I have had numerous tube amps and the only ones that were noisy were designed with compromises. For headphones I use a WOO WA5-LE. No noise just music. It sounds noticeably better than the HP out on my BHK Pre. But again it’s 70lbs of headphone amp. All of my PSAudio Gear is silent period. Tubes don’t have noise inherent in all designs.
I’m faced with compromises here also. The idea of headphone amp for me was to plug in the headphones without requiring an extension cable. But I’m going to need an extension of some sort to connect an analog source to the headphone amp. Or get a new analog source and sit it next to the headphone amp. I think the simplest option is just to get a headphone extension cable and plug it into my Halcro pre-amp.
That’s where I would start until you see how much time you will actually use them.
The other thing I would recommend is just seeing if the headphones are comfortable. Several of the ones I’ve tried are just fatiguing - either the shape doesn’t fit my ears, the pressure is too much on my head or certain parts of the ear or my ears get uncomfortably hot (even with openback designs). Bizarrely one of things that STAX get right is the comfort although I can imagine this varies depending on ear shape.
As for extension cables if you do really find you like the headphones and enjoy the experience you could go for a second system maybe based around a combined DAC/headphone amp like the Chord DAVE and just place it next to your listening position.
I had Sennheiser HD600 before. I hardly used them. And when I did, because of the cable length, I used to plug them into the pre-amp and lay on the floor to listen. And there was no real reason to do that as I can play my loudspeakers as loud as I like and not bother anybody. And music from the speakers always sounded better than the headphones.
Yes I feel the same. For me it was night time listening after getting home from work in the early hours that made headphones a necessity, but if I had the choice I would always go for speakers.
For me music is not just about hearing the music, it is also about feeling it.
Also whilst headphones can do midrange and treble really well they always seem to lack in the bass (even when they claim to go down to 20Hz) - again this may be due to the fact that we feel the base as well as hear it. The imaging tends to be a problem too.
You have an outstanding system so I think it will be difficult to get close to that even with the best headphones due to the inherent limitations they have.
I’ll have a listen to the Ora headphones and then decide if they’re right for me. If they don’t add much to the party I’ll just give them to my boy for school. He did have a very good pair of Sennheiser for school but they got nicked.
Do a review once you get them. I would be interested in how they sound because for practical reasons I always need a pair of headphones. Right now I’ve got some HD600s for portable use but I need something to replace the Stax but I want something that won’t fall apart after a year. Would also be useful to be able to use it with a variety of amplification which you can’t do with electrostats.
Ora are way behind on their original delivery schedule. But I don’t mind. They want the product to be exactly right before they start shipping them to customers. Shipping a half-baked product is likely to upset quite a few in their target audience, hence the wait.
It’s normal for Kickstarters. I think if they really can make the final product for anything close to the Kickstarter price and they really do improve on regular headphone imaging they could be an audiophile bargain. Now if only someone could tackle the bass issue too.