It could be normal for an amp if it's class A, although likely not. For a dac, definitely absolutely not normal.

I use audiophile grade zips, but I guess I just appreciate music more.

I'm sure they sound amazing but they certainly don't look the price. Personally, if I had that much money to spend in a pair of headphones I'd get the Susvaras.

Yes, do it! You know they deserve to die! Oh, right, this is the mod thing post.

Thanks!

Yes.. I know most people would find it an odd choice but using tubes for doing the actual amplifying seems unnecessary to me now that we have semiconductors to do that job. It wears out tubes faster and the output impedance is too high for my headphones at least (unless you buy a $2.5K amp, which I won't). I researched for hybrid amps and I couldn't find anyone with unanimously positive reviews so I thought that the most technically correct solution would be using discrete units that perform their own specific task instead of one combo that does two completely different things. And a preamp leaves the possibility open for using in a speakers setup as well.

I bought it to use with a tubes preamp and that's my main gripe with the adi-2. If it had an external input to the amp one could connect the line out to a tube preamp and then back to the ADI-2's own amp. But besides that specific case, I agree it doesn't need an amp.

I don't feel I'm missing anything with the Aryas but if I ever upgrade it will be for those ones. With their price, there's no reason to buy the Aryas when the HE1000 are so close. I paid €1000 for the Aryas but if I were to buy them new I would save a little bit more and go for the HE1000.

In my experience, rocks do improve sound quality. I threw one against a shop's window and grabbed a home theater for my living room.

I'm glad I could help.. The Arya V2 doesn't have a good rep because of a huge gap they have in the frequency response, although that should be possible to correct with equalization. Which is why I find most headphones reviews useless since they only talk about each headphone raw as if equalizing wasn't a thing.

Oh, I understand your question now. The RCA maximum output value is 3.5V and for the XLR output it's 6.9V. However you can control the volume to avoid saturating your preamp input so that shouldn't be a problem.

In any case, you won't burn anything. If the input signal is too high you would just get a distorted output because of clipping at the input so you'd have to gradually increase the ADI-2's volume until you start noticing a degradation in sound.

Edit: you don't need the THX-887, you'd just be adding noise to the system and reducing SNR. Most likely imperceptible but still unnecessary. The ADI-2's built-in amp should be far superior, especially considering the integration with the dac that allows to balance digital and analog amplification to maintain the highest possible dynamic range and SNR.

Ok, it's only a misunderstanding about terminology, what you call "pre-function" Is actually called a line out, and all dac/amp combos have one, although not always balanced. That doesn't make the device a preamp, a preamp is what you connect the DAC to.

The title of your post asks one question and the body says a completely different thing. It has balanced and unbalanced analog outputs to be used as a DAC-only, and the equalizer makes it the best DAC out there IMHO. The spectrum analyzer is hypnotic to watch and the VU meter is extremely useful to get an idea of the dynamic range of the source and to get an objective reference of the actual output volume you're getting regardless of the amplification level (because each song has a different volume usually).

But it doesn't have analog inputs to act as a preamp. I don't know what you read that could have given you the idea that it might have.

The amp is as good as an amp could get so you won't ever need a discrete one just for the sake of amplifying for headphones, and it's tightly integrated with the DAC in a way that always keeps a SNR as high as possible.

Finally, and this is an important disadvantage for me, it doesn't have an external analog input to the amp section, which would allow it to be connected to a tube preamp and then back to it's own amp section.

Hope this clarifies what it can and cannot do. Let me know if you have any other questions.

The are great $200 headphones and mind-blowing ones for $1500, you'll have to set a budget so that people can recommend you the best options for that price.

My advice for now would be to rip your CD collection into flacs (or just download them if you can find them in that format, which you will for the most popular titles) so you can listen to them wherever and whenever you want from a PC or phone, having immediate access to every song without having to change the discs. Using a PC will also give you the possibility of equalizing your headphones, which is a huge plus.

Thanks, I'm trying to get into the tubes world but I'm sick of reading endless threads to hunt some objective information and ending up having nothing definitive at the end.

Is there any reason everyone uses the gtb instead of the gta?

Thanks, would love an update post of how they sound when you have a chance to try them..

Can I ask what tubes have you ordered?

People in that crowd didn't have 2023 phones..

I made it yesterday, English is not my first language. Is it not how they're called?

Sorry, I just saw that it was in the description.. I'm surprised to find a complaint about the stock headband, it's pure comfort to me.

What happened to the headband?!

He's an audio consumer.