passive devices after headphone amplifier for IEM's?

ive just had a discussion on this from another forum...
IEM's , especially the balanced armature designs, have much higher decibels per watt than earbuds or headphones... most portable audio equipment and headphone amps are designed for driving things which are less sensitive than IEM's....

so, if an inline resistor with enough resistance was used between the IEM and whatever its plugged into, not only will the volume control on the amplifier be used in a more familiar way (you could turn it all the way up without damaging your hearing or your IEM's), but the impedance is so great that there will be negligible current flow.... this means that things like the output impedance of whatever is connected to the resistor will not matter
also, the balanced armature IEM drivers i know of have low impedance, probably within the error margin of the resistance value of the inline resistor...

will this allow for a chain of passive devices between the amplifier and the inline resistor? assuming that plugging the device to the amplifier will not cause any damage because the input impedance of the device is similar to that of a pair of headphones and the devices are able to handle the voltages coming out of the amplifier... the final device in this chain will be connected to the inline resistor, and hence would be acting something like an 'ideal voltage source', all the current flow in the chain will happen between the amplifier and the final device...

any thoughts?

yes, i forgot to mention that my amp happens to be a DAC as well, so all the noise strictly comes from the amp, and yes i do need the amp to get any sound in analog form at all

the problem i am facing is that the amp has a minimum volume of -60db ... i could increase the volume in one db increments.... at -58db its already too loud

also, my IEM's have a max power input of 3 watts... the amp im using is rated at 200R/300W , whatever that means...

my experience with adjustable volume controls was that all they do is have the contacts in the adjuster rust out, or get crud stuck between the contacts, and they lose contact when your adjusting the volume... i'd rather leave the volume adjustment to the amp, and have a fixed attenuator... also , the inline volume controls have a habit of changing the sound signature depending on what volume they are set

do amps benefit from being as unloaded as possible? as in , will they perform better if they generate alot of voltage without having to output much current... my IEM's have very little power draw, and with a resistor i should be able to scale down the voltage reaching them, and the whole setup should have very little current flow...

is this with one amp, or is this with all the amps you have tried?

since the performance of the IEM's dont change with respect to the signal it receives, the increase in quality must be due to a fundamental effect of all amplifiers to give a higher sound quality signal when they are outputting less current

the same fundemental effect, caused by the lack of current flow, might be used to extend the chain of devices beyond the amplifier, as long as the devices are passive and will not damage, and be damaged by, the amplifier.... the amp would not so much be outputting power (since power is voltage X current , and the IEM's dont take alot of current) , as it is outputting a strong voltage signal... the signal would be so strong that it can still be picked up by the IEM behind the inline resistor after all the attenuation caused by the passive devices
a main use for this setup would be passive equalization, which is higher quality than powered equalization since it does not introduce noise... this has a direct benefit on balanced armature IEM's since they generally have inferior sound to similarly priced full-size headphones...


::edit:: this is the same principle behind those portable amplifiers, that is, by getting the portable device's built-in amplifier to give as high a sound quality as possible, by drawing as little power as possible... the built-in amplifiers would be acting like signal generators, and the task of driving the headphones will be offloaded to a dedicated amp which is much better at mantaining the signal intergrity at high power levels