[tutetibiimperes]

I’ve been looking for a tube headphone amp, and want something that’s nice and has a lot of tube coloration (I have solid state amps for perfectly neutral sound, this would be for a change of pace).

The 300B tube gets a lot of praise. The Cayin HA-300b Mk II looks great, but it’s also very expensive.

Cayin also makes the A300B Mk II which is a speaker amp, and it’s half the price despite putting out more power and having more tubes.

There are other 300B tube speaker amps that are even less.

I’ve heard tube speaker amps don’t like to operate without a load, but since most headphones are higher impedance than speakers, they’d provide plenty of load, or would the much smaller voice coils be an issue in that load?

Some amps (like the A300B) have their own volume control, some don’t. Does anyone make a box that has speaker jacks on one end, a balanced headphone jack on the other, and a stepped attenuator in the middle? Would an R2R stepped attenuator provide enough load on an amp so as to not damage it without headphones being plugged in?

 

[svmusa]

I have tried to connect headphones to speaker taps via resistors, it is an experiment and all depends on the headphone impedance and sensitivity. Higher sensitive headphones I background buzz/hum depending on the amp. Lower sensitive and higher impedance phones are more suited for this approach, in the end I think its a mixed bag experience for me.

 

[tutetibiimperes]

I have tried to connect headphones to speaker taps via resistors, it is an experiment and all depends on the headphone impedance and sensitivity. Higher sensitive headphones I background buzz/hum depending on the amp. Lower sensitive and higher impedance phones are more suited for this approach, in the end I think its a mixed bag experience for me.

Thank you.

Ideally I’d like a solution that didn’t involve having to add resistors - I wouldn’t want to artificially raise the output impedance of the amp, and I don’t want to limit its full potential power output for more demanding headphones.

Zysonix makes an adapter box, but it doesn’t have a volume pot option, nor does the Amp&Sound Black Box.