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KiyPhi t1_j67hnqh wrote

Reply to comment by flyedchicken in made it to Venus by flyedchicken

>With some tracks and genres these need more power to get to the volume I'm accustomed to, some significantly less. I can see how these are purported to be a little amp picky.

This is due to how power delivery works. These are less sensitive than your average headphone but that tends to matter more at higher volume levels. About every 6 dB, you have to use double the voltage from your amp. This means that the difference between two headphones at lower levels may not seem so much (a couple of mV) but at higher levels can mean a whole volt of difference. So if you have a song that has an overall quiet level of loudness, you will have to turn up the amp more for the Venus than you would another headphone since it will require more voltage to get the same increase in volume, especially if you have a linear volume pot.

Also, glad you like your Venus. I love mine. :)

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flyedchicken OP t1_j68hra4 wrote

I'm familiar, I just was caught off guard that these (100dB, 18ohm) sometimes seem to need more power than my old HE560 (93dB, 50ohm) to feel equally loud. But then you may need to turn it down a good 15-20% to listen to another song comfortably, even within the same genre. It's like they just take up more of your usable volume range on a per track basis whereas the HE560 had almost a 'loudness normalization' effect. Maybe that just means I wasn't amping those enough?

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KiyPhi t1_j693rap wrote

I think Hifiman report is their numbers in dB/mW, meaning the HE560 would take only 0.49V to reach 100dB. That would put their sensitivity at 106dB/V, making them still a fair bit more sensitive than the Venus.

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