Hello all. I'm still waiting for my headphones. I also joined the mass drop for the Objective 2 amp to help drive these headphones. I also bought a 3.5mm to RCA cable, a Fiio E17K, aftermarket protein leather ear pads, and an aftermarket higher quality audio cable for my HD6xx.
I plan on using my iPhone 8+ as an audio player sometimes as well. So, I had to buy a special $40 adapter to allow my iPhone's audio output to come though my Lightning port and into the micro USB port of my E17K DAC
. As an alternate workaround, I also bought the apple camera connection kit which allows me to use the lightning port as an USB output. It took a little bit of research to find out that in order for the Fiio E17K DAC to work properly, it needs to receive it's input through the micro usb and not the 3.5mm input.
So, I plan on hooking my phone up with my Lightning MicroUSB to my E17K DAC, then have the DAC output coming out of a 3.5mm into the O2 RCA ports in the back of the O2 Amp, then out of the output to my Sennheiser HD6XX headphones.
Another part I'm researching, is the amount of power required to drive the HD6XX. From what I've read, the HD6XX has about a 2V RMS maximum input. Which according to what I've read is about a gain of 4X or 12db which is all dependant and relative to the source output signal. I'm not sure what the output of the iphone is. Does anyone have that information? I'm thinking, if I'm using just the iphone + Fiio E17K to drive the headphones (without the not so portable O2 Amp), I'll want the gain to be about 12db. If I'm using my iphone to E17K to my O2, then I would set my E17K to 6db (which equates to approx 2X gain) gain and have my O2 at 2.5x gain which would bring me to about 4.5x gain going into the headphones.
As an alternate, to increase the fidelity of the source signal, I was planning on turning an old PSP into an audio player and decompressing my WMA, MP3, etc, music into WAV or FLAC and then uploading to the PSP. I wonder if that would be sufficient or if I should just buy a dedicated audio player like the Fiio high resolution audio players. I also have spotify which includes a high quality resolution of 320 kbit/s. I think lossless audio is around 1,200-2,700 kbit/s. If playing lossless audio though, wouldn't kind of defeat the purpose of a DAC. I mean, I know even though it's lossless it's still digital but it seems like the sample rate is close enough to analog that one wouldn't be able to tell the difference? If anyone has any good reference sites or documentation that explains all these concepts, I would appreciate.
I'm not totally new to high fidelity audio, but still relatively new. I have an engineering background and education level so these concepts of voltage and impedance are not new to me. I still have a lot to learn as always though. Any suggestions, corrections, concerns are always appreciated.
For my PC, I have an asus Z270E motherboard with a built in amp. I'll have to take a look at the specs to see if hooking my O2 amp up to my motherboard would help or if my motherboard is sufficient. I wouldn't doubt that my motherboard amp already provides sufficient power.
I plan on using my iPhone 8+ as an audio player sometimes as well. So, I had to buy a special $40 adapter to allow my iPhone's audio output to come though my Lightning port and into the micro USB port of my E17K DAC
So, I plan on hooking my phone up with my Lightning MicroUSB to my E17K DAC, then have the DAC output coming out of a 3.5mm into the O2 RCA ports in the back of the O2 Amp, then out of the output to my Sennheiser HD6XX headphones.
Another part I'm researching, is the amount of power required to drive the HD6XX. From what I've read, the HD6XX has about a 2V RMS maximum input. Which according to what I've read is about a gain of 4X or 12db which is all dependant and relative to the source output signal. I'm not sure what the output of the iphone is. Does anyone have that information? I'm thinking, if I'm using just the iphone + Fiio E17K to drive the headphones (without the not so portable O2 Amp), I'll want the gain to be about 12db. If I'm using my iphone to E17K to my O2, then I would set my E17K to 6db (which equates to approx 2X gain) gain and have my O2 at 2.5x gain which would bring me to about 4.5x gain going into the headphones.
As an alternate, to increase the fidelity of the source signal, I was planning on turning an old PSP into an audio player and decompressing my WMA, MP3, etc, music into WAV or FLAC and then uploading to the PSP. I wonder if that would be sufficient or if I should just buy a dedicated audio player like the Fiio high resolution audio players. I also have spotify which includes a high quality resolution of 320 kbit/s. I think lossless audio is around 1,200-2,700 kbit/s. If playing lossless audio though, wouldn't kind of defeat the purpose of a DAC. I mean, I know even though it's lossless it's still digital but it seems like the sample rate is close enough to analog that one wouldn't be able to tell the difference? If anyone has any good reference sites or documentation that explains all these concepts, I would appreciate.
I'm not totally new to high fidelity audio, but still relatively new. I have an engineering background and education level so these concepts of voltage and impedance are not new to me. I still have a lot to learn as always though. Any suggestions, corrections, concerns are always appreciated.
For my PC, I have an asus Z270E motherboard with a built in amp. I'll have to take a look at the specs to see if hooking my O2 amp up to my motherboard would help or if my motherboard is sufficient. I wouldn't doubt that my motherboard amp already provides sufficient power.