1. What is the recommended connection for a headphone amp (Total Airhead) and headphones (Etymotics ER4S) to a home stereo? Should I connect to the output of the CD player or Preamp?

2. Is a preamp likely to have enough power to drive the ER4S without the Total Airhead?

Thanks in advance.

Scott Seaman

Hi Scott,

If your pre-amp has a headphone jack, it should be able to run your headphones. The sound quality may not be the best possible (although this depends on the pre-amp), but it may well be better than a Total Airhead. If you want to use your Total Airhead, however, you should connect it directly to your CD player's RCA outputs. Any cabling should be fine, considering that the Total Airhead is not such a good amplifier that you'd notice big differences between various sorts of interconnects. You could get radioshack gold audio interconnects (around $8) and an RCA-to-mini adaptor (around $4 at radioshack for the gold-plated model).

Dan