How to use headphones with separates

A killer rig driven by your preamp (what I use anyway) is the Schiit Magni 3 (Now the "+") for $109 combined (or not) with their Loki Mini +...get the nice small "Pyst" cables (made by Straight Wire) from Schiit to hook 'em up and that should blow away nearly anything else for small bucks. A great sounding rig with EQ.

Good to know, thanks!

if you wanna use your existing gear with headphones, get a Zynsonix speaker tap adaptor box. depending on your headphones, you can configure the box with a bypass switch i.e. having 0dB (bypass) or whatever level of attenuation you need (if using with sensitive headphones); i have mine with 0dB and -17dB.

a lot of it depends on your gear and how much factory gain they have, as it makes background noise/hum more apparent with sensitive headphones like the Utopia or Grados. the harder to drive headphones eg Susvara, Abyss, will be fine at 0dB through the box.

This is how I listen to my RAAL SR1a and CA-1a. I used to use a RAAL VM-1a dedicated RAAL tube amp for this and it is the best for these phones. However, I needed the cash so I sold that amp and got the following cheaper gear,

Schitt Aegir amp | Schitt Mjolnir preamp | DAC | RAAL TI-1b 2-channel amp adapter

The reason I was able to sell the VM-1a was because the new TI-1b adapter gets you to about 90% of the level of the VM-1a.

Well what if you do not have the RAAL SR1a or CA-1a. That is a mistake and you should test drive my 2 phones to see if it is even better than your 2-channel. The SR1a is similar to 2-channel and the CA-1a has a traditional headphone sound.

BTW - the Schiit preamp I mention above is a headphone amp/preamp and I used it as a preamp, the headphone amp part is too weak for my RAALs.