Grado Headphones

If you do not need the ultimate in portability I would get a Grado RA-1 battery unit. I find this amp to be very organic sounding and works very well with low impedance phones. You will need a decent interconnect. Audioquest,

I like the Sennheiser PX 100 and Koss Porta Pros for portable use.

I have the same headphones and two headphone amps - cheap and really cheap - the new FiiO 5 is $20 bucks at Amazon - looks exactly like an ipod shuffle - charges from USB. And some other nice one that was $60 bucks - probably not made anymore. I bought cheap ones because I need portable - I used them to drown out the dentist drill for some long procedures.

The one piece of advice I keep harping on - PLEASE use the LINE OUT audio from the ipod jack, NOT the headphone mini output when connecting to any amp. The headephone audio out was not designed to be amplified impedence and gain is all wrong. The line out will give much better results - plus you leave the ipod on min volume conserving battery. If you use the headphone output you'll be in the same place - having to turn the amp output all the way up and also the ipod output up really high. (wasting ipo battery) Problem - its really hard to find a decent ipod output jack cable - I've made my own.

the concept of a mini-headphone amp for ipod use is patently silly--it belies the whole concept of portability. as good as the grados may be, i'd opt for koss portapros for ipod use (like mortsnets above)--they're more efficient, and consequently will play louder. at 35-40 bucks, they're one of the great bargains in audio, plus they're comfortable and sound very, very good.

Hi folks:
What is a relatively inexpensive way to get more gain from that ipod, are there mini- headphone amps? Appreciate any thoughts,
Cathy

Hi, Cathy. The Nuforce Icon Mobile should give you just what you're looking for. It's $99, is very attractive, smaller than an iPod, has internal rechargeable battery, and functions as a headphone amp for iPods or as a USB DAC for computers. Available on Amazon. It even comes with a silicon rubber band to piggy-back it with your iPod.

Amazon listing including 8 customer reviews.