Headphone amplifier

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Some headphones are hard to drive and needs large voltage swings or high power up to over a watt to give any satisfying volume, my headphones dont produce any usable volume at full volume when connecting to my mp3 players, at the computer line out u barely hear anything.

Why gain on my amp is so high is cuz its actually the driver stage for a bigger amp, it was just a test to see wut it'd sound like with headphones.
 
Agreed, my last amp was a gain of 2x with a 1.4vrms input and 64 ohm cans, and it was very loud at 12 o clock.

I always wondered why people have headphone amps with +-12v-15v rails. You cant send more then +-5v into a set of cans even at 600ohm.

I use 600-ohm AKG 240DF driven with Benchmark DAC-1 USB (+/-15V headphone amp?) every day and didn't feel they get incredibly loud. Signal of 5V peak over 600-ohm load would pump out 21mW(rms) power. Since most phones are rated at 1mW for its SPL, and if we think about a speaker system rated at 1W 1m for a comparable SPL, 21W power into that speaker really isn't much either. Many of us here have amps of way more than 100w/ch, so I guess +/-15V power rail for 600-ohm phone is not insane.
 
Agreed, my last amp was a gain of 2x with a 1.4vrms input and 64 ohm cans, and it was very loud at 12 o clock.

I always wondered why people have headphone amps with +-12v-15v rails. You cant send more then +-5v into a set of cans even at 600ohm.

I use 600-ohm AKG 240DF driven with Benchmark DAC-1 USB (+/-15V headphone amp?) every day and didn't feel they get incredibly loud. Signal of 5V peak over 600-ohm load would pump out 21mW(rms) power. Since most phones are rated at 1mW for its SPL, and if we think about a speaker system rated at 1W 1m for a comparable SPL, 21W power into that speaker really isn't much either. Many of us here have amps of way more than 100w/ch, so I guess +/-15V power rail for 600-ohm phone is not insane.
 
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This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.