MAC or PC headphone L/R output drive?

[albireo13]

I am building an amp to drive speakers, with my MAC/iTunes as the source. I will start off using the analog L/R headphone outputs to drive the input of the amp.

My question is ... what kind of load can the headphone jacks drive?
I am having a hard time finding such info in the MAC specs.

Eventually I will add a DAC. For now, I plan to use a volume control POT in the AMPs input stage. My plan was to use a stereo, 10K POT. Thus, the MAC would have to be able to drive the 10K load impedance. Is this an issue?


Rob

 

[qusp]

the mac should have a line out or a line out setting on the HP out. it will drive 10k just fine. of course the quality wont be fantastic, but it'll get you started

 

[wakibaki]

The headphone jack can drive headphones, some of which can be as low as 16 Ohms, so 10k will not be a problem. The quality may be perfectly adequate, I've never listened to a Mac, but I've had a more than few PC laptops and desktops and the built-in sound on most was good.

w

 

[qusp]

well yeah it'll sound OK, the quality of the onboard is good as that goes, better than most PC onboard IME, but still better when opportunity allows to move on