Is it safe to connect active monitor to headphone amp?

I have a mini3 headphone amp.

If i were to buy some active monitors such as maudio BX5a, is it safe if I connect it to the headphone amp? I wanna use the volume knob from the headphone amp.

I'm not sure how safe it would be, but I have used a CMoy for this purpose before with a T-Amp and some bookshelf speakers.

I wouldn't. The monitors are designed for a line level input.

It could work, but you could damage things. The problem is that the headphone amp can probably output more voltage than the speakers can take. There is, unfortunately, no hard and fast standard for how much voltage a line level input should need to cause an amp to reach maximum volume but it is generally in the realm of 1-2 volts. The headphone amp likely can output a few times that. Well if you turned it up like that, it'd cause the amp in the speakers to start clipping and likely damage the speakers.

So it would work, as long as the volume wasn't turned up too much. What's too much? That's the problem, I can't tell you.

As such I would recommend against it since you could accidentally damage things.

What you want is a preamp or attenuator. You should absolutely not use a headphone amp in this way.

ashmedai said:

What you want is a preamp or attenuator. You should absolutely not use a headphone amp in this way.

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Curious, does this apply to sound cards as well? My Xonar d1 has an op amp: is that what headphone amps contain?

An op-amp is a type of integrated circuit, not a type of audio amplifier.