cageymaru
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2003
- Messages
- 22,060
The 50 watt per channel Class AB Emotiva Audio BasX A-100 stereo amplifier could be the best headphone amplifier out to drive high impedance headphones. The narrator of the following video explains that the average amplifier has some resistors inline with the speaker outputs for headphone operation. Unfortunately the average cheap home theater amplifier lacks high quality circuitry for driving headphones properly. So Emotiva Audio decided to create the ultimate headphone amplifier.
In this basic amplifier design, Emotiva Audio has installed the same resistors inline with the speaker output to drive headphones. But unlike everyone else, there is a way to bypass the resistors so that you can drive your headphones with all of the amplifier's power! Of course this is dangerous for your headphones so the narrator of the video goes into a discussion of great length on how dangerous this is at the beginning of the video and also corrects some aesthetic design flaws near the end of the video to make sure that you don't fry your headphones. If your interest in this amplifier is piqued at this point, I suggest watching the entire video.
He goes on to test various hard to drive headphones and explains how everything integrates with his PC. If someone would make a list of them I would be grateful as I tend to not pay attention to things I have to save for to buy! He was annoyed by the length of time that the optional auto turn on feature took to start the music playing, and he didn't appreciate that it went into an optional standby mode after 5 minutes 30 seconds. I never cut my gear off so this wouldn't affect me in the slightest, but it seemed very important to mention for those that like those types of features.
He uses colorful language so I feel as if I should warn you about that. All in all I found the video very interesting especially since he was showing it in a working PC environment. 50 watts per channel should be enough for the average set of PC speakers and overkill for most headphones. Enjoy the torodial transformer porn at least if you watch it to the 2:15 mark!
In this basic amplifier design, Emotiva Audio has installed the same resistors inline with the speaker output to drive headphones. But unlike everyone else, there is a way to bypass the resistors so that you can drive your headphones with all of the amplifier's power! Of course this is dangerous for your headphones so the narrator of the video goes into a discussion of great length on how dangerous this is at the beginning of the video and also corrects some aesthetic design flaws near the end of the video to make sure that you don't fry your headphones. If your interest in this amplifier is piqued at this point, I suggest watching the entire video.
He goes on to test various hard to drive headphones and explains how everything integrates with his PC. If someone would make a list of them I would be grateful as I tend to not pay attention to things I have to save for to buy! He was annoyed by the length of time that the optional auto turn on feature took to start the music playing, and he didn't appreciate that it went into an optional standby mode after 5 minutes 30 seconds. I never cut my gear off so this wouldn't affect me in the slightest, but it seemed very important to mention for those that like those types of features.
He uses colorful language so I feel as if I should warn you about that. All in all I found the video very interesting especially since he was showing it in a working PC environment. 50 watts per channel should be enough for the average set of PC speakers and overkill for most headphones. Enjoy the torodial transformer porn at least if you watch it to the 2:15 mark!
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