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klogg4 t1_iy33miv wrote

Reply to comment by Lelouch25 in My JDS Atom amp on high gain sounds MUCH wider with Planar headphones? by Lelouch25

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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