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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Headphone amp recommendations and advice posted by EgilG on February 17, 2000 at 18:26:34:
By that I mean, use your power amp. To that end, I re-post my DIY "Add a Headphone jack to your really good amp the proper way" down below.Adding a Headphone Jack to a Quality Power Amp
You may not be aware of it, but it is relatively simple to build a very high quality headphone jack that will work with your
favorite power amplifier.Qualifiers: The amp must be able to have the two stereo channels grounds connected together without ill effects. You will
probaly want to put a switch on the output of the power amp unless it is a spare not used to drive the maion speakers. An alternative is to use high quality bannana jacks to connect and dsconnect the speaker load when using the headphones. A huge powerful amp is not required, and the smaller power amps that tend to sound sweeter work sound better anyway.Details: Obtain some very high quality resistors (Vishay foil units are my top choice, other wise, Caddock or any good wirewound {Ohmite} should do. Try to make sure that the body or leads are not made of magnetic material) A value in the range of 270 ohms to 100 ohms and another 1/10 that value times two is all you need. The power rating of the resistors should be approx. 1/30 that of the power amp to avoid excessive power dissipation becoming a problem. Remember, the actual heat dissipation is due to long term heating not peak power on transients. A pair of ten watt resistors should do the job nicely. The larger value resistor is connected to the output terminal of the power amp and the other end to the smaller
value resistor. This junction of the two resistors is connected to the headphone jack terminal for the appropriate channel, and the other end of the smaller value resistor is connected to ground. Repeat for the other channel. The two channels grounds should be connected to the ground lug of the headphone jack.What you have created is a resistive divider that has a low output impedance to help damp the headphones diaphram. It will have an output impedance of around 10 to 27 ohms. depending on the value of the smaller resistor. The load seen by the amp is from 110 ohms to 297 ohms. What this voltage divider does is reduce the signal, and hence the noise and low
level distortion form the amp by approx. 20 dB. Connecting headphones directly to most power amplifiers is very frustrating, not to mention dangerous, as the noise, hum and low level colorations are maddening on headphones, which usually only require milliwatts to be driven to loud levels.Most inexpensive recievers and intergrated amps with headphone jacks merely use series resistors, which results in high output impedance and a corresponding increase in diaphram resonances due to poor damping. The circuit I describe maintains most of the damping while reducing noise and hum, etc. and allowin ghe power amp to drive to decent levels
without a significant amount of load on it.Using this type of headphone connection can allow you to hear the inherent and intrisnic quality of your power amp without any loudspeaker/cable interactions to mask what the amp it self is doing with having to drive any current. Some amps respond very well to this hookup, others can sound kind of rough, even though they drive a loudspeaker quite well. The
cost is right, so experiment.Jon Risch
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Follow Ups
- How about the headphone amp you already have? - Jon Risch 02/17/0018:36:58 02/17/00 (0)
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