Headphones driven from speaker outputs.
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 8:03 am
I received an email from Artisan Silver Cables which I have copied below:-
...or to put it another way: driving the hell out of your headphones (carefully!)...
So here's the story: we were recently contacted by a customer, who wanted us to make a pure silver adapter cable to connect the speaker outputs of his power amplifier to his headphones(!)
We were a little concerned about the potential to over-drive the headphones (or the customer's ears!), but we went ahead and made the cable, whilst advising him that he would need to be very circumspect with the volume control...
The cable was around 75cm in length and fitted with WBT's superb 0610-AG banana plugs (the same plugs we like to use on our speaker cables), going to a Neutrik 1/4 inch stereo jack socket.
Once the cable was made, it was tested in one of my personal systems, with a Red Rose amp, rated at around 30 watts per channel, driving my Sennheiser HD-650 headphones.
I was unprepared for the result.
The set-up absolutely trounced my usual headphone amp, which I had considered to be of decent quality - the music became extremely vibrant, pure, open & powerful, with far better resolution of very low-level information - just fantastic. In fact, the performance was far better than I had imagined was possible with HD-650s.
The way the amplifier uncompromisingly gripped and dominated the headphones - leading to fantastic sound - reminded me of reading Hi-fi News magazine back in 1985 (when I was first becoming interested in high-end hi-fi), with Ken Kessler's inspiring description of the way the fantastically muscular new Krell power amps exhibited "vice-like grip" over the speakers, forcing the speakers to sound better than you'd think possible...
Clearly, our customer's idea was excellent!
Caveats?
Yes, a few:
1. Clearly, great care is needed with setting low volumes - also the whole system will need to be of excellent quality and with very low noise.
2. The high sensitivity of the headphones may reveal previously unheard hiss and/or hum. For this reason, valve-based equipment may prove to be a problem, with it's lower signal-to-noise ratios.
3. Higher sensitivity headphones, designed to work with portable equipment will obviously be unsuitable. This is only going to work well with headphones that like to be driven and are expected to be used with dedicated headphone amps.
So, with the above provisos, this may be a great way of driving high-end headphones - and to my ears, superior to the great majority of specialist headphone amps.
Our customer simply had this to say:
"Hi Alister,
thank you very much for the adapter cable.
I got it last week and it has been running continuously since then.
It already sounded great right out of the box.
I can honestly say, that my headphone setup never sounded this good...
...Kind Regards, Jens"
The 1/4" stereo jack socket confused me so this is what he meant. http://www.neutrik.com/en/audio/plugs-a ... nj3fc6-bag
...or to put it another way: driving the hell out of your headphones (carefully!)...
So here's the story: we were recently contacted by a customer, who wanted us to make a pure silver adapter cable to connect the speaker outputs of his power amplifier to his headphones(!)
We were a little concerned about the potential to over-drive the headphones (or the customer's ears!), but we went ahead and made the cable, whilst advising him that he would need to be very circumspect with the volume control...
The cable was around 75cm in length and fitted with WBT's superb 0610-AG banana plugs (the same plugs we like to use on our speaker cables), going to a Neutrik 1/4 inch stereo jack socket.
Once the cable was made, it was tested in one of my personal systems, with a Red Rose amp, rated at around 30 watts per channel, driving my Sennheiser HD-650 headphones.
I was unprepared for the result.
The set-up absolutely trounced my usual headphone amp, which I had considered to be of decent quality - the music became extremely vibrant, pure, open & powerful, with far better resolution of very low-level information - just fantastic. In fact, the performance was far better than I had imagined was possible with HD-650s.
The way the amplifier uncompromisingly gripped and dominated the headphones - leading to fantastic sound - reminded me of reading Hi-fi News magazine back in 1985 (when I was first becoming interested in high-end hi-fi), with Ken Kessler's inspiring description of the way the fantastically muscular new Krell power amps exhibited "vice-like grip" over the speakers, forcing the speakers to sound better than you'd think possible...
Clearly, our customer's idea was excellent!
Caveats?
Yes, a few:
1. Clearly, great care is needed with setting low volumes - also the whole system will need to be of excellent quality and with very low noise.
2. The high sensitivity of the headphones may reveal previously unheard hiss and/or hum. For this reason, valve-based equipment may prove to be a problem, with it's lower signal-to-noise ratios.
3. Higher sensitivity headphones, designed to work with portable equipment will obviously be unsuitable. This is only going to work well with headphones that like to be driven and are expected to be used with dedicated headphone amps.
So, with the above provisos, this may be a great way of driving high-end headphones - and to my ears, superior to the great majority of specialist headphone amps.
Our customer simply had this to say:
"Hi Alister,
thank you very much for the adapter cable.
I got it last week and it has been running continuously since then.
It already sounded great right out of the box.
I can honestly say, that my headphone setup never sounded this good...
...Kind Regards, Jens"
The 1/4" stereo jack socket confused me so this is what he meant. http://www.neutrik.com/en/audio/plugs-a ... nj3fc6-bag