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Headphones for sound control

I'll be moving to an up-scale life-care facility.  The apartments have concrete exterior walls, and I usually listen to small baroque and jazz trios at moderate sound level,   But I think headphones may be the way to go when I want to crank it up for large orchestrations like Aida or Mahler's 2nd.

 I've been impressed with the sound of my cousin's Sennheiser 800S with his McIntosh headphone amp.  I have an Ayer QX-5 Twenty with a headphone driver that Ayer tells me is very good.  I suppose the answer is to try the Ayer before buying the McIntosh.  I've downsized my rack of Ayer gear to a KEF LS60, but I really like the sound of Ayre electronics.  Advice sought.

dbphd

Showing 1 response by larsman

larsman's avatar
larsman
2,275 posts
 

A dedicated headphone amp should generally sound better than the headphone socket on another kind of component.

I'm sure Ayer does tell you that the Ayer headphone driver is very good, and for what it is, it probably is. But if it's not a headphone amp, it's an afterthought to the main purpose of the component, and I'd almost guarantee you the McIntosh headphone amp would sound far superior. As always, try to give a listen first if you can. 

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