A question about headphones

I have been using headphone systems for fifty years (the top of my head hurts from remembering the Koss headphones… ouch). I got really interested in high end headphone systems about twenty years ago. You can see my current headphone system under my user ID. I was listening to it just this morning and was simply stunned at the sound.

I have Bose QuietComfort and I love them on airplanes and while traveling… but they are cartoonish and simply terrible in terms of High-Fi. Blu-tooth sounds terrible.

First of all, I can assure you headphones can be absolutely stunning. They will not replace a regular audio system… but, as in your situation… wanting to let your partner sleep… they can be wonderful.

I would stick to wired for your test. Bluetooth is terrible. Once you know how wonderful they can be, then you can decide how to proceed.

Lots of high end preamps have headphone jacks… many sound simply terrible. They just throw them in, without thought. The best system is a separate system. But, you are not there yet. You are testing the waters. I would recommend a set of Focal headphones which are plugged into your Mac as a start. Focal are very efficient… so will sound pretty good.

To escalate, you probably want a good headphone amp… I recommend a Woo. Their tube headphone amps are incredible… warm, natural and dynamic… the more you pay the better they sound. I own a WA6, WA6SE, and WA5. I recommend any and all.

Headphone systems are exactly like main systems. Every component maters… and the sum of the parts equals the whole. The good thing is you can put together an incredible headphone system for a tenth of the price of a main system. Well, worth having both. For me, sitting in front of the fireplace while listening to music on my headphone system is wonderful.

Congratulations. Sounds like you hit on a good solution without breaking the bank.

I suppose you tried directly connecting to your preamp. My guess is that the sound is much better through your headphone amp. But, I’d be interested to hear what you think after a lot of hours on your new setup and you know what it sounds like.

I don’t think I know anyone (that is into high end audio) with one set of headphones… or headphone amps for that matter. Watch out. I guess it is that it is so much less expensive than main systems. But, you end up realizing different headphones have very different power requirements and headphones sound very different and you can switch quickly.

But a word of caution, you do have to match well. I have a very smart friend that for some reason seems to be unable to do component matching and has half a dozen flee sized head amps and he keeps buying headphones that require large amounts of current and can’t figure out why they don’t sound great.

But have fun! I love my Sennheiser HD800s… open backed and simply phenomenal. But until I had a phenomenal high current tube amp they were like many people describe them too trebly and a bit lean. Not at all in my system.
 

If there is a take away from me, it is that a lot of weaknesses in different high end headphones go away when feed correctly… massive current and natural detailed sound. My HD800s and Focal Utopia now sound pretty similar… when with lower level electronics they sounded vastly differently.

OP, thanks on your comment or direct headphone output. I was just keeping an informal tally.