headphone amplifier

[AlecWest]

Hope this is the right place for this post. I have Koss PRO4AA Titanium headphones. Plugged into a standard stereo amplifier, they can be cranked up until ears bleed (grin). Not that I do that, hehe. But, I have a new laptop system that can't be cranked up too far before it starts to distort the audio (sigh). So, I'd like to put an amplifier between my laptop's headphone-out jack and my headphones. Recommendations??? Especially amps that don't need (ugh) batteries and/or have some way to boost bass???

Regards,
J. Alec West

[mgh]

Control Panel- sounds, speech etc- change speaker settings- speaker settings- advanced-speaker set up-select stereo headphones from drop down box- try with an audio CD- most probably you won't get distortion.

On the other hand, audio in many files downloaded from the net has distortion in loud passages, because the nut who uploaded it cranked up the volume too much during encoding.

[AlecWest]

Control Panel- sounds, speech etc- change speaker settings- speaker settings- advanced-speaker set up-select stereo headphones from drop down box- try with an audio CD- most probably you won't get distortion.

On the other hand, audio in many files downloaded from the net has distortion in loud passages, because the nut who uploaded it cranked up the volume too much during encoding.

The "control panel" instructions you gave appear to be XP instructions. My Win7 laptop has no "advanced speaker set up" choice. In any case, I have two laptops sitting side by side. One runs XP Pro SP3, the other Win7 Home Premium. The XP system can be cranked up to a respectable volume without distortion. The Win7 system cannot. Point is, I really don't want to crank up outputs of either laptop - preferring instead to let an external amp do the heavy lifting.

Regards,
J. Alec West

[sanlyn]

The audio settings dialogs do look a bit different between XP and Win 7, but they operate the same way. There's almost always a speaker setup dialog in your control panel "Sound" dialog or the config menus for your audio hardware.

Headphones like the Pro4AA require some amp power. There's not enough juice in the typical laptop or PC sound card to drive expensive headphones. I'd suggest something like the Grado SR85 series or similar, with higher sensitivity. Grado makes excellent budget headphones that work well with small-scale amps like those found on laptops.

[boardbuilder]

Maybe a USB device like this (150 milliwatts):

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_42833_FiiO-E10-USB-DAC-Headphone-Amplifier.html?ut...FaOMTAodmyAA9g


Or this one (250 milliwatts):

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_44985_FiiO-E17-Portable-Headphone-Amplifier-DAC.html

USB sound devices like these are likely to have been more carefully designed than a typical notebook computer's audio section. Connecting a headphone amplifier to your notebook's analog audio output may amplify more sounds than you really want to hear!

Full Disclosure: I have not used these units, nor have I purchased from this vendor.