Headphone amplifier

[Knox]

Years ago in the ‘60’s, here in Australia I used to be able to get English i.e. British magazines about Hi-Fi
In one of which I remember a design for a valve amplifier for headphones
This was a low output amp as little power is needed to run headphones to a reasonable level

A colleague built this little amp and gave me a demo
Remember this was in the days of vinyl

The sound quality was out of this world, as in superb i.e. very involving
It made me want to listen to all my vinyl records anew since they all sounded so much more lifelike

Are there any designs currently available for valve headphone amps to be run from high quality CD players in the UK?

In my opinion the quality of sound from such a union would leave iPods for dead!

[StevieDvd]

Yep there are literally a few, or if you count the models coming in from China/US there are dozens.

Your best bet is to pop over to head-fi.org where there are many reviews of the various models starting from budget to oh my god you must be too rich.

I've not got into tube models myself so can't name the models from memory, but a few that stand out in mind are Musical Fidelity, Earmax and Ray Samuels Audio.

[alexs2]

There are a good number,and the price range is very wide.

At the bottom end of the range,the Chinese amps are well priced and generally well made,but most are variations on the same general theme if not direct clones in some cases.

The amps listed above are good also,but would suggest the Earmax Pro for it's higher output over the standard version,alhtough sonically,both are excellent for the price.

The MF amps are good if you plan to either modify or use different tubes,and easy to do so with,plus there are a number of support forums for them.

In the upper ranges,a number of the Stax phones use tubed energisers and sound superb,and for dynamic headphones,the Cary 300B Sei is also superb but both that and the Stax's are costly.

[Knox]

Thanks a million StevieDVD and Alexs2

I’ll investigate head-fi.org