Okay, cleaner power's not going to hurt, but hopefully we can expect that Asus engineers are accounting for less-than-perfect power and have enough power supply filtering (mostly capacitors and dedicated regulator chips) to get the job done. If you look at performance results in the wild, that seems to be the case for those systems tested, though maybe not always.
A few more comments:
A few more comments:
- Power "requirements" for many planar magnetics seem to often be quite overstated... unless people are actually listening at 115dB+ levels (kind doubtful, even for really loud peaks)
- Planar magnetics are almost purely resistive (easy) loads, so the differences between amplifiers should be mitigated, so long as you do not drive them past what they can handle
- The issue is just the low sensitivity and low impedance meaning that higher power levels are required than for other headphones; fortunately, some TPA6120-based amp like the one in the Essence has high output current capability and will not lack for power, should not even clip at max volume setting (which should deliver up to 115 dB SPL)
