Musical Fidelity X-Can V3 Headphone amplifiers get class A ratings from Stereophile and they don't cost a fortune.
OTOH, if you want a multipurpose amp, you could get the Benchmark DAC-1 which is also a DAC. The DAC-1 is also highly rated, I don't remember if it was rated an A by Stereophile also, but I think it was. If you get the DAC-1 you could then use any crappy DVD player as a source and digitally output the signal to your DAC-1 (assuming the crappy player doesn't convert 0s to 1s and 1s to 0s), because the DAC-1 reclocks the digital signal before converting it to analog.
The reclocking would be a major decision maker for me, as I would only buy audiophile headphones to listen to music in my bedroom (I have a dedicated listening room for my stereo system) and wouldn't want to buy a new CD player just to listen to music up there, especially when I could just use the DVD player we have up there and digitally output the signal to something like the DAC-1...
OTOH, if you want a multipurpose amp, you could get the Benchmark DAC-1 which is also a DAC. The DAC-1 is also highly rated, I don't remember if it was rated an A by Stereophile also, but I think it was. If you get the DAC-1 you could then use any crappy DVD player as a source and digitally output the signal to your DAC-1 (assuming the crappy player doesn't convert 0s to 1s and 1s to 0s), because the DAC-1 reclocks the digital signal before converting it to analog.
The reclocking would be a major decision maker for me, as I would only buy audiophile headphones to listen to music in my bedroom (I have a dedicated listening room for my stereo system) and wouldn't want to buy a new CD player just to listen to music up there, especially when I could just use the DVD player we have up there and digitally output the signal to something like the DAC-1...