![]() Your headphones need to be of a pretty decent standard before you get the benefits of a dedicated amp - we use Austrian Audio’s Hi-X15 (£89/$119/around AU$160) or the similarly-priced Grado SR80x as decent benchmarks - so you might not want to bother if you're currently rocking a pair of £20/$20 knock-offs you found on sale at Amazon.Ĭonversely, you may decide that your headphones are performing well enough as it is, and that you like the sound just fine without needing any extra oomph or refinement. Then, of course, there's the matter of price, and the quality of the equipment you're going to be plugging your new gadget into in the first place. In short, you'll need to decide whether you'll be listening to your headphones on the move or solely at home before committing to a purchase. Bigger models, whether they're are battery- or mains-powered, command that you clear your desk or make some room on your hi-fi rack (like you'd need to for the upcoming Yamaha HA-L7A). Some of the headphone amplifiers below will happily slip into a jeans pocket and, with the right cables and connectors, can be paired with a phone. Size and portability are also key considerations. This means many headphone amplifiers are also DACs (and can be called such), although be aware that you can get DACs without headphone sockets, such as the Chord Qutest. These days, though, analogue- only headphone amplifiers like the Chord Anni and SPL Phonitor xe are a rare breed, as the majority of headphone amps also boast built-in DACs (digital-to-analogue converters) that feed digital inputs for broader compatibility – ideal if, say, you are listening to music stored on a computer. So what should you look for in a headphone amplifier? Analogue inputs are the most common and mean you can plug in any source that has analogue outputs (which is most of them). Why do you need a headphone amplifier at all? An external headphone amp is designed to sit between your source/stereo amplifier and pair of headphones for listening to your hi-fi in intimate isolation, and it can be the basis of a compact and effective computer-based desktop hi-fi system too.Ī headphone amp is specifically designed to drive headphones rather than speakers, and while dedicated headphone outputs are now less common for many smartphones, they still exist on a huge array of products that span the audio and video fields.
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