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Does anyone know of one? I just got a Fiio mini portable amp for my headphones and the difference is amazing. So being me I wanted to build a DIY headphone amp for desktop use. My googling hasn't done much to help, but i think it would be a neat mod. Thanks for the help guys!
Edit:
I found this, but i don't know if there was a better design for a desktop amp.
http://www.tangentsoft.net/audio/cmoy-tutorial/
Well, sound is electricity being applied to a coil and removed (or is it reversed?) X times a second, so...
Here are a few projects I gleaned from hack-a-day.
http://diyaudioprojects.com/Solid/Tu...Headphone-Amp/
http://www.amb.org/audio/mmm/
http://diyaudioprojects.com/Solid/12...LM317-Headamp/
Here is a video that Patrick Norton and Dave Calkins did for Systm on Rev3 where they put a Chu Moy together.
lol, the only headphone amps I've ever built were based on the trusty old $1 LM386 analog audio amplifier chip, pretty much using the exact circuit layout presented in the datasheet.
Technical specifications measuring sound quality might be slightly inferior to other dedicated ICs and controller boards, but it sounds fine to me (and amazes other people) and I suspect the frequency response of the headphones themselves is far more of a limiting factor than the amp circuitry. Distortion through the LM386 part is acceptably minimal, even at full gain (and even when exaggerated with a makeshift Darlington transistor signal amp), this distortion is still almost entirely drowned out by the 60Hz transformer hum rippling out of my Gold-Standard PSU. I also think that intelligent layout and solid build quality in the amp construction has great impact on performance, even top-spec parts will produce noise when stamp-soldered alongside garbage SMT caps on a cheap PCB in some Shenzhen factory. For a one-off project it pays to actually test a few identically rated secondary components in place before soldering, using only the ones which fall into tightest tolerances and produce the cleanest and quietest signal. Incidentally, I tend to set aside the noisiest nastiest parts to make noise-generator and audio oscillator circuits, where such properties are actually desirable.
FWIW, I generally use quality headphones, currently favouring Etymotic ER-6 isolator headphones, I avoid the cheap (yet overpriced) consumer junk headphones made by Sony.