General Asylum

Posted by dbphd (A) on December 01, 2024 at 14:04:00

In Reply to: RE: Headphone amp posted by dbphd on November 29, 2024 at 16:10:01

Since no one responded to my question, I resorted to reviews. A Stereophile reviewer thought the Ayre QX-5 Twenty drove the Audeze LCD-X very well. It also drove the Sennheiser 800 well, but with a bit of harshness in certain regions. The Mcintosh headphone amp may mask that harshness.

Given I already have the QX-5 Twenty, I may pick up used Audeze LDC-X to try with it. Source would be Ethernet from Roon Nucleus and Blue-ray from Ayre DX-5 DSD.

I've been very impressed by how big my KEF LS60 can sound when playing large orchestrations loud, but I'm an 88 year-old recent widower who's planning to move to a very deluxe life-care community, and no matter how good the sound proofing is said to be, loud music is unlikely to be tolerated. I need headphones for that. Fortunately my preference in music is baroque chamber and jazz trios at low to moderate sound levels. The LS60 does that splendidly.

I'm toying with the idea of replacing my Ayre KX-5 pre and VX-5 amp with an AX-5 integrated, all Twenty series, to use with my KEF Reference 1s, but that seems overkill given my future living arrangement.