[HawaiiR]

Sorry, please ignore this thread....
or delete if you're a moderator. 
thanks.

 

[roker]

Quote:

 
The (possibly) silly question: why buy an amp just for my headphones? Why not spend a little extra to buy a "high-end" receiver or amp/preamp for my system? I'm a newbie, obviously, so I'm not sure what the purpose of spending say, $1k on just a headphone amp is. ... and yes, I'd love to be schooled on this.
 
 

Some head-fi'ers do this with various degrees of success.  In fact, some headphone amp/dacs have preamp functionalities built in.
 
Equipment like my DACmini functions well as a preamp.  People have also said good things about Burson 160D used as a preamp. 
 
Personally I'd rather buy a dedicated headphone amp or a piece of equipment with the headphone amp design as it's primary purpose since more attention is dedicated to amping headphones.  This is the rule, not the exception (I'm there's a many good preamp/reciever that can do the job).