connecting headphones to a small Tripath amp?

[Brisso57]

HI

I have a Rose Voix amp. It's a Tripath, delivering (I believe) 15 WPC into 4 ohms.

It doesn't have a headphone socket.

Can I use it to drive my vintage headphones, by simply making an adapter cable: RCA's to 6mm female socket?

... or do I need to include some form of attenuator, so as to not overload the headphones?

Thanks

 

[rayma]

Can I use it to drive my vintage headphones, by simply making an adapter cable:
RCA's to 6mm female socket?or do I need to include some form of attenuator,
so as to not overload the headphones?

You can start with a series resistor in each channel, typically 100 Ohms, until you get used
to the combination. The phones may very well sound better with smaller resistors (or none), though.

 

[Hikari1]

Tripath chip will explode when it sees the common ground of the two headphone channels. Your phones must have seperate grounds to use with a tripath chip.

 

[abraxalito]

Transformer's the solution to bridged outputs feeding 'phones with common ground connection, it'll also provide attenuation if required (step down).

 

[Brisso57]

Transformer's the solution to bridged outputs feeding 'phones with common ground connection, it'll also provide attenuation if required (step down).

Are there any commercially-available products to achieve this?

 

[Brisso57]

Tripath chip will explode when it sees the common ground of the two headphone channels. Your phones must have seperate grounds to use with a tripath chip.

Thanks for the prompt warning! (phew)

 

[Hikari1]

Ive smoked a tripath chip. Almost lit my pants on fire. The amps power cable was drapped across my lap when it happened.

If you really want to use that amp with headphones its probably easier to just rewire your heaaadphones to 4 pin xlr and put an xlr jack on the amp. I dont know what headphones you want to use but most phones dont need that much current or the 20db of gain the tripath amp has. A better cheap solution would be a cmoy headphone amp or something like that.

 

[rayma]

Thanks for the prompt warning! (phew)

You can rewire some phones for 4 wire operation. Most have a 1/4" stereo phone plug
only for compatibility with common equipment. A transformer will only make the sound worse.

 

[Brisso57]

Ive smoked a tripath chip. Almost lit my pants on fire. The amps power cable was drapped across my lap when it happened.

If you really want to use that amp with headphones its probably easier to just rewire your heaaadphones to 4 pin xlr and put an xlr jack on the amp. I dont know what headphones you want to use but most phones dont need that much current or the 20db of gain the tripath amp has. A better cheap solution would be a cmoy headphone amp or something like that.

I'm thinking you may be right. Thanks.

 

[abraxalito]

Are there any commercially-available products to achieve this?

I'm not aware of any finished products, perhaps too many variables related to the power and impedance requirements.

That being said its not really that difficult to wind one's own, I've made several using ferrite cores (RM14 work well). The cores are available from Mouser and others.

@rayma - have you tried headphone listening via a step-down transformer or is your statement about how it'll sound speculation?

 

[Pano]

Correct, you have to be careful here. Not to mention that the amp has a rather high ultrasonic carrier.

You can put three resistors in series across each set of speaker terminals to make an attenuator and ground lift. You can try 20R-8R-20R in series, but the values don't need to be exact, you can go higher - just use the same on left and right. Connect the to either side of the 8 ohm resistor. One side of each 8 ohm will be connected to the same point on the other channel for your headphone common ground.

There are some tweaks to this, but that's the basic idea.