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The Sound Signature of a Headphone Amp

Hi,

I’ve been looking at headphone amps and I’ve been getting advice to buy units at wildly different price points. I own an ASR Emitter 2 Exclusive amplifier and the sound signature of this amplifier is exceptional. I was told to run cables from the tape outs on my ASR into the headphone amp, which is no problem. So I’ve looked around at Cayin, Schiit, etc.. From my inquiry with the Schiit store in CA., it was confirmed that the signal that I would hear would primarily be that of my ASR power amp but that the headphone amp still has a footprint on the overall sound so the better the headphone amp, the better the results. What know one has been able to explain is how much of the signal comes from the power amp and what percentage comes from the headphone amp? Is there a headphone amp that gets out of the way totally, acting as just a headphone input with a volume control? Any clarification on this would be greatly helpful. Thanks!

goofyfoot

Showing 4 responses by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
7,502 posts
 

OP, Glad to hear it. Bummer on all the hassle.

ghdprentice
7,502 posts
 

Replacing Quad panel? That is terrible. They should not need replacing for at least a decade or so. Have you identified a cause?

 

You could slowly put together a headphone system, over time. I typically use my headphone system for an hour a day and my main system for two hours. Both of mine have the same sonic character by choice. You might look for a used high end headphone amp. 

ghdprentice
7,502 posts
 

I would say most of the character is going to come from the head amp since your integrated is working primarily as a switch box in this situation. 

ghdprentice
7,502 posts
 

The tape out is a line level output that bypasses the amplifier and volume controls of your integrated amp. This should allow for input into a headphone amp. The headphone amp will control the volume for your headphones.

 

Headphone amps are like all other high end audio equipment. They each have unique sonic character and in general sound better the more you spend. Headphones also have very large differences in power requirements… just like main speakers. I have owner headphone amps from a hundred bucks through my current setup in which with high end 300B tubes cost over $6K… and worth every penny in sonic character. This has enormous current capacity, so any headphone is going to sound it’s best. It is a Woo WA5… you can see the system under my user ID, virtual system.

Many good headphones are hard to drive. So, it is important to match the headphone amp with 

 

I highly recommend looking at Woo headphone amps. They are incredibly musical and natural. 

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