I just bought a pair of Sennheiser HD201s and the sound quality is excellent, but I don’t think my System76 laptop is doing them justice. A friend of mine said a headphone amp would help improve the bass and fill the sound, but I don’t know which amp would be best for these cans.
I’m not looking for a $500+ headphone amp. I need something $100 or less. The HD201s don’t need a lot of power to drive them.
I used to swear by the KOSS KTX-Pro1, a budget headphone with titanium drivers. They were best known as the Pro35a back when they were Radioshack branded. Their sound was great, they had excellent bass, but they were incredibly flimsy. I baby my cans, but someone they got a short in the cord and that’s why I got the Sennheiser HD201 instead. This is mostly because of Logan’s reviews of the more high-priced models. I had no idea Sennheiser made cans that were under $30.
Anyway, can any please make a recommendation for a good sub $100 amp for them? Thank you in advance.
I use an Objective 2 headphone amp/DAC combo to drive my AKG 702's. They are around 64 ohm cans, but the O2 can drive 600 ohm headphones. I think just the amp is around $150. The amp/DAC combo like mine runs around $280 ~ $290. It's all open source design though so you could download the spec and buy a kit for less than $100, if you are handy with soldering iron.
Edit: I all so have a CHEERLINK SMSL sAp-5 MAX9722 HiFi Bassy Portable Headphone Amplifier that I use with my old iPod. I picked up off Amazon for less than $70. It seems to work pretty well and doesn't color the music. It's supposed to drive up to 300 ohm. The battery life is pretty good. It works well for a mobile amp.
Don't think you're really going to need an amp, since the HD201s only need 24 ohms to power the headphones.
Will the O2 improve the bass output? That seems to be where the HD201 is slightly lacking. It has bass but its not very strong.
OP post below is from the other thread:
My old headphones died on me, and I bought a Sennheiser HD201. The sound quality is better than my hold go-to brand, but the bass isn't as strong. A friend said a headphone amp would do the job.
I'm looking for something sub $100. I don't need a DAC. I use the audio out on a Blue Yeti for clean USB audio and simply need something to help boost the bass. I looked at the Bravo Audio V2 Class A 12AU7 Tube Multi-Hybrid Headphone Amplifier and would like some advice. Maybe there's something out there that's better someone here could recommend.
I put this question in the wrong forum last time, hopefully people who are more knowledge about this hand out here.
Thank you for any help you can give.
You won't find any improvement in sound quality using an amp with such a low-end pair of headphones, because let's be real here, the HD 201 is a $20 headphone for a reason. And if this graph is correct, they have even less bass than the Grado SR80, and that's actually kinda sad. I say keep that $100 and save up to invest in better headphones.
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The O2 doesn't have any bass boost functions so you would have to use software EQ to get more bass if that's what you want. The O2 mainly gives clean amplification with out adding anything to the music so you can get accurate reproduction of the recording. The O2 is really a desktop amp and can drive some serious headphones. The sAp-5 I mentioned earlier does have a bass boost function, it's fairly cheap, and it's small so it's very portable.
Ok, well I am gonna help because everyone has been somewhat right and somewhat wrong.
You do not need an amp. That much is true. However you do need a dac.
The problem you have right now is that most computers have crappy on board audio.
If you need a cheap dac, then you can not really do any better than the hifeme sabre U2.
If you combine this dac with the ASIO driver, you should get a noticeably quieter sound stage, and an overall smoother sound.
Enjoy.
And this is why I do not listen, like, or even acknowledge audio engineers.
I have actually listened to all of those headphones, and the HD201s sound the best.
Grados are decent if you mod them, but the M50s have a very small sound stage and there is absolutely no depth to the music. Everything sounds very synthetic and bland.
And the HD202s are just plain awful.