Headline

[Getmic]

I’m in the market for a headphone amp to use with my ND5XS/Nait XS/hicap/XPS set up. I’ve settled on the headphones on the basis that they sound good when using a non-naim headphone amp but really good when i use them on my Unitiqute2 in my study. This leads me to thinking that a naim headphone amp is the way to go and I have a couple of options…I could try to upgrade my XS to an XS 2 given that it has a built in headphone section or I could go for a headline with napsc. For background I’ve settled on a pair of KLH headphones with 32ohm sensitivity (so should be fairly easy to drive). My questions…
(i) is the headphone section on the XS 2 at least as good as that on the the Unitiqute 2
(ii) will a dedicated headline/napsc out perform the XS 2 headphone section (and by that I mean give me more of what I like about the Unitiqute 2 sound - and not a completely different sound signature) - if it does I would go down this route.
(iii) will the headline drive headphones up and down the impedance spectrum (ie up to Senheiser 650s if I ever wanted to try these).

Thanks!

[Richard.Dane]

@Getmic

(ii) will a dedicated headline/napsc out perform the XS 2 headphone section (and by that I mean give me more of what I like about the Unitiqute 2 sound - and not a completely different sound signature) - if it does I would go down this route.
(iii) will the headline drive headphones up and down the impedance spectrum (ie up to Senheiser 650s if I ever wanted to try these).

The Headline should outperform the XS2 headphone stage, even if powered by just a NAPSC.

The Headline2 should cope with higher impedance cans better than the original Headline. I have found the Headline2 to be more than capable of driving Sennheiser HD600s as well as various Beyers (IIRC Beyers were used back in the day during development).