• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

output transformer for 600 Ohm headphones

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For a headphone amp, the linearity and drive requirements of a 6080 aren't bad, at least if used as a OTL (capacitor coupled) cathode follower.

I've built this one. It sounded nice enough, but the design I listed earlier sounds better and uses less power 🙂

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...The answer is distortion for a strapped pentode increases at both high and low loads....

*Near and beyond maximum "undistorted" output* When blindly testing with the *same* drive voltage for all conditions.

Hi-Z load a pentode and the gain goes up, the plate clips, both up and down, which makes 3rd.

If they had turned-down the drive for high level and high load (as you would do when the sound was harsh) the 3rd would drop way down.

Any tube bigger than your thumb, properly loaded (none of this R-C coupling to 250r load), will have quite low THD until your ears implode.
 
In the case of 600 ohm you don't need a resistor.

I did a test and hooked my cans direct on the amp (there is hum in background), I recognize the sound and its problems, but having a good amp with headphones doesn't make me like the headphones any tiny bit. On the other hand it sounds great listening to vinyl, which I never did before with headphones, I recognize the sound, its limitations and it is way better than dac sound, powerful, true, superb sound.
 
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