headphones for tube system



Hi Audiogoners, greetings from the UK – I have a question that I hope someone will be able to answer for me.

Background: a lifelong music lover – (mostly contemporary ) and hifi enthusiast (albeit in a small way)  - now in my dotage and sadly with deteriorating hearing.

My system is an Abbingdon CD77, pre is a Melody 1688 II into a McIntosh 275 mk 4, B & W CM10 ser 2 speakers. Van den Hul cabling.

I want be able to use headphones and am not sure how to go about adding in an amp for them. Any suggestions and headphone recommends would be appreciated


xiang

Showing 2 responses by freediver

Looks like your preamp has analogue outputs(hi & low?)...If your using rca interconnects you could go with balanced I/C between amp & pre and use pre out to a headphone amp.Some expensive headphone amps have balanced inputs should you care to spend that much $...
As for head amp and cans I suggest you spend time going through the equipment reviews on "head-fi.org"...Headphones are a lot like speakers,ie:you have cans with the highly detailed sound,the romantic sound and the studio sound...Also figure out a budget.Headphones can top out at $100,000.00+...Best value for $ IMO is the $250.00-$750.00 range with HiFIMan,Audeze and Sennheiser’s new HD660 leading the way...