FM3 built-in headphone amp

G

giantslayer

Experienced
I have an Axe FX 3 and am setting up an FM3 for bass guitar. I am running the exact same preset on both, testing everything out. I have my AX3 hooked up to a Schiit Magnius as a headphone/IEM amp. I also bought a Schiit Gunnr for the FM3 as a headphone amp, so that I could send Out1 as XLR to FOH and add in a monitor mix to Out2 for IEM.

Using my Audeze LCD-2 headphones, the AX3 and the two Schiit amps sound ballpark close to each other. The FM3, however, sounded noticeably different. It was softer, warmer, and a lot less detailed especially in the highs. Also less total volume available on tap than the AX3 headphone amp (although I tried to listen at roughly the same volumes).

Anyways, thought I would share my findings. If you use headphones with the FM3 a lot, an external headphone amp is worth looking into.
 
All Fractal products have the same flaw as far as their headphone amps are concerned, the output impedance is way too high, which may lead to issues with some headphones, especially those that have low impedance.

However, the impedance numbers from specs don’t give the full picture, there are other factors at play. I know for a fact that FM3 is virtually unusable with some headphones, and some of the issues I could describe in a similar way to what you’re saying.

Whether FX3 has the same headphone amp or not I do not know. If it does, it may be possible that it’s better.

To my knowledge, nobody ever did any measurements, and what we have are just anecdotes of the “I use my Fractal with headphones X, and they sound great” type, which is pretty much useless information.
 
vangrieg said:
All Fractal products have the same flaw as far as their headphone amps are concerned, the output impedance is way too high, which may lead to issues with some headphones, especially those that have low impedance.

However, the impedance numbers from specs don’t give the full picture, there are other factors at play. I know for a fact that FM3 is virtually unusable with some headphones, and some of the issues I could describe in a similar way to what you’re saying.

Whether FX3 has the same headphone amp or not I do not know. If it does, it may be possible that it’s better.

To my knowledge, nobody ever did any measurements, and what we have are just anecdotes of the “I use my Fractal with headphones X, and they sound great” type, which is pretty much useless information.
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Yeah, the reason I had an external amp with my FX3 in the first place was to be able to run low impedance IEMs. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have thought of it.
 
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