Originally posted by: RupTheKid
The DAC I have is not suitable for mobile use. You should really, really try just using your mobile player first before spending money on a DAC. If the sound is good enough for you first, then why mess with it? You're not going to damage your equipment or hearing by waiting to purchase a DAC. Secondly, I believe you have the wrong idea about impedance. The *higher* the impedance number, the easier the headphones are to drive. An impedance of 300 makes the Senns 900% easier load to drive than your Sure phones, and the JH13 30% more difficult to drive. With any headphones under 50ohms, you should seriously be looking at a portable headphone amp. The Sennheiser phones are, in comparison, notoriously easy to drive. Also, unless I'm misunderstanding you, it is against the law to have ear buds in both your ears when driving. In some states, you can be pulled over solely for this offense, because with both ears filled the authorities say you may not hear road noise or emergency vehicle sirens. Ultimately moonboy403 is right; if you have the option of listening to the gear with your own ears and associated equipment there really is no substitute.
I reread my own writing you quoted and was horrified how many typos I did not catch ***moving my head side to side and slapping my forehead in disgust with myself***
You are right, I misunderstood ( In the short term about the ease and difficulty of work an amp load the amplifier has to deal with). Although I had 6 months of full time classes in the US Army for AC/DC theory and repair of electronics I had studied. Yes I do know that the most difficult loads to drive in home Audio amps are 2 ohm, and you need some very fine amps to drive those, but we human beings are creatures of peculiar intelligence, we need to process what we know, and use it before it becomes part of our daily wisdom tools. So thanks for reminding me.
Now you have me wondering, about volume, and efficiency, and driving power. I mean, high efficiency speakers tend to need less power to drive them. and even with 8 ohm speakers there are more and less efficient boxes they come in, like "infinite baffle" requires much more power but gets a tighter bass while a "Base reflex" box gives more efficiency with less tightness and requires a much bigger magnet to produce a similar base. My Tonnoy speakers from England have a monstrous Magnet on them so even with a base reflex they sound great and tight enough, in the base.
So you have me thinking and rethinking what I say.
My logic was that with less resistance I will have greater efficiency result in volume at the same level of the amp, but I used wrong logic.
The way to test the logic, is as you said, to listen to to the IEM and if it were possible to the HD800s
As to listening to sirens of fire trucks and ambulance, I drive in rush hour times bumper to bumper, and when I notice cars in front of me pulling to the side I can look in the rear view mirror and see the ambulance and I pull over to the shoulder too. The HD800 would stand out like whales on my ears, and the JH13 would be practically invisible.
I am single and looking and if I do get a significant other music lover I might think of being the owner of the HD800 as well and scrape up the funds for them too.
So far from what I read, The HD800 have a
bass weakness. I wonder how much of a weakness... So possibly I may love owning both and give up my Koss Electrostatics to my significant other and see what I can get for my Sure 530 on the used market.
Maybe in time someone will invent a converter adopter from one IEM to the next person's ears
I will forget about the Dac and Amp for now and focus on the Jh13 and the HD800. While speaking to Brittany from JHaudio she did mention that there are 6 drivers per ear 2 tweeters two mids and two bass drivers, and that makes for the possible sound attantions it has been getting, JH just discovered a fantastic combination, and how he joined them all for a single ear player. we always play with parallel and series, as Bose does in their 901s to put 9 speakers together for one speaker sound.
You can see by all the writing I am doing, I am thinking overtime... Big bux for me are hard to spend as probably all the rest of you feel too... So I post here at Anandtech for getting clarity. And of course my gratitude for all the help that is offered with brotherly good intentions.