Talk:Headphone amplifier

untitled section
Anonymous: The caution notice is badly worded and does not belong on this page. This page is about headphone amplifiers, not the dangers of listening to music "real loud". Someone more qualified than I should rectify this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.19.6.125 (talk) 22:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

www.headwize.com is NOT a commercial site.
 * Removed extra linking and re-worded the caution notice. -- Rohitbd

Headwize link
Apparently someone anonymous feels strongly about Headwize. However, it doesn't seem to be a very informative link. What was the purpose of adding it? The forums? If so, I would suggest replacing the link with a direct link to the Headwize forums. The link to Headwize seems to endorse them as a source of the best deals, which is beyond the scope of Wikipedia. --LostLeviathan 02:43, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Headwize is the forum where the online headphone community started. It's since declined in popularity with the advent of Head-Fi, but the HeadWize Library as well as the DIY forum remain an important resource. --Anon

Head-Fi Link
I feel that the Head-Fi forums are very informative about this subject, it is one of the most comprehensive resources for headphone amp reviews on the net and the links should stay in the article. =) Dept of Alchemy 05:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * problem is that Head-Fi, like many audiophile websites, will often indulge in what can at best be described as beliefs inconsistent with reality. To put it bluntly if half the things said on that forum were true then Randi would owe someone a million dollars Superslash (talk) 15:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite?
(Putting in Talk for people to scrutinise. Feel free to improve, correct technical errors and/or merge with main article.)

A headphone amplifier is an audio component that drives headphones. It typically takes a line level signal, and amplifies the voltage and current to levels high enough to power headphones. All devices that have a headphone output, such as CD players or digital audio players, have a built-in headphone amplifier. Standalone headphone amplifiers are also available to augment or bypass these, giving a better-sounding (and often louder) signal.

A headphone amplifier typically consists of two amplification stages: a voltage gain stage, and a current gain (or output) stage. The voltage gain stage boosts the voltage of the input signal from a nominal 0.3162 volts RMS (line level) to a higher voltage, suitable for the headphones being driven. (A higher voltage leads to a "louder" signal.) This stage may use an op-amp or a vacuum tube, either of which lends a slightly different sound "colouring" to the output. The "gain" rating of headphone amplifiers refers to its voltage gain.


 * About "either of which lends a slightly different sound "colouring" to the output". The whole purpose of a headphone amp is to deal with the impedance (as stated elsewhere in the article) and to increase the available voltage gain to insure more loudness.  However, only products sold with sound colorization as a feature should color the sound, since many listeners spend extra money to avoid sound colorization.  There is no scientific evidence that op-amps or tubes must color the sound.  Colorization can be controlled completely by the internal supporting circuitry design, either to elicit tubes and op-amps to color the sound in various ways, or to force the colorization to zero, even while using tubes and op-amps.  Since it's reasonable for a reader to assume correct science in an encyclopedic article, let's stick to the science. Ohgddfp (talk) 23:47, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

The current gain stage boosts the amount of current available to the headphones. This stage usually uses a buffer, sometimes as an IC and other times as a discrete circuit. The amount of current that a headphone draws is related to its impedance; given a typical operating voltage and impedance for a headphone, its current draw is derived from Ohm's law.

In some headphone amplifier designs, one of these stages may be omitted, or they may be combined.

A standalone headphone amplifier is designed to improve the sound from standard audio sources. The built-in headphone amplifiers on many of these are built from cheap parts, introducing distortion and noise to the signal. In addition, many portable devices emphasise battery life over sound quality; as a result, their underpowered headphone outputs can not drive high-end headphones to their full potential. Standalone headphone amplifiers connect to the line-out or headphone-out ports of audio sources, to provide a superior output signal.

A new section is needed to include Headphone amplifiers for pro audio
In the pro audio terminology a headphone amplifier is device that allows multiple head-sets to be connected to a one or more audio sources in the same time. There is a whole range of headphone amps for music recording and production and some of them have rather different functionality then Hi-Fi or consumer headphone amps. They can have sub-mixing capabilities, MIDI muting, subgroup and source selection and more. I think that a separate section or even a separate page would be in order just for the pro-audio headphone amps. For now I'm adding a separate section for pro audio amps.--Mike Sorensen 14:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Output Impedance Section
This entire section reads like an advertisement, and makes a number of uncited or unsourced claims (I don't want to just go through and mark it up with "citation needed" left and right though); anyone particularly opposed to just removing the section? Obobskivich (talk) 08:34, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The output impedance is probably the most important characteristic of a headphone amp, so it needs to be addressed. I did remove the link to that specific headphone amp, it was dead anyway. The rest of the information is now mostly objective and very well sourced. 18.62.28.46 (talk) 18:52, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Output impedance is vital. If it is incompatible with your headphones it can absolutely ruin the listening experience.--78.28.107.82 (talk) 14:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)