11 Apr 2009

Driving DT880s

Over on the Headphonic forums someone asked me to give them a bit of a run-down on how capable a PA2V2 is for driving Beyerdynamic DT880s. Although the PA2 performed quite well with the Ultimate Ears SuperFi3 canalphones, the DT880s are notoriously hard to drive (at least according to most of the headphone-centric websites around the place) so I was expecting the little amp to struggle a bit. I initially planned a 3-way test, driving the DT880s from
  • the headphone socket of a 5th Gen iPod video
  • a PA2V2 using line out from the iPod, and
  • an O1 amp using line out from the iPod
The iPod headphone socket was intented as a baseline - most people have access to an iPod of some description so it could be used to put the other results in context. I started with iPod vs PA2, using my usual testing procedures.

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