I bought it and it literally destroys the sound quality out of your high end sound card. I specially noticed it with my newly bought Audio Technica ath-ad900x which at first I was like What....why are these much accoladed headphones sound so bad. I was at a total loss. Then I plugged the hp's directly to my sound card's rca output and I was like WOW!!! what a difference. Now these AT cans sounds the way they should. So sadly to say but the Behringer ha-400 is crap.
Sorry, but no. This is factually wrong. I dont mean "the sound quality isn't as bad as Swift makes it out to be." I mean that the sound quality isnt bad at all. It's a clean, very transparent amp. It sounds like whatever the source sounds like. I really can't imagine what Swifty was expecting it to do to his AD900x. I can only speculate that his sound card is extremely colored and otherwise inaccurate, so when he heard a neutral amp, it wasn't what he expected, and rather than giving himself a chance for brain-burn-in, he concluded it's a bad amp and probably never tried again.
The HA400 has plenty of power. Using my Ipod Nano 7G as the source, it drives my 250 ohm DT880s plenty loud with the volume at 75%; I have my Q701 playing simultaneously with its knob slightly past 50%. Interestingly, my JVC Riptidz earbuds also needbto beba little past 50% to get a desirable moderate volume. I can't imagine why, maybe some unusual method of measuring gain?
The HA400 is clearly designed for use in a recording studio, so each member of a band can easily set individual headphone volume levels. It also works great for the purpose I got it.for: evaluating several pairs of headphones against each other, while being able to match volume levels beforehand, without having to change settings every time you change headphones. I can't overstate how amazingly useful that last part is to me!
If you're a headphone addict like me, and you often find yourself trying to find out what one certain song sounds like on several different pairs, the HA400 is a valuable tool, and at ~$30 new, it's easily affordable for anyone in this hobby. I admit I'm unlikely to plug it in just for casual listening fun, but I use it often as an analytical tool. It has a myriad of potential uses I've only just begun to explore.
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EDIT: there is one issue I forgot to mention. When plugging in a new 'phone when the unit is powered on, it often causes a quite loud "click" in the 'phones. Fortunately the transient is brief, and seems to be at a relatively high frequency, but this happens even on high impedance sets,
and even when that channel's volume is set at 0%, even when ALL channels are set to 0. This is unfortunate because Behringer didn't provide a power toggle of any sort. If it's plugged in, it's on.
The fact that this happens even with the volume at 0 is particularly perplexing to me. Does anybody else have insight here? My only somewhat plausable guess is that maybe turning the knob all the way to 0 doesn't actually mute the channel?
I don't know what kind of transient it takes to potentially damage a headphone transducer (obv. It will vary between models), but I'm thinking it's time for me to learn.
