jacobdp Wrote: > Obviously the DAC and analog line outputs of the SB2/3 are supposed to > be audiophile-grade, and there's been a lot of discussion on them here, > but I haven't seen much talk of using the built-in headphone amp for a > "good" listening setup. Is it designed to the same level?
IMHO it smokes my iPod, but by no means an audiophile dedicated headphone amplifier with a beefier power supply. The trouble with hot rodding the headphone output is that you will first want a more powerful amplifier, and then more voltage and power to feed it. Neither of these is practical as an internal hack - you'd be much better off with a external DIY amp connected to the RCAs. While we do have very clean power at +5 and +9v for the DAC and RCA op-amps, this is only possible because the current draw is so small that we can regulate it down from a higher, well filtered voltage produced in the display power supply. The power required to drive headphones necessitates a linear reg powered from the external 5VDC input. This puts roughly a 3.3v ceiling on the voltage we can (cleanly) pull, so a more powerful amplifier chip can't be simply wired in place of the existing one. So by the time you get around to bringing in a higher voltage and a better amplifier, you may as well have started from scratch in an external chassis, because you've essentially replaced the entire headphone output... and of course you'd want a 1/4" output jack too! -- seanadams ------------------------------------------------------------------------ seanadams's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=23096 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
