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make virtually no difference to the maximum volume?  When driving some HD555s or AKG k141-2s, (or even some earbuds), when it is on maximum volume, the difference is very small.  This is with a Sansa Clip as the player... if I sit in a quiet room and attempt to tell the difference, the amp on full power increases the output by the equivalent of four pressings of "up" on the Sansa's volume (there are 40 intervals between mute and 100%, so about 10%).  I was under the impression that with a headphone amp I'd be able to leave the player at about 30% volume, and be able to amp headphones up to a comfortable maximum volume.  With the E5 I can't even tell if it is plugged in it makes so little difference!
 
Is my one just rubbish or are they all like this?

 

[Jack C]

make virtually no difference to the maximum volume?  When driving some HD555s or AKG k141-2s, (or even some earbuds), when it is on maximum volume, the difference is very small.  This is with a Sansa Clip as the player... if I sit in a quiet room and attempt to tell the difference, the amp on full power increases the output by the equivalent of four pressings of "up" on the Sansa's volume (there are 40 intervals between mute and 100%, so about 10%).  I was under the impression that with a headphone amp I'd be able to leave the player at about 30% volume, and be able to amp headphones up to a comfortable maximum volume.  With the E5 I can't even tell if it is plugged in it makes so little difference!
 
Is my one just rubbish or are they all like this?

Hi

That's not how you would use a headphone amp. The headphone amp's benefit is to allow you to set the output volume of the player near maximum, while using the amp's volume control to set the desired listening volume. This way, the signal/noise ratio from your player is maximized.

Jack

 

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I see.
 
I was under the impression that the best way to keep noise/signal at an optimum was to avoid putting the player near maximum output, but to be honest that was a guess of mine.  In other audio set-ups, say a media player into a hi-fi amplifier, isn't it best to let the amp do most of the work?  And leaving the player at max volume will eat its batteries - I thought an amp would be a good idea, because you could share the output between the player and the amp and get much longer battery life.
 
Regardless of these things, the E5 makes only a small difference - I take it that is normal.  So, am I right in thinking that even if I bought a proper and more expensive amp, I'd still not have a device which could take the headphones to their sensible maximum, while leaving the player at a fairly low output, say 50% volume?

 

[Jack C]

In general, headphone outputs from media players can provide good clean output in terms of voltage. It is when they are asked to drive a lower impedance headphone that they run into trouble. A variety of things can happen, including frequency response anomalies, distortion, and etc. A head phone amplifier presents itself as a high impedance device to the media player, and mitigates many of these issues. It is therefore desirable for the media player to be set to a high volume so that the signal it produces is much louder than its background noise.

In terms of battery use, since the headphone amp is a high impedance load on the music player's headphone out, the power draw from the headphone output should then be reduced as compared to driving headphones.

There are headphone amps on the market that will give you a 10dB or more volume boost, which would be more than what the E5 can deliver. However, it is never a good idea to set your music player to a low volume and rely on the headphone amp to provide the volume boost. Doing so unnecessarily amplifies the background noise from the music player.

Jack

 

[Digital-Pride]

Thanks Jack-Micca, for that info!  That answered quite a few questions of mine(seriously, it was like one of those eureka moments) and now I feel like I understand amplification as a whole better.  Here's to Jack-Micca! 

 

[Leander7777]

If you want your headphones to get a lot louder with the E5, you'll need an LOD cable.

 

[FearSC549]

Quote:

If you want your headphones to get a lot louder with the E5, you'll need an LOD cable.

The Clip+ doesn't support that.