[Jason36]

Good morning,
 
I am in a bit of a quandry with regards to whether I would gain any major benefits from using a portable amplifier with my iPhone / iPad?
 
At the moment I have fairly easy to drive headphones (Grado SR80i's / Beyerdynamic T70p / Sennheiser IE6) all of which are used with my home based Netbook system via a uDAC2 (soon to be replaced with an Arcam rPac) as well as my iPhone / iPad when I am out and about, in the office, Away from my Netbook Station.
 
To my ears these sound OK through these devices directly out from the headphone socket.
 
I am about to invest in a new set of higher end IEM's probably the Heir Audio A.4 / A.4i or Westone 4R......possibly the Klipsch Image X10i are under consideration as well.
 
I believe these are all fairly easy to drive IEM's as well and should cope directly out of the iPhone 4S.....but I cant help wondering whether I would gain any additional improvement in sound by using an external amplifier.....possibly one of the following:
 

1. RSA Hornet
2. RSA Tomohawk
3. Fiio E11

 
or am I likely to gain bigger improvements longer term by looking at something like the Fostex HP-P1, GDAP X or CLASS combo.....all of which will obviously by pass both the phones DAC and Amplifier (albeit also a lot more expensive)?
 
Can anybody offer any advice or help with regards to this matter.
 
Also can anbody comment on the difference between the Heir and Westone IEM's?
 
Cheers
Jason

 

[ostewart]

JDS Labs C421 is a good amp to consider too.

They may be easy to drive IEM's but most improve with amplification.

 

[Jason36]

Thanks for the reply Randomkid,

I definately like the look and sound of JDS Labs C421

I am surprised however that nobody else has commented on this with their experiences. I am sure there are a lot of individuals on here who use iPhones / iPads etc as music sources, but I only get one reply about a generalist question.

Oh well.....anyway I am also thinking about the following amps now as a short list:

JDS Labs C421

Arrow 3G / 4G

Pico Slim

RSA protector - mainly because of the ability for balanced / single ended outputs (although not as slim as the others)

I believe the RX also gets good reviews, but is a fair bit more expensive.

Without the ability to try these before buying, it's hard to know what to do.