This is one area I'm not super up to speed on. Yesterday I ordered a set of Hifiman he560 planar magnetic headphones. I'm not sure if I will need a separate amplifier to drive them or will the sound card be enough?
In general planars are easy to drive. I used iPhone to audition Sundara and volume was decent. There shouldn't be any issue with ae5, unless you it gets electronic interference from video card or other pc parts, causing noise or disruption. If you getting noise, you might benefit from getting dedicated headphones dac/amp.
No! I have Hifiman HE-560 and AE-5 and still need an amplifier and a strong one (I use schiit magni 3) . HE-560 is very hard to drive and the "High" gain option in AE-5 degrades the audio quality so better not use it which means "Normal" gain option is the way to go but not strong enough for HE-560
Thank you for the replies. How about tube amps vs solid state? Also the sound blaster x ae-9 looks like it would be perfect. Just as a heads up these will be my first audiophile class headphones.
I'll do it To get the best from those headphones a better DAC and amp are needed. I'm serious, I own a high end pair of planars. The AE-5 doesnt bring out enough detail which is where planars excel, its an unfortunate waste of them. I tried the AE-5 on my HD650 and my planars, both were missing a fair amount of space/air, twinkle and micro detail from recordings. It didnt matter so much on the HD650 as they havent got an amazing top end response anyway but it made the planars suck somewhat. The HE560 will make good use of a better DAC and amp.
Tube amps with planars are lovely. Get a well reviewed one 'capable' of over driving the headphones to be sure it copes well with bass transients to reduce the risk of a dry sound. I decided to build one from a Bottlehead kit, worth a look.
ps the build log is here https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/bottlehead-mainline-high-end-headphone-amp-build.423969/
Proof? Only thing I know in regards to this is if you use low Ohm headphones on high gain, and the mismatch will cause distortion.
I mean for He-560 . The he-560 is not high impendence headphone (45 ohms) so high gain sounds louder but the bass flattens and overall sound quality sounds worst then Normal. I would recommend also a decent dac for the great HE-560 headphones rather than using AE-5 processing
I missed your mention of the AE-9. I havent heard the AE-9 but I owned an Oppo 205 that uses the same DAC chip (Oppo surround chip, AE-9 stereo chip for the front channels). It was incredibly detailed if a bit too laid back with music for me (using my hifi), down to how Oppo implemented the DAC chip. My brother also has the Oppo 205 and agrees. After all, I had the Oppo 105 with the exact same DAC chip as the Stereo Minimax Tube DAC Plus (I also owned) and the Minimax blew all over the Oppo for soundstage and micro detail. I used the Oppo for surround and the Minimax for stereo. The DAC chip is important but so is implementation. Reviews are key. If you dont want to spend big bucks the AE-9 should serve you well. edit ooh, forgot to mention. When I got my planars and tried them on my brothers Oppo 205, that worked very well. Even better was the Oppo 205 feeding my tube amp, the headphone amp on the Oppo is good but can be bettered.
On a serious note, I think you should go slowly with additional hardware. Just take your time. Listen to headphones with your current hardware, compare to how it sounds directly off your smartphone, see if you can notice the difference. If you can't tell the difference between devices, you might not be able to tell the difference between sound card and dedicated headphones amp (solid state). Tubes are totally different beast, that mess with sound, it will add more confusion imo, especially If you don't understand what your headphones originally sounds like.
So I have been using hyper x cloud revolver wired with my ae-5. I'm hoping this will be like the jump from 60 to 144hz just on the audio side. Is it similar the I could never go back to that?
In my experience, it was more like 30hz to 144hz. 30hz (Closed gaming headphones) -> 75hz (open headphones [HD599, DT990, etc...] ) -> 144hz (high-end audiophile grade open headphones [HD800, DT1990, AKG712, etc... ]) But again, we all have different sound preferences. If you really enjoyed the sound signature of HyperXCloud, it might take a while to adjust your brain to new headphones sound signature. So don't worry if you find your new headphones lacking in terms of bass quantity. Higher-end headphones are about quality over quantity.
