[j-curve]

Behringer has a couple of products with tube stages which could be used in a headphone system. One is a combined mic/line amplifier,

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and another is a 4-band parametric equalizer (with eq-bypass switches).

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As they stand, they are perhaps not ideal for driving headphones directly though, due to any or all of the following:-
- 30 ohm nominal output impedances (a bit high)
- 2-channel design as opposed to stereo (ie. separate left/right knobs for everything)
- fiddling with 6.3mm mono plugs to connect to the things
- gain reduction circuit may be necessary at the output, since these boxes like line level or higher
- you wouldn't want to accidentally flip from line amp to mic amp or engage the phantom power either...

The point being, is it worth the hassle? How do these things sound? They come with 12AX7 tubes as standard. Do warmth controls offend the purists?

Isn't it about time Behringer made a compact tube-based headphone amp? Their current product is a rack-mounted solid state quadruple headphone amp.

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[dngl]

I heard these in a sam-ashy type place, and for the money you can get much better dedicated headphone amps.

 

[Orpheus]

hi. as for the sound, i haven't heard any of them... but so you know, behringer is most known for copying other companies. take for instance their mixers: they were sued recently by mackie for some very strong similarities to their mixers. behringer's new monitors are also almost indentical to the mackie hr824's in appearance. makes you wonder huh?

anyway... there's a reason why behringer's about 1/3 the price of their competition. i had a behringer 24x4 mixer before... and it had several problems develop in the last year. plus some functions simply did not work all that well. now i have a mackie 32x8... much better.

anyway, behringer will never make a tubed headphone amp. in fact, i have never seen any professional power or headphone amp with tubes. so... don't bother looking at these prosumer/professional companies for tube headphone stuff.

but if you really want, you can take that behringer tube line amp and make a custom cable that takes the two 1/4" plugs and combines them into a headphone cable. it's not hard to do. if you want, i can tell you how. but i'm not sure the outputs will be enough to drive your headphones alone.... the unit's made to output a line level signal that goes into a mixer.

dean

 

[BeeEss]

Quote:

... but so you know, behringer is most known for copying other companies.

Have you seen the latest? They're copying Yamaha's O1V digital. Sheesh.

j-curve, I would stay with consumer stuff if I were you... there's very little pro gear I have used that compliments home headphone listening, and that that does is of considerably higher quality than the Behringer stuff. If you want to grab some opinions from the pros on these units, head over to the Live Audio Board. These are folks that have had experience with lots and lots of gear. Just be prepared when asking about the Behringer stuff-the results may not be pretty! Generally, their stuff is aimed at entry-level pro users and prosumers.

Hope this helps. --BeeEss