# Does a headphone amp just increase loudness? Or something else too?



## ravisurdhar

Does a headphone amp just increase loudness, or does it do something else too? I've got a pair of SE530s (AMAZING! ) and a pair of UE 5vi's, and both have an absurdly high sensitivity (119 db/mw or something like that). Would an amp really do anything for me? Sources are my MacBook Pro (iTunes, mp3s varying from 128-320kbps) and my iPhone.


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## Uncle Erik

I don't know about IEMs (not my specialty), but amps do a lot more than increase volume. Amps have more to do with control. It's the difference between driving a school bus down a twisty road at 55 MPH and driving a fine sports car down the same twisty road at 55 MPH. Same speed, same road, but one does a much better job at it than the other.


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## Mr.Sh0eWax

Often times the built in amplifier in your MBP will not be able to deliver the power (in terms current / voltage - someone else can probably offer more details here) that less sensitive headphones require in order to reproduce that analog signal accurately (or to their fullest). 

You could try thinking of it as two singers, singing the same score. Even though the music is written the same, a novice singer might not have the breath control and strength in her vocal cords to reproduce the music as well as a veteran singer. Maybe that's too simplistic.


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## Nuwidol

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ravisurdhar said:


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  Usually when amping you take the sources signal straight from a line out rather than the players own headphone out. this way you bypass the players internal amp & use a clean unaltered signal.


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## HiFlight

An external amplifier presents a very high impedance to the output of the player amp or DAC thus helping to prevent alterations of the signal due the varying impedance of the headphones. This change of impedance is a result of the wide variation and complexities of the frequencies presented to the headphones.


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## wuwhere

An external amp has its own clean power supply, it doesn't have to share power with anything else.


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## Uncle Erik

ravisurdhar said:


> But how? It's still the same (analog) signal...other than boosting it or changing the EQ, what can an amp do?





 
It has to do with control. Moving a voicecoil and cone is a physical act. Some amps have a better "grip" on that than others do. You can have one amp able to push the cone out, but due to weak power, it might not stop it and move it in the opposite direction as fast as another one can. That comes across as a sloppy sound, sometimes making it sound veiled. Other amps will run out of power during critical passages, and much else.

Also, the amp's ouput impedance curve is very important. It determines how much power is available at certain frequencies and that intertwines with the headphone's impedance curve.


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## 12345142

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12345142 said:


> The search bar is at the top of the page.


 

 Fine, I'll clarify. This question has been asked way too many times. All too often newcomers to Head-Fi immediately start a thread asking their questions, rather than using the search function.
   
  OP: try searching for "why headphone amp" in the search bar - I just did. I guarantee you'll find what you're looking for, including several discussions on the same topic that have been started before.


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## latenlazy

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mr.sh0ewax said:


> Often times the built in amplifier in your MBP will not be able to deliver the power (in terms current / voltage - someone else can probably offer more details here) that less sensitive headphones require in order to reproduce that analog signal accurately (or to their fullest).
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> You could try thinking of it as two singers, singing the same score. Even though the music is written the same, a novice singer might not have the breath control and strength in her vocal cords to reproduce the music as well as a veteran singer. Maybe that's too simplistic.


 

 I don't believe it's just that. Some amps distort the signal (especially the built in ones, which I imagine are super cheap). When you get a separate amp you're not just trying to get more power, but also trying to route your signal to a better opamp to reduce or eliminate that distortion.


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## Mr.Sh0eWax

latenlazy said:


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Sure, definitely. I didn't by any means try to imply my answer was all encompassing. Sorry if that misled you.


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## ravisurdhar

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uncle erik said:


> It has to do with control. Moving a voicecoil and cone is a physical act. Some amps have a better "grip" on that than others do. You can have one amp able to push the cone out, but due to weak power, it might not stop it and move it in the opposite direction as fast as another one can. That comes across as a sloppy sound, sometimes making it sound veiled. Other amps will run out of power during critical passages, and much else.Also, the amp's ouput impedance curve is very important. It determines how much power is available at certain frequencies and that intertwines with the headphone's impedance curve.


 

 Interesting...but that still doesn't change the fact that the signal is going through the DAC and amp in my laptop/iphone *before* reaching the external amp. Whatever sloppyness introduced by those components will only be amplified by the external amp. Besides, like I said, IEMs (and SE530's in particular) have a fairly low impedance and a huge sensitivity...my laptop's amp is certainly powerful enough to drive the SE530s, as indicated by the fact that I never have the volume above 3 (and I assume the volume slider is somewhat proportional to signal power (mW)). I could understand rerouting the signal so the digital signal goes through a different DAC, but once it's analog, there's not much you can do...right?


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## BlackbeardBen

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ravisurdhar said:


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 No, because if you're driving the external amp with your iPhone's amp, the iPhone's amp is "seeing" the load of the external amp, not the load of the headphones.  So it's not the same - the distortions induced by the load are going to be different, and in essentially every case, lower with the external amp (they are usually a relatively benign high impedance load) than straight to the headphones.


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## ravisurdhar

Ah, right, of course. OK, that makes a lot more sense now, thanks! Now, to drop $400 on an amp or not...?


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## Yoga Flame

Just to add to what others have already said...

 Quote from http://tangentsoft.net/audio/ampweaksource.html:


> Distortion goes up as the load on an amplifier goes up. If you add a headphone amplifier, this shifts the load from the source to the headphone amp, lowering the source’s distortion. If the headphone amp is of higher quality than the source’s output stage, distortion can be audibly lower.


 
   
  In other words, it can be difficult for a laptop's weak built-in amp to supply enough power for headphones to sound optimal. But it is easy for the laptop to just pass the audio signal along to an external amp.
   
  There is also the issue of hissing for sensitive headphones/IEMs. When I plug IEMs directly into my Creative Xmod, I can hear bad background hiss very clearly. But when I connect the Xmod's line out into my M³ amp and plug my IEMs into that, the hiss is gone. I would have thought the amp would simply amplify the hiss even more right? But I think it's because the amp has high input impedance, so it easily rejects the hiss that my low impedance IEMs could not.


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## p a t r i c k

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ravisurdhar said:


> Ah, right, of course. OK, that makes a lot more sense now, thanks! Now, to drop $400 on an amp or not...?


 


  Get a second-hand one 
   
  This way the money will go much further.
   
  The most common problem I see with headphones in these forums is people who are using very good headphones with rather mediocre amplifiers.


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## estreeter

One thing I did notice after buying both the fullsize and portable amp I possess is that something is undeniably lighter - my wallet.
   
  On a more serious note, I am enjoying my portable setup more than I thought I would - portable amps have been the target of quite a few naysayers, here and elsewhere, over the years but I believe things are definitely on the way up in terms of both power and finesse.


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## BlackbeardBen

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p a t r i c k said:


> The most common problem I see with headphones in these forums is people who are using very good headphones with rather mediocre amplifiers.


 


  The most common problem I see with headphones in these forums is people who are using rather mediocre headphones with overly expensive amplifiers...


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## ClieOS

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blackbeardben said:


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 The most common problem I see with headphones in these forums is that there are too many people who are using headphones with amplifiers want to believe amp is the magical cure for bad SQ


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## p a t r i c k

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blackbeardben said:


> The most common problem I see with headphones in these forums is people who are using rather mediocre headphones with overly expensive amplifiers...


 

 Most reasonably good headphones will gain huge benefits from good amplifiers.
   
  Unfortunately many people don't realise this and never hear how good their headphones are because they use them with poor amplifiers.
   
  I do write "good" amplifiers and not "expensive" amplifiers because unfortunately there are plenty of expensive amplifiers that aren't very good.
   
  Unfortunately many people mistakenly believe that good amplifiers are going to have some effect on the sound. That maybe there is going to be some great increase in bass, or maybe the sound will get warmer in some way. However if the amplifier has these effects then it probably isn't a very good amplifier.
   
  The great benefits from good amplifiers comes in resolution. It is in the quality of the reproduction, the timbre of the instruments, the subtle nuances etc. that will improve with good amplifiers.
   
  The reason for this is that bad amplifiers lose this information in the amplification process and no matter how good the headphones might be, they will never regain information lost by a bad amplifier.
   
  So, I recommend that if people get a chance to listen to a really good amplifier with their headphones then they should. Remember good amplifiers don't "warm up" the sound, nor do they add gobs of bass. Those are bad amplifiers no matter how much they might have cost.


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