Headphone amps - I don't get it...

mdixson · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:02

Okay I understand the point of an Amp on a good seperate's setup at home; what I don't get is why you would want one with a mobile device, such as an mp3 player.

Surely you can't avoid the built in amp that is probably rubbish... so why amp a poor signal in the first place?

I currently have my iPhone and Shure e4c's and was looking at buying/DIY headphone amps untill this dawned on me!

Any help with regards to this would be great; I really need a good reason to get one of these or not...

Cheers! :confused:

J1234 · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:10

Having an amp with a portable device completely bypasses the built in amp, so with the iPhone you'd use the dock connection to connect it to an amp (LOD to 3.5mm usually) and the volume is controlled by the amp not the iPhone.

Amping directly from the headphone out will be pointless, yes.

mdixson · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:13

Justin said:
Having an amp with a portable device completely bypasses the built in amp, so with the iPhone you'd use the dock connection to connect it to an amp (LOD to 3.5mm usually) and the volume is controlled by the amp not the iPhone.

Amping directly from the headphone out will be pointless, yes.

Okay that is what I thought may be the comeback, so in this case is it worth me getting an amp and if so is there one that will conect to the dock connector on the iPhone without some form of adapter?

hohum · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:13

Power delivery, mainly. Instead of relying on the mp3 player to power your headphones you just pass on the audio signal to the amp, which can do a much better job of driving them... thus improved audio quality.

J1234 · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:17

mdixson said:
Okay that is what I thought may be the comeback, so in this case is it worth me getting an amp and if so is there one that will conect to the dock connector on the iPhone without some form of adapter?

It's worth getting one if you want to improve the sound quality on your mp3 player, and so you can pump up the volume a bit more. They're fairly cheap to buy/make too.

Any normal portable amp will work, you just need a LOD - 3.5mm cable, this:

And connect that to the line in on the amp.

You can make one of these cables too, which is good fun if you're going down the DIY approach.

mdixson · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:24

Justin said:
It's worth getting one if you want to improve the sound quality on your mp3 player, and so you can pump up the volume a bit more. They're fairly cheap to buy/make too.

Any normal portable amp will work, you just need a LOD - 3.5mm cable, this:

And connect that to the line in on the amp.

You can make one of these cables too, which is good fun if you're going down the DIY approach.

Cool, this is great advice, i'm wondering if the DIY approach is gonna be a good one or if I should opt for a retail amp. Was looking to get the Shure se530's soon so something that will do these justice would be great!

The DIY one i'm looking at is this:
http://www.headwize.com/projects/cmoy2_prj.htm

http://tangentsoft.net/audio/cmoy-tutorial/

p4radox · 16 Dec 2008 at 16:50

mdixson said:
Surely you can't avoid the built in amp that is probably rubbish... so why amp a poor signal in the first place?

The "inbuilt" amp of the portable device is often not that bad. The main point in portable headphone amps is to be able to power larger drivers/lower impedances ie: bigger headphones than the crappy little in-ear jobbies you get with iPods.

Considering it like this, you can see a marked improvement in the sound quality.

My home made Cmoy amp improves the sound of my iRiver H120 when using my Sennheiser HD555 'phones. Considering these 'phones don't really require an amp and that the iRiver has a pretty clean output I can only imagine what a decent amp with some high performance 'phones would sound like.