nothingman
Senior Member
Why is the input sensitivity so high on headphone amplifiers? What am I missing? On my loudspeaker power amp, the input sensitivity is 1.43V for the SE inputs. That makes total sense to me, since any home audio preamp is going to be in the meaty section of the power band and not clipping at that level.
I went and bought the HD6XX and the Sabaj A10H to get started. The problem is the input sensitivity on the A10H is apparently quite high. I’m running into problems getting enough voltage out of my miniDSP SHD, especially when running EQ, even with the A10H in high gain mode. I went looking at the Topping alternatives like the L30, and it’s the same story: 3V input sensitivity even on high gain mode.
Who in home audio has all these DACs and preamps outputting a solid 3V, especially when so many are using EQ on headphones? The counterpart to the L30 is the E30 which has 2V max output. Why is the headphone amp world totally different in this regard? Is this all part of measurement-chasing by manufacturers, or is there a good engineering reason why power amps have input sensitivity accessible to any DAC/preamp and headphone amps do not?
Lastly, paging @JohnYang1997 here, would I be better served by a DAC/amp combo, say the Topping DX3 Pro+? I can output coax from my miniDSP SHD and then run volume via remote on the Topping, but I don’t fully understand if a DAC-amp combo will intrinsically fix the underlying issue of getting enough power to the headphones (e.g. is the built-in DAC output a better match for the headphone amp sensitivity?).
Two things are most important to me beyond raw amp performance, 1) good channel matching, and 2) remote functionality since I use all of my 10 foot cable to sit on my couch while listening. Hence I thought I scored a home run with the Sabaj A10H, but it seems I missed the mark purely based on headphone amp input sensitivity. It doesn’t seem like it should be this hard. Thanks, all.
I went and bought the HD6XX and the Sabaj A10H to get started. The problem is the input sensitivity on the A10H is apparently quite high. I’m running into problems getting enough voltage out of my miniDSP SHD, especially when running EQ, even with the A10H in high gain mode. I went looking at the Topping alternatives like the L30, and it’s the same story: 3V input sensitivity even on high gain mode.
Who in home audio has all these DACs and preamps outputting a solid 3V, especially when so many are using EQ on headphones? The counterpart to the L30 is the E30 which has 2V max output. Why is the headphone amp world totally different in this regard? Is this all part of measurement-chasing by manufacturers, or is there a good engineering reason why power amps have input sensitivity accessible to any DAC/preamp and headphone amps do not?
Lastly, paging @JohnYang1997 here, would I be better served by a DAC/amp combo, say the Topping DX3 Pro+? I can output coax from my miniDSP SHD and then run volume via remote on the Topping, but I don’t fully understand if a DAC-amp combo will intrinsically fix the underlying issue of getting enough power to the headphones (e.g. is the built-in DAC output a better match for the headphone amp sensitivity?).
Two things are most important to me beyond raw amp performance, 1) good channel matching, and 2) remote functionality since I use all of my 10 foot cable to sit on my couch while listening. Hence I thought I scored a home run with the Sabaj A10H, but it seems I missed the mark purely based on headphone amp input sensitivity. It doesn’t seem like it should be this hard. Thanks, all.
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