[hardwarenut]

The AT-HA2 is audio techicas cheapest and smallest amp ($50). It supports 2 headphones but has only one volume control. They are small enough to be protables except that they need to be plugged in.

Has anyone head these amps before and what are your opnions?


** whoops posted to the wrong forum (headphones). Looks like someo one moved it for me =).

 

[pub]

not recommended but if you wana try it ....that's fine...

anyway...official website information and specification
;( but in Jp without english~~

http://www.audio-technica.co.jp/prod...us/at-ha2.html

 

[allennokisi]

I have it. It's cheap, about 5000 yen. But isn't anywhere near audiophile. It's capacitor coupled with only 470 microfarad caps, has a cheap poorly tracking volume control and the chip, a njr 4556 is pretty noisy because it's minimum gain is about 20db. It does have a single 7812voltage regulator in it though to keep things usably quiet. And it can put out 300mw. The chassis is a pretty cool extruded thing with metal endplates. But it's pretty tight, can't do much modding. The whole thing is about the size of a pack of cigs. But it uses a 15 volt wall wart, so it's a little deceiving.

I've upgraded the power supply caps and output coupling caps to around 2000mf and forced it into class A at about 15ma. The sound smoothed out but is still pretty brittle. I only use it for my video game systems with some cheap headphones.

For me it serves a useful purpose, so I didn't feel like I wasted 5000 yen, but if you have any opamp based diy amp, it will definately put the ha2 in the weeds.

 

[hardwarenut]

allennokisi,

Thanks for the info it was quite helpful. What do you think of the large HA50? Have you tried it? They sounded pretty good for me but of course they are a lot more expensive and really overkill since I don't need 5 jacks with 5 independent volume controls.

 

[pub]

I had one,but sold it..

 

[allennokisi]

That amp is a pro unit, so it was designed with an eye toward indestructability rather than sound. It is better in probably every respect, but for that money your into real headphone amp territory, so I can't really recommend that either unless you need it. I don't know what's insided it but I can give a pretty high guarantee that it's opamp based.