Experience with headphone amps?

I’ve been using a busted pair of AKG headphones for the last bunch of years, and am finally accepting the fact I need to upgrade. I try to do most of my mixing on my Adam A7X monitors, which sound amazing, but often that isn’t practical (I mostly end up working in my studio in the evening/nighttime, and it’s right next to my daughter’s bedroom, so blasting monstrous kicks at night doesn’t work out). Some of the recent headphone threads here have inspired me to find a really good pair of headphones for mixing, but I’m also curious if anyone is using a separate headphone amp in their set-ups, and how that’s worked out for them.

I know basically nothing about them, except that they’ve been a thing in the high-end audio world for a while. Has anyone been using one, and found it to be better than, for example, the headphone out on their interface/mixer? I have a MOTU 828x interface I use with my computer for recording, and an A&H ZED 18 that all my Elektron gear is hooked up to (the outputs of the mixer go to two of the inputs on the 828x, but unless I’m recording I usually just plug my headphones into the mixer’s headphone out). I’m not sure practically how I’d integrate a headphone amp, either, so that’s another thing I’d be curious to know about.

This is pricey at 600US but worth its weight in gold.

I’ve used the old UA audio interfaces and outputted into this amp. I only used 99 dollar MDR7509 headphones. I got way better mixes and masters from this amp. If you go to. 300 dollar set of headphones more detail comes out. If you use 1800+ headphones then this amp makes you feel like you’re in a treated studio environment. You will hear your EQ and compression moves in your mixes with this thing. I’ve had it since 2019 and am a happy camper.

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I’m not sure I need it, but my Fuck Schiit Stack drives my HE400SEs nicely.

(I’ve since replaced the 20+ year old radio shack RCAs with newer and shorter RCAs)

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As a general rule, I would suggest that if you aren’t dealing with noise, things aren’t sounding distorted, and your headphones can go loud enough, you probably don’t need a headphone amplifier.

If you want to get technical about it, the output impedance from your device should be a minimum of 1/8th that of your headphones - or ideally even lower than that - to achieve a proper damping factor.
Insufficient damping can lead to inconsistencies in the frequency response or distortion - particularly at the low end.
I find that you lose definition, and things can sound ‘bloated’ in the bass region without proper damping.

If the output impedance is not specified, it’s safe to assume that it is going to be high (probably above 50 Ω).
The headphone output from a lot of instruments, interfaces, mixers, or speaker amplifiers does tend to be quite poor - even if that device performs well using the line/speaker outputs.

The Digitakt/Digitone headphone output is specified at 55 Ω for example, which means that it’s really only suited for driving 440 Ω or higher impedance headphones (55×8, following the rule above).
In that case, even though it may get loud enough with low impedance headphones, running the output through an amp would be beneficial.
Modern headphone designs are typically below 100 Ω, so that’s going to apply to most of them these days - though there are still some older studio models in the 300–600 Ω range.

A lot of audio interfaces do not have the spec listed for their headphone output, but you may be able to find measurements online.
The YouTuber Julian Krause has measured a lot of smaller interfaces for example:

The output from a lot of them is quite disappointing - either having too high of an output impedance, or not having the power to drive many headphones properly.

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Amplifiers themselves do not have to be expensive.
There has been massive competition in recent years, which has brought high-end performance down to significantly lower price points now.

I recommend checking the Audio Science Review forum for measurements and recommendations.
A couple of hundred bucks can now get you what would have been state-of-the-art performance, at ten times the cost, just a few years ago.
In the budget range, Topping tends to be one of the better performing Chinese brands, while Schiit is often recommended for people that want something from a US company. But there are lots of options.

My preference would be to spend a little more than the absolute minimum and get something with a balanced audio input (TRS/XLR) rather than unbalanced (RCA) but that may not be useful/necessary depending on the setup.

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Many thanks, @v00d00ppl, @obscurerobot, & @Scyphozoa – very useful info! I think I’ll probably start with upgrading my headphones and spend some time with them directly connected to my interface and mixer. But a headphone amp may be in the future, so it’s great to know there are some good/not impossibly expensive options out there.

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