headphone amp question

I think a good solid state amp with your headphones sound good. I think finding a Gilmore Lite is an excellent amp. If you must go tubes then the Little Dot MKIII does a terrific job. Subjectively I prefer the Gilmore Lite but the LDMKIII is hardly a slouch. Plus you can tube roll if that's your choice.

You might want to bring your question over to Head-Fi.org, if you can tolerate the signal/noise ratio of the posts there. There's a whole bunch of great headphone amps that would work well with the 580 as they're not that difficult to drive. It really depends on your budget and expectations/goals. I recently heard Schiit's new Lyr amp with a few different cans and was very impressed. You might also consider upgrading the headphones if headphone listening becomes a priority. There are many options that sound significantly better than 580's to my ears, but certainly always at some significant cost increase. For the $ they are a very good headphone.

Thanks to all. S/N too low at headfi. The music she doesn't appreciate is the loudspeakers, thus, the idea of a move to cans. I like all of the ideas so far. I know that listening is the real solution, so I will buy the most likely candidate and sell it if it doesn't work. I also know I can't generalize about SS vs tubes. I'll keep the 580s for now. Great ideas. I'm open to all suggestions except different cans.

Agree with the Woo recommendation. I've got a 22 and swear by it (works great with my T1s and my LCD2s, with some tube rolling for each). The 6 / 6 SE has lots of fans too.

I agree that Head-fi has deteriorated in recent years to the point that it is impenetrable unless you keep track of members who have something of value to say and ignore those who are just running up their post count.

FYI, I have owned a lot of headphone amps in the last six years, including amps from Luxman, Meier, Woo, Singlepower, Blue Circle, and Original. I have also attended meets and have heard amps from Ray Samuels, Burson, TTVJ, and Decware.

Headphones like Sennheisers have a fairly high impedance. I have found that OTL headphone amps offer the best sound quality. If you like Sennheisers and can afford an OTL from Woo or Decware, you will get amazing sound quality...liquid, full mid-range with no sacrifices in terms of bass. FYI, I enjoyed my Sennheiser HD650s much more out of my Singlepower Extreme, an OTL tube amp, than out of my Luxman P1-u, one of the best solid state amps on the market with a retail price of $3,000.

So for high impedance cans, go with an OTL, as their performance is amazing and they are often less expensive than transformer-coupled amps. If, on the other hand, you plan to switch to low impedance cans from Grado, Audeze, or JH Audio IEMs, a transformer-coupled tube amp or a solid state amp would be a better choice.