Portable class A headphone amps - Page 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sumflow 
What does inefficient and practical have to do with getting the best sound possible? My home amps have that class A sound. Why would anyone want to go on the road with anything less.  That is of course unless they have never heard it.

Because class A = high power consumption = low battery life = poor portability (unless you don't mind lugging a 5 kg battery or something)
 

So logically, they are either lying about it having Class A fidelity, or lying about it's power and battery life.

Or, 'Class A' could be as obfuscated an audio term as 'turbo', 'extreme', or 'HD' are among other consumer niches.

driving 600R headphones with 9v is pretty funny and all with 0.00000000.... THD suspicious indeed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sumflow 

Thank you I did not know until now that the uAMP109G2 was a class A amp. 

  They post specs like class A amps do.. I will look into it.  THD+N ≤ 0.00003% Made in USA.    Thanks..
Quote:

What does inefficient and practical have to do with getting the best sound possible? My home amps have that class A sound. Why would anyone want to go on the road with anything less.  That is of course unless they have never heard it.

Of course everyone would like the best sound possible, but when you go portable you have to compromise, unless you like lugging around a 10 pound behemoth in your pocket.

Perhaps SKYLAB will do a test? Strange that the manufacturer haven't sent the uAmp109G2 for review, since the uAmp107 got a good review by SKYLAB.

maybe, but as justin says, its not actually possible to get those numbers, no matter the design. they are probably using either the opamp or dacs ideal laboratory test spec as what they can achieve because its using it, as soon as you do something in the real world it does not live up to this spec in the slightest. my sabre dac is capable of 140db dnr, do I get that with my dac?? no, I get closer to 125-130, which is a big difference in zeros

It is not difficult to build a portable LR opamp module and bias it for class A operation, however the benefits of doing so depend very much on the quality of the other downstream components such as buffers, caps, resistors and the elegance of the circuit design, etc.  This can be done without extravagant usage of battery power.  Is it worth it?   Again, it depends upon the quality of the circuit-related components including the power supply and most importantly, the quality of the ear at the receiving end!

Is the Fiio E3 a class A amp?

(Yes it is a joke)

Im interested in knowing how this portable stacks up