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NX4DSD & Mr Speaker's AEON Flow Closed headphones

F4ng

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Aug 9, 2018
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Hi,

I'm currently using Xonar Essence STX with this headphones but the card has a nasty habit of occasionally sending out white noise, and I don't want to risk permanent hearing damage, so I'm looking for alternatives to drive this headphones, preferably with DSD capabilities just to know if it actually affects sound quality or not.

At first, I was looking at the Chord Mojo/iDSD BL. However, after reading the review for the NX4DSD, I think that I may not need to spend that much to drive this headphones properly.

So... what do you guys think? Can NX4DSD provide sufficient power for this headphones? I'm not looking for a specific sound signature. I just want to make sure that this headphones is being driven to its full potential.

I know I can buy iDSD BL or Mojo and be done with it, but both of these are quite expensive, and I really don't want to deal with Mojo's battery and EMI issues(don't exactly want to deal with something that could become just a useless brick after a little over a year).

Any suggestions?
 

Veri

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Feb 6, 2018
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Can you use the Xonar as a line-out instead of amp?

I recommend the A-100 for planar headphones https://emotiva.com/products/a-100

You can bypass its internal resistors which makes it output serious wattage and can drive just about anything.

The iDSD BL has great power in its own right but 3x the price of the a-100. Not sure about NX4DSD's rated power.
 
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F4ng

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Thanks, but I couldn't find this particular brand in my country, and it doesn't seems to have DSD.

Anyways, these are the specs for N4XDSD. Hope this helps making things easier for you guys.

nx.png
 

Dro

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This seems sufficient. I have the Aeon and peaks require around -10 dBu, which would be around 0.7 Vpp.
 

zachary80

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The NX4 DSD should get you the power you need, although it might get a little tight if you EQ heavily.

I don't have those headphones but I do have an NX4 DSD that I previously did some testing with using a simple sound level meter. By my math the voltage sensitivity of the AEON Flow Closed is about 111 db/1Vrms, between the LCD2C @ 113 db/1Vrms and HD650 @ 105 db/1Vrms. On the NX4 DSD and playing pink noise, I tested the LCD2C to be in the ~82db range at around around 1:00 on low gain, and tested the HD650 at about 12:00 on high gain.
 
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