A Headphone Amplifier
December 26th, 2008 — 4:56pm
Why does anyone need a headphone amplifier? You can just plug your headphones into the jack on your iPod, can’t you? Yes, of course you can. However there are some high-end headphones that have low impedance — they need more current than the usual high-impedance phones. Often these headphones are low efficiency, meaning for the same loudness they need more input power than more efficient phones. Finally, the output amplifiers in low-power portable devices are often of indifferent quality, particularly at reasonable volume. A headphone amplifier fixes all these problems; and if you make it yourself, you can add extra features like crossover networks.