[BIgsteviet]

Hi all,
 
I'm sure you all have dedicated headphone amps (or have one on your shopping list), but I bet a lot of us use the headphone socket on speaker amps sometimes.
 
From my own experience, some of them are OK and some of them aren't. Sadly, in my opinion, the AS-500 falls into the latter category for me. YMMV, depending on your phones.
 
I picked this up yesterday to drive speakers (Monitor Audio Silver 4is) in my man cave and in that role, I can't fault it! Clear sound, powerful and accurate. Miles Davis' Flamenco Sketches hasn't sounded so good in years... £170 from Richer Sounds is an absolute steal for this speaker amp!
 
But plug headphones in and it's a whole different story. Harsh, brittle and choppy. I bet my AKG 271s aren't a good match, but the amp actually introduced sibilance on songs where I've NEVER heard it before. Marilyn Manson went from glossily produced crunch with bite to a raspy mess. And poor old Miles has never sounded so shrill, like a sharp knife to the ears.
 
This is all in Pure Direct mode. Using the tone controls softened the sound, but introduced a mushy bloom. Turning the loudness down to -30db was only slightly better.
 
All in all, fantastic with speakers, dreadful with phones in my experience.
 
Hope this helps someone!

 

[lljayll]

I've gone through a few integrated amps. A Sony TA-400, NAD C325BEE, and a  Marantz PM6005.  In my opinion they aren't optimized for headphone use. It could be different for other integrated amps but this is my observation from the ones I've heard.