[tony4563]

Well, I've been putting it on and off for ages. I've been in and out of the forums reading up on amps and wondering if I REALLY needed one. I mean, my Grado RS2's sound great out of my integrated amplifier, but then again I'm lead to believe the headphone sockets from integrated amps are supposed to be cheaply made and inferior...well, arn't they? I just HAD to find out! Having moved up the headphone ranks rather quickley in the last year ( sr60 - ms1 - ms2i - sr225 - rs2 - sr225(...I missed it when I sent it back due to a fault and got the rs2 instead...225 is THE rock headphone! ) I thought another £70 on this incurable wallet bashing hobby wouldn't make a big difference. Here in the UK we are very limited on amp selection. I saw the Pro-ject Headbox Mk2 @ £70 and it actually looked really nice on the screen. I checked for reviews but most of them were for the older version which didn't get many favourable reviews. Would this Mk2 version be an improvement? Only one way to find out... I ordered it. If it was crap I could always send it back. It came the following day and I was very impressed with the build quality as I connected it to my CD player. Soundwise, I was pretty well impressed! The bass is a touch lean to what I'm used to, but this makes the sound "cleaner" and even more detailed. The main improvement is in the soundstage. The sound expands outwards a little more which makes the sound "airy". It just sounds so natural. This is great because Grado's have a narrow soundstage anyway. To cut a long story short, this cheap amp has definately improved the sound of my Grado's which I thought was great anyway. One query I do have is.. can the amp be connected directly to my integrated amp or can it only be used with the line out sockets on the CD player?

 

[vorlon1]

Yes, you can connect it to your integrated amp, as long as you have cables that fit the inputs and outputs. Some people suggest your tape out loop as it is not affected by your system volume. You may or may not find an improvement that way. I have hooked various headphone amps up to my home system and some sound as good as with a direct feed from the source and some sound worse. I haven't noticed any that sound particularly better running out of the larger system, although with some setups you can get more gain that way which is helpful with some of my less sensitive headphones.

 

[tony4563]

mmm...I've just had a look at the back of the integrated amp. There are the speaker terminals and the following red/white phono socket groups:

Pre out
Tape In
Rec out 1
Rec out 2

AV/MD
DVD
Tuner DAB
CD
Aux/Phono

On the back of the Headphone amp are the power supply socket and the following red/white phono sockets:

In (left & right)
Out (left & right)

Basically I'm wanting to listen to my CD unit (which has a red/white line out phono socket) and DAB Tuner (which has a audio output / aux tuner phono sockets) thru the headphone amp without swapping phono cables all the time . Can it be done with this set up?

 

[vorlon1]

It should work ok if you put one set of cables on rec out 1 and hook the other ends of them up to the inputs of your headphone amp. Obviously using red to red and white to the white connectors. Then whatever inputs your music sources are hooked into, as you say, AV/MD
DVD
Tuner DAB
CD
Aux/Phono

you select whichever input you want to listen to and it should be output through the tape out jacks into your headphone amp. You can try either tape rec out one or two, both should work. There is ususally another selctor switch to play the tape outs that is capable of being switched on without changing the main input selector. You may have to switch that on, but I think it will output direct to your headphone amp without doing that. Let me know how it works. Make sure to keep the volume off on your headphone amp while you are setting this up and test it by turing it up slowly because the output from your tape out may have more gain than the usual out puts from the players you have been using. I hope this doesn't sound too complicated, if I could just show you it to you it would be totally simple, but it is cumbersome to describe.

 

[tony4563]

Thanks for your help Vorlon 1. All sorted now.

 

[vorlon1]

Great!