Recommendations for headphones under $400?

Tim, I thought the same but if you read his entire post he wants to be able to use his turntable and the digital out on the h300 will not do an analog to digital conversion to use the dac loop. 

I am now wondering if a digital to analog converter would work for this. I have no experience with these devices so I cannot say if the sound would suffer. Perhaps if uberwaltz doesn’t need the extra power of the h300 maybe selling it and purchasing an H160 could be another solution. I just got one and it sounds very nice.

Hi chrshani37,

     Ah, okay.  I somehow missed reading he uses a turntable.   I was going to ask uberwaltz what sources he was using.

     I'm amazed a hi-end manufacturer like Hegel makes its customers jump through hoops just to listen to headphones with their products; I thought they'd have a premium headphone amp built into their expensive integrated amps that's easily accessible via a front plate headphone jack.  Weird, they decide to incorporate a good but costly dac in the H300 but cut corners by omitting a means to listen via headphones. 
     Apparently, my proposed solution won't allow uberwaltz to listen to his turntable via headphones  since the H300 cannot convert the analog turntable signals to digital signals outputted through its coax (S/PDIF).    
     Because of this, I think your suggestion of uberwaltz selling his H300 and buying a H160 is a good one.  He'll be able to connect all his sources directly to it and listen via his headphones to all of them by simply inserting his headphones plug into, are you ready for this?, a headphone jack right on the front of the H160's front panel. 
     Man, it sure must be nice to be able to afford an integrated amp that allows such spectacular technology to be accessed so conveniently.  I can only hope this leading edge technology will trickle down to an affordable product in my lifetime.

Enjoy,
  Tim    

     

Actually full source list
is 2 digital and 2 analog so yea i needed some way to get the signal out of the hegel to headphones
quite an omission on the manufacturers part but seems they have "learned" as all later hegel integrated have a headphone socket.
Have to regroup and decide what is best plan to go forward
Thanks to all for their input

May just give the Hegel h160 a try as it definitely has a great built in headphone amp and majority of the features of the 300 although down in power from 250w to 150w per channel.
However with the 300 i have rarely ventured above 50 on the volume for my listening levels and I really do like what I hear so more of the same vein might work well with the bonus of the headphone amp built in...which obviously the 300 should have had right from the start!

Hi uberwaltz,

      As long as you like the sound of your system with the H300 and your speakers don't need more than 150 watts to perform their best, swapping for the H160 seems to be your best solution. 
      You're likely to have a very similar system sound through your speakers while gaining the ability to conveniently listen through your headphones when you wish.
      The H160 is the first Hegel integrated amp to have a headphone jack.  It's not actually a separate and discrete headphone amp, but a voltage divider appended to the H160's output section.  The circuitry around this divider is very low noise and, according to all the reviews I've read (Stereophile and Novo Press), the headphone section is very good.        I still don't understand why Hegel didn't include something similar on your H300.

Good luck,
    Tim      



















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