending on what you're using now you might need an adapter or adapter-cable.

But "typically" the headphone jack on a tape recorder was used for monitoring (during recording) and for everyday listening it was plugged into an amplifier (or receiver or preamp, etc.). You can also monitor through the amplifier.

but do not want to compromise on sound quality either.

Then you should avoid analog!

 

[nycarrival]

I am planning to do some recording from a DAC and just enjoy the sound of the reel-to-reel. I do not want to spend more than £500.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I am planning to do some recording from a DAC and just enjoy the sound of the reel-to-reel. I do not want to spend more than £500.

More info would help. As already advised if you are using the headphone jack on a R2R you need high impedance headphones. At least 300 ohms. For instance the manual for the old A77 Revox suggested 200-600 ohm headphones. If you are going to feed the line out to a headphone amp externally you can use anything you want with a good headphone amp.

If your question is whether some particular headphone is better for listening to reel to reel than other types beyond impedance then I'm not sure anyone can answer that. If you aren't using some sort of noise reduction R2R will have some hiss which will be more apparent in headphones. Response of tape usually drops out below 40 hz and droops a bit above 10 khz. You'd not need super low end on phones and you don't want a bright balanced phone as it will accenuate hiss. If you went with a phone with a drooping treble it might help with the hiss, but also would make the music sound lifeless.