Headphone Amplifiers

I have this particular one:
http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/nuforce_icon_usb-input_integrated_amplifier/

Its very, very good at my PC, but its a massive hassle to use for my iPod, because it kills the battery super fast... You can't really consider it portable, although they do have a mobile model, but I can't comment on that because I've never used it.

If you're gonna use it at your PC, you'll definitely get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

They do make headphones sound a fair bit better, mostly in the mid range though... If you're looking for better highs, this doesn't make much of a difference, but its great for mid range and bass, particularly for heavier stuff. Depending on how well mixed the album is to begin with, and as long as you rip your MP3's upwards of 128kbps, you should get some pleasing results.

In all honesty, I'd reccomend you to just get a 100$ pair of headphones, but the better your earphones, the better that little amp will make them sound.
I'm not sure what kind of a budget you're on, but I don't have any real complaints about that on what I payed for that model, although I did get it on sale.

As I said, I have no real idea as to the quality of other models, as thats the only one I've ever used.

So,
1. From that model, I think they're quite good, although only really useful if you have something stopping you from buying an actual stereo, IE space, budget etc. If you're gonna listen to most of your music at your PC, well then I can't see a good reason not to buy it.

2. I'd say that one was half worth it, and I guess the more you use it (and I use it a fair bit) the more you'll get out of it. I listen to music at my PC quite a bit, but it depends on how much you focus on what you're listening to and when you're doing it etc...

3. I can recommend that model, although I can't recommend any others as I said.


I mean, overall I think it depends on how good your headphones are. If you're looking to get even better sound out of a great pair, then thats the way to go. If you're looking to get better sound out of an only decent pair, then you could be wasting your money. My current pair was 120US, and they sound great with and without the amp, so it depends really.

If you're not interested in getting new headphones, then get that. If you're just looking for all round better sound, get better headphones.

Hope that helps
-Joel

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ this is a portable device ... I guess it's useful if you want to use big headphones with portable players who may not have the necessary power for that (they're optimized for small headphones). I'd like to know if - and how - they can actually improve the sound quality.

According to Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphone_amplifier):

How they work Effectively, a headphone amplifier is a small power amplifier that can be connected to a standard headphone jack or (usually) the line output of an audio source. The headphone amplifier improves the sound quality by increasing the amount of power available to move the transducer, increasing the control that the source has over just where the transducer is in space. This is often expressed as damping factor. For example, a 32 Ω headphone (such as the Grado line) driven by a popular DIY headphone amp with a <1 Ω output impedance (the Gilmore Dynamic) would have a damping factor of >32, whereas the same headphone driven with an iPod (5 Ω output impedance) would have a damping factor of just 6.4. Of course, damping factor is not the only specification relevant to choosing a headphone amplifier — harmonic distortion, frequency response, IMD, and myriad other measurements are also significant.

And also, the equalizer settings on my model work about 90 times better than those on my PC (which has an incredibly average stock soundcard) and on my iPod, so I can get better, and more desirable levels through using the controls.

Edited by progkidjoel - December 12 2009 at 18:15

Headphones amplifiers are generally not very "efficient" (lot of class A), so not very portable.

The damping factor is not the most relevent cirteria, even if it becomes quite important for high impedance headphones (try plugging a Beyerdynamic 250 Ohm on a PC soundcard headphone output, and then try with an amp, the difference is quite enormous...)

USB/Firewire soundcards have an output impedence for headphones of ~50Ohm, so using 60-80Ohm headphones should yield good result in terms of efficiency.

High damping factors are also useful sometimes if the sound card uses the reflected signal to control distortion.
The best way to judge remains listenning to a few reference tracks.

Nakatira wrote: These sound amazing, they come with or without a pre. Best headphones I've listened to http://www.stax.co.jp/index-E.html

I was kind of thinking before you wrote that, just get a good set of headphones in the first place.  Of course after you've bought one of these devices, you'd like to think it made you headphones sound better when it just actually just made your headphones sound different. 

Also, take anything from the Wiki with a grain of salt.  It could just be an ad in disguise.

Having a good amplifier to drive your headphones is just as important as having a good amplifier to drive your speakers. Of course, the headphones have to be up to the task as well. If you play a lot of music off of your computer and you have the budget for it, I would go with the Benchmark Media DAC with USB connection. You can then stream your music via say Foobar in digital PCM format to the DAC which has a very very good headphone amplifier. In fact it's a very good virtually jitter free DAC.

 

 

 

http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/system1/digital-analog-converter/dac1-usb

I hadn't even conceived of it being possible to spend that much money on something like that.

Henry Plainview wrote: I hadn't even conceived of it being possible to spend that much money on something like that.   Even if it's jitter free on the USB side, wouldn't there be jitter on the headphone side? Actually, I don't even understand what jitter is so maybe shouldn't be asking.

The DAC is well worth the money in my eyes but I can understand it being a bit out of reach for many.

mono wrote: After spending 150euros on headphones that are supposed to be top stuff, it's hard to imagine spending ~10 times that for the DAC + Headphone amp. Can you tell us what would be the difference between a DAC found in a good USB sound card (let's say ~300-400 $) and this one? Precision? floor noise? THD+N? which are relevent? Does bying this DAC imply having an excellent amp and perfect speakers? (in order to appreciate it best).