I caved. I told myself not to post here because I know how expensive it gets. I will do my best to resist, though. I posted a similar thread on [H] a while back, but I am still inconclusive as to what I should do.

Currently I have no headphone setup. I am running an Abit IP-35pro with toslink straight out to a Harmon Kardon AVR146, which drives some Polk RTi4’s. This setup is exactly what I wanted in my speakers, simple, clean, and sounds a **** ton better than my old pc setup. I am moving into a house with three roommates at the end of summer, though, and I have a feeling the speakers will quickly become a hindrance because they will need to be quiet-ish. In comes my need for headphones. Unfortunately, it seems that the HK’s headphone out is utter trash, ruling out the ideal (budget and complexity-wise) route of just plugging in some headphones and running with it. I don’t want to cheap out and get something I will quickly want to upgrade; I would rather front the money now and get it over with.

Cans haven’t been decided on, but I am presently eyeing Denon D2000’s, Senn HD600’s, or AKG K701’s. I’m not positive yet, but I just want a decent setup that will be power something up to and including these. I’ll figure this step out later, I figure. I would like to keep the cost of the amp at or around $200 (although I could stretch this if need be), which I realize will drastically limit my choices.

I have some ideas in my head of what will work and what won’t, but I figured I would just post a generic listing of what I have and know, and see what everyone cooks up as the ideal setup.

I contacted HK, and they [unfortunately] informed me that the receiver will not convert the present optical signal to anything else, eliminating the possibility of using the receiver as a passthrough to a separate DAC. The receiver does offer a coaxial out, but my motherboard only has optical out (and crappy analog, which will sound like ****), and this would require a conversion (and I don’t want quality to suffer because of this). I noticed that the ZERO Dac/amp will take in an optical signal, and also pass it through as an analog (which I could send to the receiver), but I don’t know how that will sound. In my head, the ideal product would be a DAC/amp that had a toslink in, could process and amp onboard to headphone out, as well as have a switch to pass the signal straight through and to the receiver. I am not sure, though.
I also thought of using switches/splitters on the optical signal, but I haven’t been able to scrape up a product that does this efficiently. I would like to avoid just amping the signal that is coming out of the HK headphone out, because I don't see a point in amping an already degraded source.

I will leave it at that for now. What does everyone think I should do? What else do I need to let you know?

~Liquid

You probably won't be able to find a DAC/Amp that has an optical passthrough as this basically defeats the point of the DAC section. As far as options go, you could do the following:

1) Create another digital source on your PC - either by adding a cheap discrete sound card with optical/coaxial outputs (e.g. Chaintech AV-710) or by using an USB to SPDIF converter (e.g. M-Audio Transit or HagUSB).

2) Use an optical to coaxial converter - even though you've expressed concern about a potential loss in quality, this shouldn't be the case - both signals are digital and should technically deliver the same information to the DAC.

3) Take the risk and buy a TosLink/Optical Splitter. A quick search ("TosLink splitter") shows that these can be bought for around $4-$15.

4) Purchase a dedicated USB DAC Amp - there should be quite a few available in the $150-$250 range (e.g. EMU 0404 USB, Travagans Green, Nuforce Icon + several portable size options).

5) Use the analogue section on the AV receiver - on the back there should be Tape/Line outs, which you could connect into any standard headphone amp.

:O! I can't believe I didn't notice this before! The Travagans Green is exactly what I need! I even looked at their site last night, but for god knows what reason, I passed right over the most important fact: It can take in USB, and either amp it, or pass it through as coax/optical. Perfect! (assuming I am reading correctly)

Now I ask the question: is the Travagans Green a competent (read: enough for acceptable/good performance with the aforementioned headphones) amplifier?