Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
And since I have a gaming laptop , do you think the audio jack can provide enough power to this headphone?
Usable amp/dacs run all the way from the $75 Fiio E10K, the $100 Monoprice "Desktop Amp" (it's also a DAC), the Schiit Fulla (USB powered), other Schiit products, all the way up to boutique stuff costing thousands.
Formulas you *might* be concerned about is the damping factor found by dividing the headphone Ohms (62), by the "output impedance" of the amplifier. Ideally you want to end up with a score 8+. Many amp manufacturers don't even disclose this number but fortunately most will also be low enough you really don't need to concern yourself with it. Even the Fiio is around 10 Ohms output impedance which gets you below the 8 mark (62/10=6.2) but many still love the E10K. Personally I run a lightly modded Creek OBH-11 (around $200 on Amazon) and an Audio-GD NFB-12 ($215+ shipping from China). Both are more than enough to drive these headphones.
BTW, it's not the headphone impedance (Ohms) that makes it hard to drive, it's it's fairly low sensitivity.
It's a matter of control of the drivers. When the coil (and thus, diaphragm) moves, it charges or discharges. When given more current, or drained of current, the coil moves. The buffer section of the amplifier has to not only quickly rush higher currents out, but also be able to drain them when coming from the drivers having to change direction or speed of movement quickly. With insufficient damping, the driver can under-shoot and over-shoot, resulting in poorer sound than with sufficient damping. In addition, the output impedance of the amplifier creates a voltage divider that will affect frequency response.
It's not much different than loudspeakers, except for the power magnitudes being off by 3-6 digits, and system costs being off by 2-4 digits.
At a given sensitivity, the lower impedance the driver, the greater damping factor is needed. As the impedance of the driver gets lower, any given output impedance from an amplifier will affect frequency response more than with a higher impedance driver (-0.05dB@500Hz shouldn't be audible, but -0.15dB@500kHz should be). An amplifier with a higher damping factor will have a lower output impedance (by definition). After a point, a higher damping factor will do nothing for a given set of drivers (even if you can measure differences, if they don't make about 0.1dB difference in the sound reaching your ears, you won't hear the differences).
You won't have any problems with it clipping, but if you wanted to get an O2 for listening at home, I'm sure you'd hear the difference.