Jim Lesurf said...

I also used to use HD414s for many years. But my old ones have
disintegrated and AFAIK you can't now get them, or the replacement bits. I
liked the sound overall for general test use, but found them uncomfortable
if used continuously for a long time.

Comfort was one of their great strengths IMHO. You could heat the
headband and bent it to fit and it would keep that shape, leading to
forgetting you were wearing them and ripping the connectors out when
standing up. That was their main weakness the fragile connector system.
They were also strangely attractive to dogs, I lost 2 pairs by
chewing:-)


The new EH350s I have seem more
comfy. I suspect that have more extended bass as well, but can't be sure as
I am relying on comparing with memory. :-)

The 414's could sound a bit anaemic when connected to the typical
headphone output on an amp, I always connected them to speaker outputs,
it really brought them to life, but never used them with a proper phone
amp.

These; http://goo.gl/Q1bs arrived at the weekend and remind me very
much of the 414's sound and comfort. I had a pair of HD480's for years,
but lately been using HD495's which seem to have a degree of bass bost
and I wasn't very happy with them, now with the 490's I'm in Headphone
Heaven again.


Theoretical question, Jim. If you were to redesign your DAC
specifically for HD414's would the transformers still be necessary?

Not sure, but it seems plausible that they wouldn't. Certainly the AU-D3
happily drives 1k. So a pair of 414s with a 1k or 2k2 volume pot would be
likely to be fine, I guess. That said I can't recall the sensitivity, so a
transformer might be useful. I'd need 414s to decide, and mine are long
past use.

94 dB per 1mw or 1.41v; according to the manual


FWIW One of the things that made me think 'transformer' was thinking "If I
still had HD414s their high impedance would mean I wouldn't need
buffers...".



--
Ken O'Meara
http://www.btinternet.com/~unsteadyken/