Headphones for DAC202

[frogfish]

Recently got a DAC202, and am thinking of leveraging it's headphone output when I want to give a break to the rest of the family

 

I am completely new to headphones (only using headphones with my ipod shuffle when I go running ), so hoping that I could get some pointers as to what I should be looking for that would complement the Weiss well.

 

To give an indication of the type of sound I like, I feed my dac into a Sugden integrated amp to Spendor speakers, and listen to a variety of music from classical and opera to rock, folk, and some electro.

 

Thanks in advance !

 

 

[thesurfingalien]

Hi frogfish,

 

I have to repeat advice I gave to others earlier. Finding a pair of cans that suit you is a just as difficult (or easy) as finding the right loudspeakers.

 

I you have the opportunity, visit with a local dealer that has a good selection, and spend some time listening to models that fall within budget. You will find that characteristics between brands and models differ greatly.

 

Basing your decision on recommendations by others could get you something that does not fulfill your needs.

 

Good luck!

Peter

 

[bikemig]

I agree with the comments Peter made but the cool thing about headphones is that they are not, relatively speaking, that expensive and so you can try out more than one. I have had good luck in finding headphones I've been happy with by reading a lot of different reviews and then bottom fishing a bit on what was on sale. Headroom has good technical info on headphones. This is a good blog site on headphone and amp impedance, http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html. You might also want to check out headfonia and head-fi.

 

I'm still fishing around for my "ultimate" set of cans (I'm considering the Sennheiser HD 650 and the AKG 702) but in the meantime I recently bought a pair of relatively inexpensive cans that I'm really happy with, the Audio Technica ATH-AD700 (they run around $90 on Amazon). They look seriously funky even for headphones (unless you are into purple) but they have 32 ohm impedance which means they work remarkably well with the headphone jack on my laptop (or an ipod for that matter). That means they'll make a great 2d pair of headphones once I figure out what I really want to get.

 

[frogfish]

Thanks both for the sound advice, fully agree that my ears are the best judge (for me at least!).

 

I was just hoping to get some pointers about people who own this dac, so that I can start developing a short list. Have to admit I do not know anything about headphones, and was wondering if there was any specific considerations when choosing a pair for the 202.

 

Trying to start to build a shortlist of the ones I should try...

 

Cheers