Focusrite pro 40 headphone amp

[DonM]

Originally Posted by Hypnotic

Hi,

Just want to start out by saying, I don't know much about headphone amps.

I was thinking about getting the sennheiser 650 headphones, but I am not sure if I will need an amp. I currently have the focusrite pro 40 and have been using my akg 702 headphones in it, which seems to work fine, although I am not sure if it would be much better if I bought a headphone amp.

I tried looking on the focusrite site, but couldn't find anything.

Does anyone know if the focusrite is suitable for the sennheiser 650's?


The nominal impedance on those is 300 ohms

I use my SP40 and Sennheiser 580's every day. I also use my classic 414's that I'm pretty sure are 2k ohms - the SP40 drives them fine.

Since you can create a mix just for 7/8 9/10 that is dedicated to the Headphone outputs you have a lot of control regarding levels.

What are your specific concerns about needing the amp?

-D

[Hypnotic]

Thanks for your input. My main concern is that I am not getting all that I could out of my AKG 702's or that I would not have enough power for the Sennheiser 650's. I have never used a headphone amp before, so not really sure what the difference would be.

I agree, there is a fair amount of power that is sent out from the output controls in the SP40. What confused me a little is that Focusrite posted a kind of apology that their headphone amps aren't that strong, because they wanted to avoid clipping at all costs.

Originally Posted by DonM

I use my SP40 and Sennheiser 580's every day. I also use my classic 414's that I'm pretty sure are 2k ohms - the SP40 drives them fine.

Since you can create a mix just for 7/8 9/10 that is dedicated to the Headphone outputs you have a lot of control regarding levels.

What are your specific concerns about needing the amp?

-D