I never cared much for headphones and rarely used them, but that has changed. Unfortunately I am unable to leave the house much, but the bonus is I get to listen to music pretty much all day. Once my wife took early retirement at the beginning of the year to be home with me I was forced to use headphones. Bottom line is I'm running the headphones off zone 2 of my Carver C-5 preamp. Pretty convenient arrangement but sound wasn't stellar with headphones. Not enough volume and pretty dead sounding. For shits and giggles I bought a cheap Pyle PHA40 stereo headphone amp. It helped quite a bit but the bottom end was missing and the music had no body to it. Yesterday my family (lead by BJ of course) surprised me with a new headphone amp for my 60th birthday which is tomorrow. BJ researched it and bought me a Schiit Valhalla tube headphone amp. WOW. My headphones really come alive now. Now I'm actually enjoying using headphones. Plus the ones I am using most of the time are closed back so I don't hear the TV or my wife! I just hate when BJ puts post-it notes on my audio gear claiming them for himself when I croak.
