Using a Stereo Receiver as a Headphone Amplifier?

[jstalz]

I have a Yamaha RX-497 2ch receiver..

I do not currently own a pair of decent headphones, so testing myself is not much of an option. I am unable to purchase a headphone amplifier due to my budget, but could find some money for a pair of headphones.

I am dying to know if there is anything inside my receiver that amplifies headphone sound. I cannot find anything in the manual.

Generally speaking, does a stereo receiver amplify the audio signal through the headphone output? Please share with us/me any experience you have with critical headphone listening through a stereo receiver.

 

[johnwmclean]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jstalz /img/forum/go_quote.gif Please share with us/me any experience you have with critical headphone listening through a stereo receiver.

Usually the circuitry for headphone output in receivers is an after thought.

 

[GreatDane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jstalz /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have a Yamaha RX-497 2ch receiver.. I am dying to know if there is anything inside my receiver that amplifies headphone sound. I cannot find anything in the manual. Generally speaking, does a stereo receiver amplify the audio signal through the headphone output?

Your receiver has a headphone jack and it should sound fine...yes, it will amplify any line-level signal that you have connected(CD player,etc).

Go buy some headphones and enjoy. When you save the money, buy a tube amp.

 

[iriverdude]

Wasting electricity bills having 2 speaker power amps doing nothing and active. I'd look into a stereo analogue pre-amp or a av processor with headphone amp

 

[tvrboy]

Yes, you absolutely can use a reciever for a headphone amp. I have experience with this. Recievers will adequately power pretty much any headphone in existence. By adequately I mean they will be driven to any volume you want. Sound quality will be OK. I can't comment on how much worse the SQ is on a reciever than a well-build headphone amp, cause I have never owned a really great one. But if you have never heard a lot of high end equipment, it will sound find to you. Mine sounded great with every headphone I ever used, including HD-650, K240 sextett, SA5K, 225i....

 

[miloxo]

I use my 25 year (?) old luxman R-1050 receiver also for my AD700s, SQ doesnt really improve, but i can give the weak AD700s bas a little boost

 

[jstalz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iriverdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wasting electricity bills having 2 speaker power amps doing nothing and active. I'd look into a stereo analogue pre-amp or a av processor with headphone amp

I use my receiver to power some floor-standing speakers, so I am not wasting any electricity.

The main reason for this post was to find out if the sound quality would be improved compared to listening directly out of a source. i.e. MacBook Pro and PS3.

 

[scompton]

Another good reason for a speaker amp is to drive stats with an energizer. I listened to some Yamaha AV receivers for someone here and the headphone out was pretty good. The headphone out is not an after thought for Yamaha. There have been a couple of threads on this over the years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iriverdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wasting electricity bills having 2 speaker power amps doing nothing and active. I'd look into a stereo analogue pre-amp or a av processor with headphone amp

This is the only argument I've seen that makes sense about not using an speaker amp. I wonder if it holds true with some of the class A headphone amps. I'd guess that something like the B22 uses as many watts as many power amps. I also wonder if some power amps with switching headphone jacks, and separate headphone amp circuits, turn off the speaker amps when you plug a headphone in.

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

I've had good experience with Onkyo Stereo receivers Headphone out. They sounded quite good to me.

 

[lozanoa11]

I have a Panasonic A/V that powers my sr325's well. I can't attest to the quality as i have not heard any good headphone amps but it is louder than my sound card.

 

[ford2]

Have a Marantz AVR and it has a reasonable headphone out.
Its perfect for general listening,as are most AVR's and amps.

 

[estreeter]

This is from way back in 2003 (!), but markl was clearly very impressed with the headphone out on his Denon receiver:

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f30/so...r-s-cut-50688/

8. Denon AVR-5800 receiver, Denon's top of the line "statement" piece circa 2001. $3800 list. The digital section in this unit is first rate, besting the Modwright mod-ed 333ES and the Kenwood, but really not by much, the difference is subtle.

from another thread:

The Denon receivers (AVR1801, 3801) are generally most loved by the HT mags and afficiandaos, and actually have surprisingly good headphone sections.

FWIW, I have the Yamaha receiver below yours (the cheapest in the line) and the HP out is significantly less capable than the HP out in my CA integrated stereo amp. The little CA cost $50 more than the Yamaha, but it doesnt have to process video or pump 5.1 channel sound. Obviously, Yamaha may well have improved the headphone out on the more expensive models in the series - it makes sense that they could spend more dollars on every section of the receiver as the price goes up. I would dearly love to get my hands on a secondhand AVR-5800 from the rave reviews markl gave it in several threads - at one stage claiming that it was better than any dedicated HP amp he had owned.

My tip is to buy a pair of HD201s - very cheap in most parts of the world - and plug them into every receiver you can find. For an entry-level headphone, the HD201 is surprisingly hard to drive from a DAP : I'm not going to tell you that it is the best headphone ever, but you should get some idea of how well each receiver is driving the phones. Compared to the money you can potentially spend trying to get this right (many Head-Fiers have spent years trying to match amps to headphones), the cost of a pair of HD201s is a very small price to pay - I sold mine for a large percentage of what I paid for them to a co-worker who borrowed them for a week and wouldnt give them back

good luck,

estreeter

 

[pp312]

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnwmclean /img/forum/go_quote.gif Usually the circuitry for headphone output in receivers is an after thought.

There've been several long threads on this subject in the past, enough to have clarified the fact that the HP out in most receivers/integrateds is merely an extension of the speaker out, and that the sound of one will be the sound of the other, at least in the case of reasonably high output phones. My own long experience plugging many different phones into many integrateds/receivers confirms this, and that performance will be at least satisfactory and perhaps more. This "afterthought" business is a persistent myth that seems to pop up automatically, like pressing a button, in every thread on the subject.

 

[somestranger26]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pp312 /img/forum/go_quote.gif My own long experience plugging many different phones into many integrateds/receivers confirms this, and that performance will be at least satisfactory and perhaps more.

Agreed. I was extremely surprised by how good the HK 3390's headphone out was when I tested it against my TU-882.

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pp312 /img/forum/go_quote.gif This "afterthought" business is a persistent myth that seems to pop up automatically, like pressing a button, in every thread on the subject.

Agreed - if only the headphone out on my Yamaha wasnt so poor, I'd be a lot more willing to tell the OP to just go for it. We also need to bear in mind that there are quite a few MoT Head-Fiers who make a very nice living from the assumption that the headphone out on most consumer audio is woeful, and that we are much better off with a dedicated HP amp. Either way, I think you have to move beyond the entry-level stuff to be guaranteed a good result from either a pair of headphones or two speakers. I simply wont go back to my Yamaha for music after hearing how much better it is from the CA.