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Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 20 July 2020

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The new Helm Audio DB12 AAAMP follows the path least taken for top-notch sound on the go. Path #1 is a high-quality portable media player, like an Astell&Kern -- nice, but often pricey and complicated to configure. Path #2 is a portable DAC-headphone amp, such as the iFi Audio Hip-dac -- nice, but sometimes clumsy to carry and fussy about formats and connections. Path #3 is a small, analog-input headphone amp, such as the DB12 AAAMP -- an option many audiophiles insist is not nice, because it relies on the DAC inside the source device. And of course, that source device is typically a phone made by a tech company we assume is too colossal to care about audio.

Details: Written by: Diego Estan; Created: 01 July 2020

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Reviewers' Choice Founded in 2012, UK-based iFi Audio has been busy the past few years, releasing a slew of small audio products designed “to improve your music enjoyment.” iFi makes some lifestyle and hi-fi components -- two of them, the Aurora wireless music system and the Pro iDSD DAC, were recently reviewed by Gordon Brockhouse for SoundStage! Simplifi -- but most of what iFi does centers around improving the sound quality of earphones and headphones. A recent result is the diminutive Hip-dac ($149, all prices USD), designed to enhance the sound of a smartphone or other portable digital device by bypassing its internal DAC, headphone amplifier, and output.

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 01 June 2020

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Reviewers' Choice As I’ve written before, headphone amps are typically more critical to headphone sound quality than speaker amps are to speaker sound quality. That’s largely because there’s so little standardization of headphone impedance and amplifier output impedance. The amp might be even more critical to the sound if you’re using expensive headphones of the type Focal is known for, such as the Utopia ($3999 USD) and Stellia ($3000) designs. So it’s no surprise that Focal launched the Arche ($2500), a high-end DAC-headphone amp with features intended to get the best sound out of the company’s headphones.

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 10 March 2020

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No matter where you might stand on the subjective vs. objective, measurements vs. “trusting your ears” debate, you can’t deny that the miniDSP IL-DSP DAC-headphone amp ($99 USD) can have a radical effect on the sound of your headphones. Like other roughly finger-sized DAC-amps on the market, the miniDSP plugs into a computer, phone, or tablet, and performs digital-to-analog conversion and powers a set of earphones or headphones. But while most of those products’ marketing claims are simply that they sound more awesome than other companies’ DAC-amps, the miniDSP incorporates a digital signal processing chip that can be user-programmed with different EQ curves.

Details: Written by: S. Andrea Sundaram; Created: 01 November 2019

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Pennsylvania-based Rogue Audio has been producing tubed electronics for 20 years. Although they’ve long included headphone jacks on many of their products, Rogue is not oblivious to the demands of today’s ever-growing market of headphone enthusiasts. Many high-quality headphones can sound great when plugged directly into a smartphone, but their sound can often further benefit from connection to a dedicated headphone amplifier fed signals from high-quality source components. Some high-end headphones require greater power than a smartphone, or even the headphone amp in a typical audio component, can deliver. Rogue’s solution to these needs of the headphone aficionado is the RH-5 headphone amplifier-preamplifier ($2495 USD).

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 10 October 2019

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Many companies selling DAC-headphone amps snazz them up with every possible feature and a design that grabs attention. Lehmannaudio has a different approach. Its Linear USB II DAC-headphone amp ($2199 USD) is about as simple as it could be: basically one digital input, a stereo analog input, a volume knob, and two 1/4" unbalanced headphone outputs, all in a plainly designed rectangular chassis. I’m only mildly familiar with the company -- Lehmannaudio is a German brand that seems best known in Europe, and I’d previously encountered it only at Munich’s High End show -- but I gather from reading around a bit on the Internet that elegant simplicity is the company’s thing.