Reduction with headphones?

[patswalker]

Anyone have experience using the Reduction phono stage with a headphone listening set up instead of a speaker listening set up? Yay or nay?

 

[Paul Birkeland]

What happened to your last two posts you made?  I attempted to give you some useful information, and if you had just left one of the first two posts up, others would weigh in...

 

[Doc B]

Sure, Reduction with the Integration upgrade is plenty quiet for headhones if your cartridge is of relatively high output, say 5-7mV, and your turntable/cart combination is quiet, i.e., not prone to hum pickup.

 

[patswalker]

What happened to your last two posts you made?  I attempted to give you some useful information, and if you had just left one of the first two posts up, others would weigh in...

I'm new to the Bottlehead forums and I am trying to figure out whats what. What were you going to say?

 

[Paul Birkeland]

I'm new to the Bottlehead forums and I am trying to figure out whats what. What were you going to say?

You had mentioned that you had a high output Ortofon cartridge, which is great!  It would also be good to know what headphone amp you have and the headphones you plan to use.  This is to double check that the output impedance of the Reduction isn't too high for your amp, and if you have some super high sensitivity headphones or IEMs, you'd definitely want to consider the integration to bring the noise floor down a bit more.

 

[patswalker]

You had mentioned that you had a high output Ortofon cartridge, which is great!  It would also be good to know what headphone amp you have and the headphones you plan to use.  This is to double check that the output impedance of the Reduction isn't too high for your amp, and if you have some super high sensitivity headphones or IEMs, you'd definitely want to consider the integration to bring the noise floor down a bit more.

I've actually got a nice little collection of headphone amps with different impedance levels and headphones / IEMS of the same variety too so I'm sure I can find a match with the output of the Reduction. I specifically collected a few of each (headphones/IEMS and headphone amps) so that I can mix and match with what I'm listening to and always find a great solution. So as long as it's just a thing of making sure the output impedance matches with my amps, which I was figuring would be the case, it sounds like this would work great. I do always approach these purchases with conversations with people running off of experiences as opposed to web site descriptions. So thank you for your input. Helps a lot!