What amp do you use?

[oblisk]

I personally use Gary's PA2V2. It goes well with my Sennheisers' PC350.

[fjanicki]

I built myself a Millett MiniMax tube amp, and it goes well with my grados. I'm currently building a mini^3.

[Nodscene]

If you are going to sell the MiniMax I just may be interested. I have a pair of Grado's myself.

[lowfat]

Happy w/ the onboard amp on my Essence STX.

[MpG]

Little Dot Mark IV + DAC_1 combination. My HD650's badly need the power.

[Dogger1]

Originally Posted by lowfat

Happy w/ the onboard amp on my Essence STX.

+1 Same here

[jamiee]

Headroom Ultra Desktop Amp for my Senn HD650.

Yamaha DSP-Z7 (RX-Z7) for surround speaker duties

[KMASCII]

I currently use the Auzen Forte feeding a Little Dot MK III to Sennheiser HD650's or Grado 325is's. The MK III is a great little tube amp for a first time tube user.

Say MpG I am considering getting the DAC_1. How is the sound from the MK IV? I am worried about digital brightness with the DAC_1.

[MpG]

I'm quite happy with the MkIV. Hard to say whether it was worth extra $100 over the MkIII, but I decided that I wanted the better power circuits and larger enclosure. I was expecting some minor residual background noise from it on account of it being a tube amp, but it's entirely absent, even with the volume cranked far beyond what I could normally stand. A pleasant surprise, that's for sure.

I don't get any excessive brightness with the DAC_1. Actually, it sounds quite smooth in my opinion, although whether it's the DAC or the tube amp responsible, it's hard to say for certain. At the very least, I can say that I had the amp first, and when I added the DAC later on, I didn't get any added harshness or brightness. I've also seen reports from other people who also find it quite smooth, even when combining it with a solid state amp. Very good with music detail, no obvious coloration of sound that I can detect.

My only possible gripe about it is that if no audio program/game is running, the toslink input seems to expect 96KHz data, which sometimes leads to static popping. But as long as something is actually telling it to receive at 44.1/48KHz (even a paused music player), the background is absolutely black. And when running off USB, it's a non-issue entirely. My searching so far seems to suggest that this might be a Vista issue more than anything - apparently 96KHz and Vista don't get along without third-party software solutions?

[Snarl]

Auzentech Forte's built in Headphone Amp for my Sennheiser PC-350's sounds awesome. When I want some Balls to the Wall Gaming sometimes I run Digital out to my Outlaw 990/755 Proc/Amp and Paradigm 5.1 System :)