Arcam A32 Vs Headphone AMP

[jpfreestyler]

I am looking at getting a headphone amp, options are

musical fidelity Xcan V2 from Ebay £130 ish

Pro-ject head box MK 2 £89

Creek obh 11 £120 ish

What do you guys think ?


Any others around £150ish

How will these compare with the headphone stage in my Arcam A32 ? Is it worth the upgrade ?
Thanks

[tudj]

They should offer a decent improvement, but that depends on your headphones too.

Another headphone amp to look at in that budget is the Little Dot MK 3

[Drubbing]

Do you need an amp? if your phones don't require one, spending money on a source upgrade would be worth considering. If your source is poor, ie onboard PC, then amping will make any of the bad things far more apparent.

How the Arcam goes depends on your phones. If they're high impedance, hard to drive phones, it will depend on the power the Arcam put out. The headphone out on integrated amps is a highly variable component. Some are quite good, some suck, and when they do, they drag down the good bits of your set up.

If your phones are easy to drive ie they can do dandy without an amp, then the Arcam will be a bonus (assuming your source is sound).

All I know about the amps listed is that the Creeks have a rep in some parts as pretty ordinary sounding for the money. But no first hand exp.

I've got a Meier Corda portable amp and listened to a couple of their others and find them pretty good value. German design, maybe V good VFM in that part of the world?

Personally, I wouldn't touch the little dot; a tube amp for less than 100 quid is not going to be quality, IMO. Haven't heard one, but heard nothing but bad things about it.