Your Ayre seems to have enough power for the Senns so certainly worth a shot.
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.
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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. |
I agree with @larsman that a good dedicated headphone amp will likely be significantly better than the one in your Ayre. I’d also encourage you to reach out to Linear Tube Audio and ask about their Velo amp and how it might pair with the 800S and your sound preferences, and if it sounds interesting they offer a return policy so if it doesn’t work out there’s little risk — just another potential option FWIW. LTA headphone amps all get stellar reviews BTW. Best of luck. |
Sure, go for it (headphones). I think you would be remiss to not explore planar-dynamics and electrostats - though planars are generally harder to drive, and electrostats even require their own special dedicated amplifiers (that you can't use for anything else!). I love moving coils in cartidges and speakers, but in headphones it’s slapping this mass around (coil glued to a former glued to a diaphragm) right atop your ears, and (IMO) they tend to produce far more listening fatigue and danger at higher volumes. Also, even amongst other moving coils, I never liked Sennheiser 800’s series. The older 580 / 600 / 650 series has far better tonality, if a bit less detail. |
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