[Hardwired]

So who started all this madness by creating the first amp designed specifically to drive a pair of headphones? I've never heard of a head amp until recently so whoever it was didn't have a good marketing department.

 

[c0mfortably_numb]

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[CRESCENDOPOWER]

I don't know who made the first, but the AudioValve RKV has been around since the early 80's, and still sounds fantastic even today.

 

[Thelonious Monk]

.

 

[M0T0XGUY]

You have to further define what a headphone amp is in order to answer this question. Most simple circuits in early A/V Receivers, FM tuners, CD players, and record players all pump out enough power to be considered "headphone amplifiers." But a headphone amplifier has to be dedicated to powering headphones, right? Well, I'm sure that all electrostatics / orthodynamics frgom the 60's and 70's required some sort of amplification in order to actually work, but does that really count? If you think of a headphone amplifier today, one by Singlepower, for example, you can imagine plugging in more than one pair of headphones, and more than one specific model. I'm sure that if you bought an early Stax model it would come with, or at least have the option of coming with an energizer. This would be designed for one sole pair of headphones, not an entire spectrum, so can you really consider it a modern head-amp; one that has the ability to drive many different headphones, with different impedances and sensitivities?

Now that my philosophical rant is over, some of the first real headphone amps were made by Headroom, about 13 years ago, if I recall correctly

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

Stax was around before HeadRoom, and they did make electrostatic headphone amps. Geaorge Bishoff who started Melos built the SHA1 also prior to HeadRoom, but George really wasn't interested in headphone amps very musch. He built the SHA1 as a pre-amp, but many people told him it worked so well as a headphone amp that he change the name to a headphone amp---but it wasn't very interesting to him. His real interest was big, BIG tube power amps. About the time HeadRoom started, Corey Greenberg had a 1991 artical in Stereophile called "Aunt Corey's Homemade Buffered Passive Preamplifier" that would act as a headphone amp, and went on to review the Grado SR60s with such enthusiasm that audiophiles began to pay attention.

HeadRoom incorporated in 1992, and our first amps were portables similar to todays Desktop Portable. Our first home amps were a couple of years later. Shortly thereafter, Audible Illusions built a pre-amp that had a great headphone jack on it, Sonic Fronteers built a pre-amp with our crossfeed in it, and Audio Alchemy followed suite with a headphone amp that also had our crossfeed in it. Also early on, the EarMax came out and was probably our strongest competitor for quite a while.

Once Head-Wize appeared things started rolling a little faster, mostly on the DIY side, but certainly marked the beginning of small DIY operations becomming a market force. Meta42 and Gilmore amps started popping up all over the place. Jan was the first powerhouse player to come along, he predates Head-Fi and was a strong contributor to HeadWize activity. By the time the community had largely shifted over to Head-Fi (due to the inconsistant bandwidth at HeadWize and the ever growing community's voracious posting appitite) the DIY market had significantly gelled into a virtual power house of small amp manufacturing ability. It was the age of the mint tin amps. Ray, Mikhail, JMT, and Justin at Headamp had also gathered steam and they started really comming on strong with quality offerings.

I think it's fair to say the HeadRoom was the center of the headphone enthusiasm world early on, of course that world was about 7 people at first. I had the first headphone meet at Lonnie Brownells house, it was organized on "The Audiophile Network" a dial-up bulliten board in the days before the internet. But that event didn't lead to any meet momentum; it was a pretty isolated event and doen't really count. The first meets really started as I prepaired for the "World of Headphones Tour". I did a dry run to the Northwest about 6 months befor the tour, and the folks in Texas couldn't wait so they self-organized their own meet. That was the first real meet.

I'm sure there were some other worthy benchmarks that don't come to mind, but that's pretty much how I remember it.

 

[unclejr]

That's pretty cool, Tyll, thanks for your info.

 

[MoonHawk]

sweet!, I love a good history lesson

 

[analog'd]

barney rubble designed and built the first tuber headphone amp as a high school science project in 11000 bc. He was reportedly shocked when this failed to win first prize due to something called "fire" being displayed by another boy, known only as "Sherman". Sherman's entry, however, was disqualified when claims were made that an adult named "Mr. Peabody" had aided Sherman with the help of something referred to as "the wayback machine". At this point young mr. Rubble was awarded 1st prize after all. Rubble is well known for going on to invent the cartoon.

His early amp design is still being used today and can be found as "my first tuber headphone amp" by fisher price in better toy stores everywhere.

 

[Lord Chaos]

Does anyone else remember the Shure Solophone? Thousands of these were installed in language labs all over the country, and I bought a standalone version in the 1970s primarily to monitor live recording. It was (might still be) a complete, self-contained headphone amp and sounded pretty good. I used it for years.

 

[lini]

I wonder how long the amps from Amity and Reußenzehn are around already. Oh, and does anyone know when the special SAC amp for the AKG K1000 came out ? That one should already be pretty ancient, too...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[donlin]

The Joseph Grado Signature HPA-1 came out in 1991, I think a little before the Melos SHA-1. It seems like the Grado HP-1000's were considered the first dynamic phones worthy of a stand alone amplifier and inspired some of the first amps.

 

[ricksome]

Did Radio Shack have a bread board design in the late 60's for under $10.00?

 

[jcx]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audion_tube

and from the headphone entry:

http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lak...rs/070801.html

 

[Sovkiller]

Well we are neglecting here that that they existed in the PRO world since long time ago, of course not audiophile quality, but soem of them very good...