How to Choose a Headphone Amp and DAC
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
1,238 words · ~6 min read
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so after hours perhaps even days of
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painstaking research you finally decided
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on a pair of fancy headphones to replace those crappy little earbuds that came
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with your smartphone and good for you but unfortunately actually using them
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often isn't a matter of just plugging your cans into a headphone jack you see
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nicer headphones often need more power in order to operate properly due in part
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to their High impedance which is a measure of how much something resists
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electrical current High impedances allow headphones to be built in ways that can
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result in better overall sound quality but they also mean that they often need
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an amplifier in order to drive them properly if your headphones don't get
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enough power not only will they be too quiet to enjoy but they also won't sound
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right in different frequencies meaning you've just paid a lot of money for nice
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headphones that won't sound nearly good enough to justify their cost but how do
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you know if an amp is even necessary typically many cheaper headphones or
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headphones that are designed specifically to work with portable
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devices such as smartphones will have lower impedances usually 35 ohms or less
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making an additional amplifier unnecessary in most cases but once you
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start getting to 50 ohms and higher amplifiers can make an audible
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difference and north of 100 ohms you'll definitely need one if you're wondering
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how much impedance your headphones have this can use usually be found pretty
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easily on your product packaging or a spec page so if it turns out that you
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need an amplifier what should you pick other than following the usual steps of
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checking online reviews and manufacturer reputations a good place to start is to
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determine not only your headphones impedance rating but their efficiency or
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sensitivity which is a measure of how many dbb the headphones will output per
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mwatt or molt if your headphone specs
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don't give a number it's easy to look up efficiency or sensitivity ratings for
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lots of popular models online once you've got one of these numbers you can
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enter it along with your impedance rating on one of a handful of freely
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available headphone power calculators online a few of which will be listed in
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the video description down below you can then tell how many Ms you need to get
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your headphones up to a certain level of loudness a good idea is to assume 110 DB
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which is about 10 lower than the threshold of P
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after you've gotten this number just have a look at whether the power output
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of the amp you like is at least that high this will be listed as how many Ms
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it can put into a certain number of ohms so make sure the power output is
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sufficient for your headphon impedance many amp spec sheets will say things
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like this model can put 40 milliamps
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into 300 ohms to give you a better idea
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of exactly how much juice it can provide it's also a good idea to to get
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something a little more powerful than the calculator says that you need as
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many headphones can have variable impedances depending on whether you're
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listening to low or high frequency sounds for example popular models of
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Sennheiser Headphones are known to have impedance spikes in the lower
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frequencies again you can look up impedance graphs for lots of headphones
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online to see if they're significantly different than what's listed on the box
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and choose an amplifier accordingly the last Main specification you should be
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looking at is the amplifier's output impedance which is separate from your
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headphones impedance rating A good rule of thumb to follow is you want to make
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sure that your amps output impedance is at least eight times lower than your
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headphones impedance so if you've got a
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200 ohm set of headphones you want an amplifier with an output impedance of no
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more than 25 ohms okay Luke I get it
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it's super important to get the right amp but what about the right deck I mean
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it's even in the video title come on man well a digital analog converter can be
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helpful in certain circumstances a DAC takes the digital signal from your
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computer whether it's an MP3 or flak file or whatever and converts it into an
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analog signal that your headphones can then turn into sound your computer has a
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Dack built in to allow you to plug in headphones or speakers but some cheaply
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implemented dacks can pick up electrical noise from inside your PC PC which can
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result in hissing crackling static all
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that kind of stuff right to your headphones or speakers so if you're
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experiencing these symptoms or weird sounding audio in general an external
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Dack that's outside of the electrically noisy environment that is your computer
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it can definitely help but if you aren't suffering from these symptoms you
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probably don't need an external deck especially as onboard motherboard audio
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has improved quite a bit over recent years but some audio file do claim that
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a nice Dack can open up the sound stage on nicer headphones especially
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open-backed ones so if you really want to explore high-end high-fi it can be
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something worth considering and although all this sounds like a lot of unpleasant
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