One source, two different headphones for a shared listening station

[smallcaps]

My wife and I would love to build a listening room where we can use different headphones from a single source for a shared experience.

The equipment we currently have are a PC as source, a Sennheiser HD600 and Hifiman 4XX, both terminated with blanaced cables, but would still need to pick up the amp(s) and DAC(s).

I've looked into A/B switches but none seem to hit all the features we want, which included balanced output, as well as seperate volume control.

We would like to build the system to be scalable for more headphones in the future. Was wondering if anyone on the forums has built something similar? Thanks for any advice you can give!

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I'd just run a splitter cable from the DAC to two separate headphone amps.

 

[smallcaps]

I'd just run a splitter cable from the DAC to two separate headphone amps.

Oh wow that seems simple enough. No issue with signal strength, etc? Cheers for the tip

 

[buke9]

That would be suggestion also as they are two different headphones on what they need.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Oh wow that seems simple enough. No issue with signal strength, etc? Cheers for the tip

A little but if the amps have enough power and gain, and you're not starting off with a low voltage line output from say for example a portable DAC-HPamp, then the amps should be able to compensate and far outweight the problem of using one headphone amp with two outputs to two headphones that have drastically different impedance (which affects power delivery) and sensitivity (which affects how much power they'll need), not to mention listener preferences.