Impressive class A headphone amp

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It's an impressive number. CCS driven Darlington VAS contributes to a very high Aol which probably really helps but also lowers the output impedance. I like the output stage a lot as well.

To my suprise, I recently found out that the IEC standard for headphone amps is for a 120-ohm output impedance. Most headphones (including my HD555s) are designed for that. While most traditional SS amp design attempts to create near 0 output impedances, I'm amazed that virtually no DIY headphone amp designs I have seen conform to that standard. IMO it could be as simple as a 120-ohm output resistor in series with the load or as complicated as attempting to control Rc/Re and hFe with Ic

What are anyone elses thoughts on this?
 
Hi Azira,
it would be very simple to wire in a fixed 120R resistor after the output of any headphone amp. It would also make stability very easy to achieve.

However, I suspect that wiring in a switchable parallel resistor bank alongside the120r would show that better sound quality comes from quite low values of output impedance. Don't be surprised to find that 10r to 22r (and maybe a lot less) is probably near optimum.

Tell us after you have tried it.
 
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