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Portable players traditionally have poor quality audio circuitry inside them. Being used to it, you probably do not notice how poor the audio sounds the louder the volume gets. Static is introduced, instruments blend together, and frequencies become distorted. The iPod and other MP3 players are notoriously known to have among the worst audio quality in the portable player market. The job of a headphone amplifier is to take all the burden of amplification off of the player and process the sound.
So who needs a headphone amplifier? The ideal candidates are people who have high end headphones, or have a hearing impairment. However, larger and high-end headphones manufactured today need more power to drive them. So, they tax the audio player even more than the standard earbuds they provide. Examples of higher end headphones are Etymotic Research, Shure, Grado, and Bose. Another time when it's essential to have a headphone amplifier is when you are trying to split the audio between two or more pairs of headphones. As this doubles the power required from the audio player and introduces even more distortion and static. Having a headphone amplifier will reduce the load on the MP3 player and reduce total distortion and battery consumption.
How does a headphone amplifier process sound? Have you ever noticed after wearing headphones for a long time, it becomes uncomfortable and makes you feel a restless? There is a reason for this. Audio we hear in real life is never only coming in through one ear at a time. Even if someone's shouting at you directly from your side, your other ear hears a little bit of that sound through your facial bones, as well as from refractions of the sound off other objects around you. A good headphone amplifier can process sound and make it more natural for the body to process. This technique is called cross feeding. When you listen to your headphones without cross feeding, there are some sounds that only come in from one ear. This fatigues your brain because the sound seems unnatural and it can't figure out the location. A headphone amplifier will automatically cross feed a bit of audio from each channel to the other ear, resulting in a much more pleasant and natural listening experience. This may sound crazy, but the difference is obvious once you have listened to a headphone amplifier.
When you think of an amplifier, you most likely think of the large box types that you see used in cars. This is not the case for headphone amplifiers. Since headphones do not usually need more than 1 Watt of power to work their best, most headphone amplifiers are small enough to fit in your pocket. You can bring them on road trips, airplane rides, and even just when walking around listening to music.
A good headphone amplifier and set of headphone can rival some of the best home audio systems out there. To get a top of the line home audio system is very expensive, costing several hundred or thousands of dollars. You can literally have the best portable audio in the world. When done on a small scale, better audio is a lot easier to manage.
Add a headphone amplifier to your headphones and find out how music should sound.
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