Not really. Get the headphones first then consider the amplifier. And what about the dac? You do need a balanced DAC to achieve the potential of 789.
Title Edited,
I have HD600 which scale with power as we all know. The THX handles them exceptionally well of course. But I want to upgrade to a headphone that would give me better soundstage/imaging. I still don't know what headphone that would be. So my question is in general... What kind of headphone would it take for one to consider going from the THX 789 to the A90?
Going off published spec the HD600 should be able to hit 120db at 100mw. View attachment 134809
Assuming you are running your HD600's balanced and you believe the spec of 800mw at 300ohm, then the 789 has more power than you could ever really need for the hd600s. As long as you can hit your desired volume level, I think scaling with power is nonsense. Its unlikely that the A90 is going to give you much if any improvement in sound quality over the 789. If you want the A90 because it looks cool, the connectivity, or preamp function then go for it.
If you feel like buying another amp then sure. I have the A30pro because I wanted a second amp for another room. I also have an RME ADI 2. The A30 has a ton of power. Headphones sound no different on the a30pro vs the rme except the a30 can get louder. I think the a30 pro is a good buy because you get equal power output over SE or 4.4/xlr. You are far better off keeping the thx and spending that 500 on some new phones. The HE6 might benefit from the extra power that the A90 has?
I use a Susvara with a BTR3K when I'm working at home. Which will get me to 95 dB SPL. Around 1.4Vrms gets both the HE6 SE (Amir sample ) / Susvara into the 94 dB SPL range. 4Vrms = 103 dB SPL ( 266.66 mW and 66.66 mA ) or HE 6SE (250 mW and 62.5mA ). The tons of power thing is not true, unless you are listening way too loud or want to eq your sub bass to reach Harman levels.
You don't need speaker amps for he6. In fact it's usually inferior than well designed headphone amps.Thank you all for the reples!
I recently saw a video about the Sundara and how it and the HE-6 those are super hard to drive headphones, where even a proper speaker amp would be more adequate for the job. I find that interesting.
I wouldn't know since I haven't heard either of them. I was also recently seeing good reviews of the recently released Singxer SA-1 and it looks fantastic too. There is that something about such a low noise/distortion amplifier that can push over 6watts and all purely in Class A. That thing must be a power hog and room heater too.
But like many of you suggested, the wisest thing for me to do will be to upgrade my headphones first. Then go for a DAC and if necessary upgrade the amp. It's hard going by just user and pro reviews... would love to hear them first, but that is not easy where I live. I am looking for something that has very good soundstage/imaging that can do better bass than my HD600 which is not it's strong even though I don't find like it's missing something. I am very interesting in how the reviews for the announced HD8xx from Drop turn out. I hope they can achieve keeping the reported awesome soundstage/imaging capabilities while improving it's bass response.
I hope I win the one from the Giveaway from The Headphone show.
You don't need speaker amps for he6. In fact it's usually inferior than well designed headphone amps.
Sa-1 isn't pure class A. It's just about three times the regular quiescent current. It's still class AB.
789 is more than enough.