If you spend lotsa time with headphone or your puny little MP3 playing cellphone just cant seems to be able to blast off your ear drums then this headphone amplifier is definitely a gadget you cant do without!

Headphones need about a thousandth as much power as loudspeakers to achieve similar sound pressure levels at the eardrums. This generally means a few milliwatts per side, at most, for normal listening. A few tens of milliwatts, for loud music or if you’re using unusually inefficient ‘phones - as with loudspeakers, manufacturers of high-end headphones may sacrifice efficiency for higher fidelity.

You wouldn’t think even cheap music hardware would have much trouble delivering this little power. But, actually, even quite expensive home stereo gear frequently doesn’t drive headphones very well, especially at high volume. And if you’re pumping your tunes out of a mobile multi-faceted transformative device at sufficient volume to cut through the sound of the bus, surf or very upset policeman tied to a chair, you’re likely to be asking for rather more power, from an amp of rather lower capability.

Some portable players (including big-brand units) sound lousy at all volume levels, usually because of a unavoidable equalisation settings where “ROCK”, “JAZZ”, “POP” and “CLASS” each manage, paradoxically, to sound worse than the other three. Lots of cheap portables also come with ghastly bundled earphones that add their own vacuum-cleaner-tube ambience to everything. Even if you avoid these problems, though, many portables sound OK playing quiet and lousy playing loud.

Headphone amplifiers are standard equipment for ‘phone-loving audiophiles. Basic models don’t cost much, but, as usual, the sky’s the limit for the amount of money you can spend if you start talking valve-powered zero-tolerance Class-Better-Than-A voodoo-infused gear.

You don’t have to spend a fortune for a commercial headphone amp, but it’s definitely possible.

Or you can choose not to choose a commercial product. You can choose something else. Something like Chu Moy headphone Amplifier. Heck you can even build one yourself with infos gather from this Site
Overall

If you use headphones a lot, and often wish they were a bit louder, then you need a headphone amp. Never mind airy-fairy audiophile double-talk; your headphones probably can play painfully loudly without running out of puff, if only the amp driving them can provide enough power.

Still on the subject of prosaic-reasons-to-buy - it’s handy to have one simple manual control for computer volume, as people with regular speakers, and/or bells-and-whistles multimedia keyboards, already know. Just run a game, and discovered the menu clicks are inaudible/deafening, never mind the actual game sound? Tweak the volume appropriately without quitting, or tempting fate by switching back to the desktop. Neat.

Now, if your headphones are awful bargain-bin pieces of plastic garbage, your first purchase should be a decent set of cans (man), rather than something to make your current crap smellier. Hie thee to the hi-fi store with some of your favourite CDs, and do some auditioning. You can get a seriously excellent pair of headphones for the price of a quite modest pair of speakers, and it’s not too hard to figure out what’s likely to suit you.

If you’ve got some decent ‘phones, though, a simple amp like a CMoy can considerably increase your listening pleasure. More volume, and very probably better sound too.

And tons of battery life from a plain old nine-volter.

And the sheer geekly joy of owning a lolly tin with a switch and a light.

Highly recommended.

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