#portable amplifier

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JOYO JA-05G Portable Guitar Plug Amplifier Built-in 4 Effects Plug and

Buy The New JOYO JA-05G Portable Guitar Plug Amplifier Built-in 4 Effects Plug and Play Mini Amp Speaker for Electric Guitar Practice And Ot

[mikeshouts]

THX Introduces Its First Consumer Electronics, An Portable Amp And DAC For Headphones

From the high-fidelity audio/visual certification company itself.

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[the5coreelectronics-blog]

5CORE® presents user-friendly, extremely versatile, ultra-compatible Portable Wireless Amplifiers. This portable, rechargeable PA speaker amplifier with Bluetooth is widely used as personal DJ system. Portable Powered Speakers come with a microphone and inbuilt Amplifier rendering great sound output.

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Portable Audio Amplifier

This is simple portable audio amplifier circuit. This circuit built based on IC TEA2025 which is a monolithic integrated audio amplifier in a 16-pin plastic dual in line package manufactured by UTC. Circuit has Internal Thermal Protector. It is designed for portable cassette players, mp3 players and radios. You can also use it as your smartphone or PC audio amplifier. This circuit require 9V…

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[bluetoothreceiver]

Why do I need a portable Headphone Amplifier?

Why would one need a portable headphone amplifier? Isn't it dangerous to play music from your iPod at levels that can cause ear damage? Of course it is dangerous to listen to headphones at high levels especially for long periods of time, whether with an external amp or not. The advantage to using a headphone amplifier with a portable device is to allow you to use a wider variety of harder to drive headphones along with the increased fidelity and resolution that a good headphone amp can provide.

Apple iPod Touch coupled to portable headphone amplifier

If you use an iPod or other portable digital audio device you may not be getting the best fidelity from that device. In order to get the best sound possible you have to have good files. To my ears mp3 files don't cut it. With good headphones or in-ear monitors I can hear the fatiguing artifacts caused by the compression of the original audio files that were ripped form CD or full fidelity downloaded files. While I can live with some well recorded aac files downloaded from iTunes, if the CD is available, I would rather buy it and rip from that. If you can't hear the difference between mp3 files and a .wav or .aiff file then you are probably not a candidate for a good headphone amp, unless you move up on the headphone ladder. Better headphones will allow you to hear the differences. It is subtle at first but once you have educated your ears you will welcome the improvement.

JDS Labs bass boost cMoy portable headphone amp As good as Apple's ubiquitous ear buds sound with a Nano or Touch, they are no match for a well designed step up headphone or in-ear monitor. And once you move up the sound chain you will be able to hear the benefits of a good amp. The aftermarket for headphones and in-ear monitors, buds and the like is wide and varied. And the amp market is getting larger as well with low cost amps made in China for under $10 to high priced amps that are over $500.

  So what are the benefits of a good headphone amp? First is power. Power to drive a more difficult usually higher impedance load. Most amplifiers that are part of your portable digital audio device are designed to consume low power from the battery in the device and to provide enough power to drive an easy low impedance load. Most ear buds that come with portable digital audio devices are between 16 and 32 ohms. So good aftermarket headphone amps can provide higher voltage and power to drive higher impedance loads to reasonable levels and without an impact on the battery in your iPod or mp3 player. Even with this higher voltage and power not all headphones can be driven with a portable headphone amp. Some low sensitivity and higher impedance studio type headphones still require a desktop or studio amp to get them to reasonable levels.

The legendary Ray Samuel's SR-71 portable headphone amp

The second benefit of this amplification is that it can be engineered to sound a bit better than the one in your iPod or mp3 player. How? By paying attention to distortion and power over the entire frequency range. The result can be better bass reproduction, cleaner highs and a quieter background from which the music emerges. Increased dynamic range is also a key benefit. As is resolution or detail retrieval. With a well designed amp with a lower noise floor you now can hear little details better, experience more information that may be masked by the overall noise levels of the amp that is part your digital audio player. A definite increase in spatial cues like depth, reverb trials, and even soundstage width are all benefits of a better amp. And with better amps you can experience better vocal focus, more space between instruments, and the ability to hear more of what is going on in the recording.

Can you get all these benefits with any portable headphone amp? Yes and no. With a low cost amp like a Fiio E3 or E5 for example you may just get some extra bass emphasis which may be good for the free ear buds that came with you portable player, but you won't experience much else. As you move up the ladder with amps you get more and more of the benefits noted above. And how you connect your amp can matter as well.

Fiio E5 portable headphone amplifier

Most amps can be connected to the digital audio device by using a mini to mini stereo cable. This has a mini stereo phone plug on both ends and connects from the headphone out jack on the digital audio player to the input of the amplifier. Cables can run from a few dollars to over $100. I have heard the more expensive cables and feel a good $20 Cardas 6 inch type to be the right compromise between cheap and great fidelity for the money. With this method of connecting we still have the player's internal headphone amp in the path. We will get an improvement with most players but cannot get all the benefits mentioned above simply because of the higher noise level inherent when you use two amplifiers. When connecting this way it is best to try to use a high enough signal to feed the external amp to minimize noise. By setting the volume control on the player to somewhere around 80% of maximum you should be able to get the best signal to noise ratio when using this method.

Another method that applies primarily to iPod is to use the line level signal of your Nano, Touch, or iPod to feed the amp. This requires a special cable called a line out dock cable. Be sure you get one that works with your particular Apple device as some cables are designed for older units and will not work on newer Apple units. It attaches to the bottom of your Apple device where the standard docking cable attaches. This line out dock cable takes the line out analog signal from the Apple iPod BEFORE it passes through the unit's headphone amplifier. This signal is then routed directly to your portable headphone amplifier's input. The level is fixed so the volume on the player can be left alone and the result is a cleaner lower noise input for your amp. All the benefits of an external amplifier can be achieved with this method and the right amplifier.