Headphone amp and headphones... ?

The Stax seem of course worth checking out, but they don't make it too easy with their peculiar cable ending and their apparent need for a high dollar headphone amps.

Has anyone tried the combination of the benchmark 1 DAC with the LCD-2? I am interested in hearing opinions.

I too am very interested in opinions from experienced a'goner's who have tried various headphone/amp combos over the years and settled in on a particular combo for some particular reason.

I have been doing some experimenting of late with some of teh better and older phones I have, a pair of Stax SR-80s, and a pair of Realistic Nova 45s, which are virtually unknown it seems these days and I always thought were not half bad phones back in the day compared to others.

There are some high tech and expensive in-ear phones out there these days. I've always thought the in-ear approach done really well might be the optimal way to get the best headphone sound for lowest cost, but have not tried any of these yet.

Listen to the Sennheisers, Grados, AkG's. Go to Heaphone.com and get their amp. The resulting sound will be much better than your current system....actually, better than almost any speaker system.

Madman, I have custom IEM's, the JH Audio JH16s, and they are really excellent. However, I think the Audeze LCD-2's are even better. The reviews of the LCD-2s are pretty glowing and accurate in my experience.

I would look for a tube headphone amp as well. I use a Woo WA22, which I am happy with. But if I had to do it over again, would probably have bought a Decware or Woo WA2, as OTL amps are really magical as long as the headphones have a reasonably high impedance (at least 50 Ohms).

I would stay away from solid state amps...I have not found them to be as good as tube amps at the same price level. If you absolutely need solid state, I would recommend Blue Circle. Their least expensive headphone amp at $750 was almost as good as the $3000 Luxman P1-u solid state amp I used to own.