Hifi or Headphone amp

Some people say arcam amps are very good. I've got no hands on experience with them but they were never really my cup of tea anyhow. (my preference for british was quad) You can look through the user manual for it here. I can't tell you how the headphone section is connected up as i can't find any schematics.
 
another choice of headphone amp :- grahamslee novo . just seen one on teh bay at £200 new / unused . ex-display apparently .. discounted due to no box

what hi-fi review :- http://www.whathifi.com/review/graham-slee-novo
41CE8gMTNLL._SS400_.jpg


this ones mine :D
418p1Kgv9EL._SS500_.jpg
 
Last edited:
Looks nice TALON but I think I'm getting the hifi bug again so I am deffo going for an integrated amp with phono inputs just in case I want to get my old vynal out the loft again ;)

I have found a second hand Marantz PM6004 going for £190 and they sound nice going by the reviews, so I may go for that if I can't find a better deal.
Cheers.
 
There aren't any schematics available for something as new as that. But I have found an image of the inside of one. Looks like the headphone socket is linked to the speaker outputs, so in principal at least it should be good. The headphone socket connection on the board is up by the relays near the speaker plugs, just above the main power supply filter capacitors. There look like there are two large relays on the outputs which will be part of the speaker protection and there looks like there is another relay just beneath the molex which will probably be the what switches between headphone out and speakers out. The large resistors by this area are probably the attenuation for the headphone out. (being green suggests they should be metal film, but this is no guarantee) There may well be components on the opposite side of the board that can't be seen though.
 
The insides of mine :E well not actually mine but someone else's! Not taking mine appart lol

7.jpg
 
Marsman said:
Some are better than others, but no headphone out on an integrated amplifier is going to match a good quality dedicated headphone amp. Integrated amps are designed for speakers first and foremost, and any headphone out is there for convenience. More so with cheaper budget integrated amps. Higher quality amps will have a better headphone out though. Depends on what headphones are being used, and what the headphone amp being compared to is. A good integrated amp will likely have a better headphone out than a cheapish budget headphone amp.
Click to expand...

yeah this is what I thought, still £100-200 for a decent headphone amp is tad pricey...

id need one with many phonos/inputs
 
joeyjojo said:
Really? There's nothing there! :p So much for a £700 amp - an alps pot and 2 opamps..

Also is that top mosfet (?) "peeling" off?

Can't wait to finish my beta 22 :D
Click to expand...

It's not as if it has a lot to do... Just drive my T1's to perfection ;)
 
Yeah that's the main reason I went for it really. I already had my MMX 300 and old pair of DT 990s so I had good experiences with Beyer but I wanted a headphone amp. I decided to go over the top and buy the A1 which then convinced me to go get the T1s since they're pretty much designed to work together :/
 
soundesciple said:
Looks nice TALON but I think I'm getting the hifi bug again so I am deffo going for an integrated amp with phono inputs just in case I want to get my old vynal out the loft again ;)

I have found a second hand Marantz PM6004 going for £190 and they sound nice going by the reviews, so I may go for that if I can't find a better deal.
Cheers.
Click to expand...

yeah i got about 40-50 vinyl sitign around atm as i had to sell my phono stage due to financial problems .. so need a new one . might get a 2nd hand rotel with onboard phono stage as that will do nicely and i can dig out my mission 780se speaker as well if i want to for loud listening :D
 
The most expensive part in that beyer headphone amp is probably the chassis followed by the alps blue beauty potentiometer, which can be bought for £14.40. The transformer is tiny (perfect for its purpose though), you can get dual 15V 30VA toroidals for £12. BD139 & BD140 can be bought for 25p each (partly because they date back to the 70's) and the MC33078P opamps can be bought for 97p each. The electrolytic capacitors look a lot like panasonic AD which are pence each and could easily be improved by using FC/FM/FK series instead which have high ripple currents and much lower ESR. (if you were feeling rich you could use nichicon solid organic polymer caps which are around £3-4 each) The wima film caps aren't likely to be more than £1 each for the sub 1uF values. Some good pictures of it's innards here.

The reason it sounds good is due to a well designed layout, the high voltage rails from the PSU and heavy use of wima MKP or MKS capacitors throughout. (for best performance they should be polypropylene film rather than polyester) You'll find that it's running at the upper limit of the opamps voltage as there is a voltage rise once it gets rectified giving something close to 17-18V rails. Film capacitors these exhibit much less distortion when compared to aluminium electrolytic. I reckon if you could buy clone PCB's for under £20, you could build one yourself into a generic chassis for under a ton.
 
Well now, i decided to go for a second hand amp off the Bay the Marants PM6003, payed for it last night and awaited delivery ASAP, Only got an Email this morning telling me they have refunded my money as it was damaged in transit to the shop, bummer or what, any way some you win some you loose some. :(

So there`s me all exited at getting a new amp, so i just went out this morning and got the cheaper 5004 model, ( from a Budget audio shop) set it up about five hours ago with the Gale mini monitors and, haven`t bean able to turn it off. i and am well pleased, i just cannot believe the nice tight punchy Bass and openness of the sound stage, and that sweet treble. :D I need to try the Mordaunt Short MS 10`s as well but don`t have any banana plugs for those yet, might nip down and get some tomorrow. ;)

So thanks for all your imput Guys.

Oh and the headphone socket on the amp sounds good too, a bit more bass than the sound card but about the same in all other respects.
 
Kei said:
Yes, using the headphone jack on a good hifi amp should be at least equal to a headphone amp. My luxman amp certainly equals and outclasses the amp built into the essence ST sound card i use. (the headphone amp is used for times when i don't have my integrated with me or it is inconvenient to use it)
Click to expand...

sarcasm i hope ? full sized amps have dreadful headphone sockets even a cheapo amp like the e5 would blow away 99.9% of amp sockets
 
Nope no sarcasm, if you lot built these things you'd understand where i am coming from. A dedicated headphone amp is the same thing as an integrated, the only difference is the scale and the impedance it is designed to handle. The reason why some headphone sockets suck is either that they are not coupled directly to the poweramp output or that the amplified signal passes across the inside of the amp in unshielded wires passing close to the powersupply components. A well designed integrated amp will have a headhpone output that will rival the best headphone amps available. The reason why my luxman stands its ground against dedicated headphone amps is simply because the headphone socket is right next to the poweramp output meaning that the socket is almost directly linked with no more than 1" of cable, plus i've also got the amp fully upgraded with polystyrene film capacitors everywhere (widely known to be the best for audio) along with some of the best electrolytic capacitors available. Similar story for my dad's leak amplifier that i recently refurbished, and that has two headphone outputs.

soundesciple, glad you like your new amp. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom