I have designed a new amp based on the TPA6120 chip. Seeing the price for headphone amps like the graham slee solo is one of the reason I got into DIY (no one told me DIY was so expensive :P). I thought I could do a better job and this is what I came up with. I call it reference amp because it...

hi all, i'm learning to play electric guitar and i need some distortion. My marshall amp can be overdriven, but play 2-3 notes at once with it and it makes a terrible NASTY noise! yuck! It is not useable at all. I used to own a digital multi effects pedal (zoom GFX-707). It was ok but doesnt...

I'm thinking of getting a X-Fi for its CMSS-3D Headphone capabilities. Now that creative has released a PCI-Express Xtreme Audio card that is cheap it seems perfect. But I once declared I would never buy another creative product again, so I am not so sure. The creative card is tempting because...

I'm thinking of buying some stuff from www.vt4c.com. I noticed they sell what looks like alps blue velvet, they are so cheap I think I will have a few of those as well. They call it VR-27 (I thought it was meant to be RK27), does it look like a genuine alps pot to you guys? Anyone bought any...

Does putting a volume pot right before an inverting amp cause any problems? Looks like the series impedance of the pot will add to the value of R9 and will affect the gain. Even worse, it looks like the gain will change depending on the position of the pot. The next stage...

Hi, I'm looking to build a cheap DAC. Just something to get my feet wet with, and hopefully I will have a half decent source at the end of it. Don't care if it's non over sampling or not. SPDIF input is preferable to USB. The alien DAC pretty much what I'm after except that it has USB input. DIY...

I got a 1/4" jack and can't work out how the switch operates. Here is the schematic from the data sheet: Here is a picture of the Jack: (you might recognize it from the graham slee solo )

2000h is what is says in the spec for alot of the caps I looked at. 2000 hours doesnt seem a very long time. Thats 83 days, not even 3 months. Can that be right? I'm sure most of my electrical stuff has a few caps in them, and have been operating for more than 2000 hrs, and still works ok...

If you are using foobar with headphones (i'm guessing most of you will be using headphones :P) then I recomend you try out the Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural plugin. It's basicaly a crossfeed plugin with some fixed EQ settings. It makes the headphones sound more like speakers. I wanted to...

I am planing to have a go at building a dynalo but am having some trouble sourcing parts in the UK. Only the 2SC1815 is available from farnell.. it also says "Available until stocks are exhausted" which made me think that parts listed in the Headwize artical are just out of date and have been...

What if you stuck a single transistor on the output of an opamp. Bias the transistor into class A. How will that sound for driving headphones? Most of the DIY amps seem to use buffers (the ones that i am familiar with anyway). Is there a big advantage to using buffers?

Here you will find a list of the different DIY projects and there APPROXIMATE cost to build. The costs listed are the costs to build the project "stock" (what you will need to pay to populate the board by closely following the origonal design). It DOES NOT include the cost of the case and power...

The PIMETA can work from a single voltage source and uses railspliters to get the +/- voltage that the amp needs to work. Is this correct? If this is true, it seems to me that PIMETA + STEPS would be a bad combination. Not that it would make it sound bad, but just be inefficient. Wouldn't it...

Would the 650 or 600 be better for rock (green day, system of a down, foo fighters, etc.)? I'm trying to decide between these 2 cans for my 1st proper headphone. Some people say 650 is better, some like 600 more - i wish it was more black and white. 650 has the bass, but i get the...

If anyone knows where I can get a Juli@ in the UK plz tell me. I did find a store in the US that sold it for a reasonable price and even let me pay in GBP but the cost of delivery was more than the card itself!! The best I found is 125 EUR from thomann. If anyone has bought a Juli@ in...

My setup at the moment is cheap in ear headphones, plugged into the headphone jack on my speakers, plugged into my PC's onboard AC'97 soundcard. As bad as it sounds, its worse than you think. I think its about time for an upgrade! I've waited long enough. I don't have stacks of money laying...