Headphone Heaven

As previously mentioned, I’ve been in the market for a new pair of headphones for quite some time. I have them now, and a snazzy little CMoy-variant headphone amp to help drive them. Below is the story of how I ended up here. Why am I blogging this? God only knows. Why do I blog anything? I guess it’s because a few people I know have noticed my setup at work and asked questions about it. They listen and are amazed at how great the sound is, and several have gotten the bug and have also spent many hours browsing forums and reviews late into the night before purchasing their own headphone setup. Maybe someone, somewhere, will read this and perhaps see something that will encourage them to learn more. If this post has one message, it’s that a very modest headphone setup can produce some absolutely great sounding music. Sound is one of the only things humans can reproduce with enough detail to nearly fool our brains - close your eyes, imagine you’re in the audience, and before you know it you are. Music is magic, and deserves to be experienced in its full glory. Here’s my recipe for musical escape.

There are 3 primary elements involved in reproducing music through headphones:

1. The source. A CD player, iPod, laptop, home stereo, PC, etc.
2. A headphone amplifier.
3. The headphones themselves.

Let’s talk headphones first, because in my opinion everything else depends on which headphones you’ve selected. As is the case with loudspeakers in a home hi-fi setup, the headphones have the biggest impact on what the music will sound like. Ultimately, headphone selection is a personal choice - you have to decide for yourself which headphone sounds “better”. Good headphones come in three flavours: an in ear canal type of bud that sits in the ear-canal, and two types of over-ear “DJ cans” that are either closed or open. I find the in-ear plugs to be uncomfortably similar to your average foam earplugs. They do block more noise than either of the can styles, however, and they’re of course a lot more discrete. Closed (sometimes called “sealed”) cans leak very little sound to the outside, and block a good deal of outside sounds from coming in. In-canal buds and closed cans are best if you want to listen to music on the bus, subway, or in an office environment where you cube neighbours are nearby. Personally, however, I prefer the sound and comfort of an open can. They do not, however, block noise from the outside, and they leak an awful lot of sound which means your cube neighbour will hate you. So decide where you’ll use your headphones, and from there do some reading about available models, but don’t forget to do an in-store audition with a small sample of *your* music. And for god’s sake, make sure they’re comfortable. If they’re not, you won’t wear them.

Personally, I’ve always liked the Grado cans - great punch and beautiful mids - so a few weeks ago I picked up the SR80 model. They’re pictured above. Grados are more expensive in Cananda than they should be, and because of Grado’s stupid international policy dealers can only sell in their native country. So I couldn’t buy online from HeadRoom in the US, for example. Still, at CAN$170, the Grados are a pretty good value. I’m not convinced they sound any better than the cheaper SR60 if you use the same pads on each model (the only difference between the two aside from the foam pads is the wiring used AFAIK), but since changing the pads on the SR60 brought the price up to within $10 of the SR80 I opted to just go straight to the 80..

The problem once you own decent headphones is that you suddenly have this inexplainable desire to bring the best out of them. To see what they’re capable of. It would be an insult to not drive them properly! It certainly doesn’t help that if you’re buying Grado, you probably bought them at a local hi-fi store that were happy to let you audition them plugged into a $10K system where they sounded absolutely gorgeous. So when you get them home and they don’t sound as good as you think they could, you start looking at the other factors in the equation.. It’s a slippery slope..

After a few days of listening to *my* SR80s, it became apparent that sound quality varied substantially depending on the source. Plugged into my Rotel amp+CD setup at home they sounded pretty damned good. Perhaps not as good as the Linn amp at Sound Plus, but good nonetheless. Plugged into my Powerbook they sounded noticably muddy, and the bass really sounded weak. Even worse via the SoundBlaster Live! in my PC, worse yet again via the builtin sound card on my computer at work. My Sony portable CD player was very similar to the Powerbook. Via Kevin’s iPod they sounded better than the work PC, and similar, if not slightly brighter than the Powerbook. The iPod did clip earlier than the Powerbook at higher volume levels - in fact the iPod started having trouble at volume levels quite a bit below what I would have expected.

None of this is really a surprise, since computer and portable devices typically have a hard time driving full size, low impedence headphones (which the SR80s are at 32 ohms). The question, of course, was whether this was primarily the result of inadequate amplification, or of poor DACs and components inside EF-noisy computers. I did a rediculous amount of research at a rediculous number of sites, including Head-Fi, and ultimately the verdict was mixed on whether the SR80 *required* a headphone amp to come alive.

So.. since I’m going to use these headphones primarily in my office at work do I spend my own money to put a better soundcard in the computer (improve the source), or do I go after a headphone amplifier? Or do I need to do both? In the end, budget was a limiting factor, but I decided that I did want to improve the sound quality of the SR80s with sources other than my home hi-fi. Source upgrade vs. amp was actually a pretty easy decision - I could benefit from the amplifier no matter where I was using the SR80s. I sometimes bring them home to do some late night listening, sometimes I’m using them with my powerbook, and mostly with the PC at work. A portable headphone amp could be used on all of these setups, and hopefully with an iPod in the not-too-distant future!

In the headphone amp space, simple op-amp designs are perfectly adequate for all but the most critical ears. You can buy headphone op-amps in a nice commercial package, build one yourself, or get someone else to build one for you. In the DIY space, there are many variants of Chu Moy’s original design, including something called the Apheared 47, also named after the guy who came up with the design. The Apheared 47 has a current boosted output stage, perfect for low impedance headphones such as those made by Grado. The difference between a regular Chu Moy and an Apheared 47 is that it uses two dual channel op-amps instead of one. Most also include some voltage splitting circuitry instead of resistor splitters. Basically, the Apheared 47 is a better CMoy. Feist has documented his DIY Aph47 project and I would have followed those instruction if I had the time and/or patience. I don’t. So I looked for someone who would build one for me. Ebay is your friend here, and it didn’t take much time for me to track down Twinstarr.com, who are in Toronto. Buying in Canada keeps the shipping costs down for me and eliminates the border/duty factor. The Twinstarr guys build both a CMoy and an Apheared 47 variant. Naturally, I opted for the latter. The amp is well built in a tidy, durable ABS plastic shell. It includes the quality components that the forums will guide you towards, and is powered by a single 9V battery. It, unfortunately, does not include a 9V wall-wart input plug, so I’ll always have to use batteries. The only other thing worth mentioning is that they use the NJR4556 op-amp chip, which some people like and some, well, don’t. The chips are mounted on IC sockets, so I could always change them out later if I so desired. I probably won’t. The only other complaint I have is that the input/ouput mini-plugs are a little too close to the power switch and level knob. Overall, it’s a quality, hand-made product for about US$90. I’d recommend it without hesitation.

I did seriously consider the Bithead from HeadRoom. It’s a quality portable op-amp with a cross-fade circuit (love it or hate it) that has one extra incredibly useful feature: It has a decent 16-bit D/A converter built right in and accepts a pure digital stream from your computer over USB. Basically, it can act as an external sound card that supposedly sounds quite good. The Bithead would solve my amplification AND source inconsistency. At US$199, it’s even a great deal considering most USB DACs sell for over US$100 on their own. Unfortunately, as convenient as it would be, I’d set a US$100 budget and I’d have to put off any source upgrades for a while.

After one week of experimenting with my Apheared 47, I’ve made several observations. The first is that a headphone amp won’t make a crappy source sound any less crappy. Shit in, shit out, or something like that. The on-board sound on my work PC doesn’t benefit much from the amp, unfortunately. The devices that showed the most improvement by far are my Sony portable CD player, and Kevin’s iPod. The iPod in particular just comes alive with the SR80/amp combo. A 5 second test with and without the amp shows undeniable improvement for all the people who tried it (my incredibly large sample set of 5 people..). A great result, especially considering that my eventual goal is to use an iPod as my primary listening device at work (and elsewhere). The Powerbook also benefited, but the improvement wasn’t as dramatic as with the portable devices I tried. The second overall observation is just how poor the sound cards in the average PC are. You don’t notice it with typical PC speakers, but do some critical listening tests with some quality headphones and boy, no wonder so many people can’t hear the difference between 128Kbps MP3 and the original CD…

If I could get the infamous $25 Chaintech EV-710 sound card here in Canada, I’d probably buy one for the PC at work. Since I can’t, I’ll probably hold off until an iPod walks into my life. Because afterall, with or without fancy amps and high-quality sources, my SR80 headphones still offer a very pleasant listening experience that I can enjoy at work without breaking the bank. I’m already in headphone heaven.