My JDS Atom amp on high gain sounds MUCH wider with Planar headphones?

Submitted by Lelouch25 t3_z6q68j in headphones

I have an iFi ZEN DACV2 connected to the Atom amp with RCA cables. I use the 'variable switch' on the zen dac to get more precise volume controls, and noticed it made the volume on the Atom amp also more refined/precise.

I listen to planars, Sundara 2020 and 1060C. I've noticed the sound stage just opens up with high gain on the 1060C. I also get more tallness from the soundstage. Seriously I can't believe how good it sounds on high gain.

On the track Strasbourg /St.Denis --Roy Hargrove, the sub-bass have more pronounced rumble. It feels like the music is surrounding me.

Volume matched to the best of my abilities, the low gain made the music sound like it was mono.

Do the high gain provide more mW or something? They must right? ...if it makes the headphones louder than low gain.

So an hour goes by, and now I am wondering if I should’ve upgraded to a higher powered amp like the Schiit Magni 3+. The 1060C spec says 1W is minimum.

Looking at DROP AAA THX right now. They have 2.7W to 32ohms single ended.

This whole chain was about impedance which is expressed in ohms representing headphone resistance, thus needing more wattage. (Power)

People didn’t like the way I said “headphones can be under powered”.

People also didn’t like that I described the sound of under-powered, or unmatched impedance.

Conclusion: volume doesn’t have anything to do with sound quality.

My take: You can get enough volume from a small powered amp and still not have the headphone sound full. I’ve always said this is likely due to wattage.

You can test this yourself by plugging in your headphone to your phone. You can reach good volume, but the headphone doesn’t sound full.

[maybe the proper way to frame it is that there are bad amps then]

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klogg4 t1_iy2q7nk wrote

Snake oil. Gain does NOT alter the sound. It only alters the output power to make volume knob easier to control with different headphones.

About power: it directly affects volume and that's it. When you reduce volume, you reduce the output power. Higher power amp will give you more volume at max level. Simple as that.

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NFTOxaile t1_iy3a1w2 wrote

High gain on most well designed amps allows for more voltage which also improves driver control. It's not snakeoil, it's just basic electronics.

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klogg4 t1_iy3wu8v wrote

Basic electronics? Basic electronics is that you need specific level of voltage to push driver forward/backward by specific measure. Which means voltage DIRECTLY affects volume. If you turn on high gain and turn the volume down to compensate, you output the same level of voltage in the end (and the same level of current and power as the result).

And no, "more voltage" doesn't improve driver control, the elimination of the voltage drop does. There is the only single measure you need to evaluate how the amp eliminates the voltage drops depending on the load, and that is - output impedance.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2qn0c wrote

Haha I know I was going to get one of these. There’s another Reddit poston ATOM sounding better on high gain.

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klogg4 t1_iy2r4k8 wrote

Man, it's all over the place. FLAC sounding better than Spotify. 24/192 sounding better than 16/44.1. Vinyl sounding better than CD. 1000$ cable sounding better than 3$ cable. Roon sounding better than foobar2000. High gain sounding better than low gain. Everything without ABXing. You're in the area where it's better to take basically everything with a big grain of salt and start questioning what YOU personally hear (we tend to hear things that are not there because of fancy marketing).

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2rm8l wrote

Yeah but nobody is marketing them for high gain. And I bought them cheap used. Personally I noticed a lot of comments on “apple dongle are good enough” BS.

Lots of dongle dacs paired headphones when the cheap ones only output 45mW.

Lots of BS from people denying basic mW spec of their own headphones.

Then there’s a bunch of people who just don’t understand planars.

Fact: * Planar scales with wattage.

Don’t get me started on the “all dacs or amps” sound the same people.

I see lots of ignorance from all sides really. 🤣😂

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klogg4 t1_iy2vry2 wrote

>Lots of dongle dacs paired headphones when the cheap ones only output 45mW.

I only use <2mW with my Beyer DT990 250 ohm and AKG K612 which are much harder to drive than your planars. Not mentioning Sennheiser HD650 (they're relatively easy to drive). It's because I don't really listen to music on a volume above 90dB. If you listen to music on reasonable volume levels, you're doing the same.

&gt; Then there’s a bunch of people who just don’t understand planars.

There's a lot more people who don't understand physics. Which is scarier.

Let me repeat that once again: power means volume and only volume. Sound pressure level, if you mind. You may even use a hi-fi amplifier for speakers to drive headphones, but if you listen to them on reasonable levels, you will still use 0.5-1mW out of 100000 available.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2x6l2 wrote

Nope. Not how any of that works. AMP isn’t just about volume. Under powering headphones make them sound thin.

Like yeah if you listen to them really low, you probably don’t even care to drive them fully. 🤣

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klogg4 t1_iy2xkog wrote

&gt; Under powering headphones make them sound thin.

So you want to say that you get different frequency response when you consume the same 1mW out of 40mW amp and out of 2W amp, while both having 0 ohm output impedance. Interesting. People trying to argue with physics is always interesting.

&gt; Like yeah if you listen to them really low,

If 90 dB is low for you then I feel bad for your hearing.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2xuru wrote

Yeah that’s what I’m saying, they sound different. Listening in 90dB on lower power vs higher power amp makes a difference.

There’s a min amount of power needed to fully drive the headphones. Can you really not hear the difference between your 2mW source? …If at 90dB you believe you only use 2mW, then why would different do headphones come with different impedance and ohms.

Like if that were the case, try them plugged into old laptops or tablets that have even less than your dongle Dac.

😅

If you watched any reviewer, at some point they talk about when a pair of headphones is under driven, certain amps seemingly not being able to drive a headphone even though on paper they should.

Man this is something you can test out yourself, just by plugging your headphones into different sources. You’re giving me the impression that you’ve never heard your 250ohm powered headphones properly powered. 🥲

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kazuviking t1_iy2yv0a wrote

Have you ever heard of Fletcher Munson Curve? The is no power scaling ffs only bullshit. When you know physics you know how much a headphone will need.
The beyer DT990 needs 780mW to reach 94dBSPL but that is hearing damage territory oh and power requirement halves every 3dB. So for "normal" listening level you will never breach the 50mW range.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2zcvb wrote

All I’m saying is the headphone needs certain amount of mW to sound full. You can just use the headphone power calculator.

Would you not agree that 250ohms would sound thin under powered when used with an inadequate dongle Dac?

Klogg4 is saying he powers his 250ohm headphone with 40mW amp?

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kazuviking t1_iy3046y wrote

No headphone power calculators are super accurate online. The beyers need voltage and not current so voltage limited dongles might not work for your listening level.
That 40mW amp is capable of delivering 1VRMS and that is enough to listen at 65dBSPL with loudness peaks reaching 82dBSPL. More than enough if you listen normally.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy30ckg wrote

Oh thanks for clearing that up.

I’ve tried my Sundara on my Dragonfly Black into the phone and even at higher volume it sounded thin.

I bought a 3.5mm to RCA to amp the Dragonfly Black and it instantly sounded full.

That’s what I mean.

Is under powered headphone not a thing?

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kazuviking t1_iy313ji wrote

The sundara is just built differently since that needs a lot of voltage but while being low impedance and most will struggle with that requirement.

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MachineTeaching t1_iy42xsk wrote

>Would you not agree that 250ohms would sound thin under powered when used with an inadequate dongle Dac?

Ohms are literally only half of the equation. It's impedance and sensitivity that determine the power demands.

For example, the popular Beyerdynamic DT 990 comes in a bunch of variants, the 32 Ohm and 600 Ohm variants both need the same power because the 600 Ohm one has higher sensitivity.

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klogg4 t1_iy2yqk4 wrote

&gt; Yeah that’s what I’m saying, they sound different.

Do you have an instrumentally or experimentally measured prove for this statement? ABX with an external switch or smth? No? I'm not surprised.

&gt; Can you really not hear the difference between your 2mW source? …

I'm immune to this shit. But if you're interested, I currently have MOTU M4 with integrated ~20mW headphone amp and a Topping L70 which is max 7.5W I think (I got it because I didn't care much about what to buy, it was balanced and had pre-amp mode which is a desirable combo for me). No difference between them aside from Topping being insanely loud. Planars, dynamics, Audezes, Beyers - doesn't matter. Tried other devices, no difference as well.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2z3fq wrote

Wow that is really interesting 🧐 indeed. Under powering headphones is something likely everyone experiences.

But sure if you’re happy your experience than more power to you🤷‍♂️

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imsolowdown t1_iy314f7 wrote

Maybe instead of listening to stupid YouTubers trying to get you to buy expensive shit, you should actually learn how amplifiers and headphones work.

Power = volume. There is no such thing as an “underpowered headphone sound”. The only thing that happens when a headphone is underpowered is that it sounds too quiet. You will never get a “thin sound” from not having enough power. It’s just physics.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy31rdq wrote

Ok so it’s not 100% due to power. So some headphones have more resistance.

“Impedance is a specification used to show the headphone's resistance to the electrical current.”

“Headphones with higher impedance (25 ohms and over, approximately) demand more power to deliver high audio levels.”

—-that’s why I thought it was due to power.

I found this comment to be useful.

“Planar magnetics affect the output voltage uniformly due to the fixed impedance, which means that the result should just be a shift in voltage by a factor x. “

Personally: There’s definitely some sound coming out of headphones when they aren’t driven correctly.

And that sound, to me, is very compressed or thin.

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imsolowdown t1_iy32idq wrote

It’s not due to anything because it’s not a real effect. You are hearing things. That’s how powerful the placebo effect can be.

There is absolutely no scientific basis for the stuff you are claiming here. Unless you are using a broken amplifier, you cannot drive a headphone “incorrectly”. If you don’t give it enough power, you won’t get enough volume. That’s it. Nothing else changes.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy32po8 wrote

But I can plug in planars into a dongle Dac, and have enough volume.

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imsolowdown t1_iy330ad wrote

Exactly. Do you want to believe the science or do you want to believe stupid people trying to get you to click on their affiliate links so you buy expensive shit that you don’t need so that they can get their cut?

There is a LOT of false information and myths in this hobby and you wouldn’t be able tell what’s what until you learn about how headphones and amps actually work.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy343ql wrote

Yeah but I found the sound signature to be lacking lows. —confirming what some of these reviewers say.

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imsolowdown t1_iy355y9 wrote

Those reviewers don’t really know any more than you do. None of them are engineers or physicists.

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klogg4 t1_iy3320u wrote

>So some headphones have more resistance

Which means they will output less power at the same output voltage, because current will be less. That's why amps give less power when they drive higher impedance headphones, because power equals voltage times current (P=V*I). THAT'S physics.

The trick here is how much power you REALLY need. Amp needs to give more power with tougher headphones - that's reasonable, but if I draw 0.2 mW with AKG K371 and need 1 mW when I switch to Beyer DT990 250 ohm, that's not a big deal.

&#x200B;

>“Headphones with higher impedance (25 ohms and over, approximately) demand more power to deliver high audio levels.”

"High audio level" means higher volume, not higher quality.

How much power do headphones need? You check sensitivity for that. For example my AKG K612 sound as loud as 91 dB when you give them 1 mW. The trick here is 91 dB being loud enough for having a blast to your favourite track.

And despite people saying planars need a lot of power it's usually the opposite - Audeze LCD-2 for example is one of the easiest headphones to drive that I ever borrowed from people (lol). While Beyer DT880 600 ohm is definitely the toughest.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy33gi9 wrote

Right, so headphones do need a certain power to drive them because some have more resistance. Therefore when they aren’t provided with enough power it can be considered “under-powered”.

Is it taboo to say under powered? Or that they don’t sound “good” when under powered?

Am I wrong to describe the sound of an under powered headphone?

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klogg4 t1_iy33miv wrote

They're only under-powered if YOU don't have enough VOLUME with your gear. It has nothing to do with the sound quality (usually... there's a little exception that I doubt you experienced yourself).

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy33w25 wrote

But it isn’t always volume. There are cases where I can get sufficient volume but found the sub-bass smoothed or rolled-off.

Or you’d rather say the amount of volume isn’t high enough to render the mids or lows?

I can get sufficient amount of volume with my 250ohm DT880 Pros from amps not rated for 250 ohms. **but it doesn’t sound good.

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klogg4 t1_iy34tvd wrote

  1. The thing about "driving headphones" came out of the impedance matching thing, which also appeared in the speaker world where more powerful amps obviously had less output impedance. It's not the thing with most modern gear because most headphone amps have almost 0 ohm output impedance. Also, impedance matching isn't needed with planar headphones because their frequency response is not dependant on amp output impedance. With dynamic headphones you get MORE midbass ~100 hz and MORE treble ~10 khz when impedances are NOT matched, which is not what you want because you get muddier and more piercing sound.
    This is the reason why my MOTU M4 headphone output sounds the same as my Topping L70 - it's a weak output, but the output impedance is 0 ohm;
  2. It's a rare thing but it happens with my MOTU M4: it clips the wave when the max power is exceeded. It lets you have a louder sound but it obviously becomes distorted. Of course this is not the case with these fancy external amps like JDS Atom, it's just not possible there.
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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy35h74 wrote

That is very informative and thank you for staying on this, as it is an issue I’ve come across.

From other forums and reviews, I’ve learned that some He6SE can be driven to greater effect with 6Watts, much more than spec.

I also experience this with my Sundara as 300mW is sufficient but 1W sounds better. Which is why I asked if the 1060C could be driven better.

And it doesn’t seem to be “distortion”, but perhaps 🤔 it could be considered that after all.

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klogg4 t1_iy35pgf wrote

I'm out :/

But one last time - aside from the two specific cases I said above - POWER. HAS. NOTHING. TO. DO. WITH. THE. SOUND. QUALITY!

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy37pm5 wrote

So you found cases where distortion in high volume affected sound quality?

🥲😂😇🥹

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klogg4 t1_iy3gdb6 wrote

Yes, I did. But it has never been your case. If you're interested, Apple Dongle is not affected by both cases as well.

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No-Context5479 t1_iy2zm08 wrote

This whole thread has been a good read... OP is as clueless as they come

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szakee t1_iy2rvxb wrote

was it a volume matched comparison?

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2ryun wrote

Yes

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szakee t1_iy2scdu wrote

how did you volume match?

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2sg5w wrote

To my ears 👂. And also tried low volume on high gain vs. much higher volume on low gain.

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szakee t1_iy2sij5 wrote

>To my ears

yeah, that's not enough.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2smxs wrote

lol dude volume isn’t the issue.

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TRX808 t1_iy2vlpw wrote

Properly volume matching is a thing to be aware of. Your ears aren't great measurement sticks.

Planars can take a lot of power though so I'm not negating what you said, but "I volume matched by ear" isn't a great comparison.

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kazuviking t1_iy2ybi8 wrote

HAH, trusting your ears are the worst thing you can do.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2yhwx wrote

lol yeah? What do you listen to then, measurements?😇

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kazuviking t1_iy2z0ko wrote

Ah one of those people again. The amount of listening test were done and audiophiles were full of shit in all of them.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2zt7n wrote

That’s just too extreme. Even with my limited experience, I’ve heard differences from mobile EK17, to Audinst HUD-MX1, to iFi ZEN DAC V2.

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kazuviking t1_iy30svv wrote

Now do hear difference when you don't know when the devices are being switched.

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alchemistandy t1_iy3w179 wrote

I agree with your findings with my k712 , he400i 2020 , now lcd 2f , high gain was better for all of em , it didnt affect my focal elegia , tygr300r , hd660s . What it seems is pretty headphone dependant , low sensitivity headphones respond better at high gain.

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Iggydang t1_iy2quni wrote

Do you still notice the changes when you’ve set high gain slightly quieter than low? Higher volume levels can lead to what you’re describing, but in my personal experience it depends on the amp - my old Asgard 3 was noticeably better in high compared to low even with the volume turned lower than in low gain, but I don’t really notice any difference with the Jot 2 to make the more sensitive volume control worth it.

Placebo or not, if it sounds better just leave it there unless you notice yourself turning the volume even higher than you would in low - killing your hearing isn’t worth it!

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2qxlf wrote

I tried all the combos haha. Had lower volume on high gain still sound more full.

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Iggydang t1_iy2uqrv wrote

Saw your edit - don’t bother chasing power specs. The Magni+ will be a side grade for the money (and you’ll still need to stick with the Zen DAC to feed it), so I’d focus on going up the headphone chain since the Zen DAC should be enough for most upgrades.

If you can go and listen to a THX amp before buying, they seem to be in the same polarising camp like Topping where they measure extremely well but can sound worse than cheaper still good measuring but less focused on chasing analyser SINAD amps to some ears. Never heard any so can’t say if it’s as bad as some say.

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Lelouch25 OP t1_iy2xdac wrote

Thanks 🙏 for the info. Going to stick to this combo for now. There’s some posts about planars sounding better with THX amps and that got me checking out the cheaper THX amp. Haha

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kazuviking t1_iy2ye1w wrote

The new shiit amp is better than the thx amp in every way almost.

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