10/7/2019 Studio Stereo Headphone Amplifier

Studio Stereo Headphone Amplifier

Studio Stereo Headphone Amplifier

This is a dual/stereo headphone amplifier with high quality audio built around OPA2134. This headphone amplifier can
drive high or low impedance phones with low noise and distortion. When used with line level signals from CD/MP3 players,
etc., requiring only a power supply and volume potentiometer. Many high-power amplifier audio designs have already
provided an output for headphones. To support simple headphones, additional circuitry is required by adding only two
resistors in series with the loudspeaker output to limit the drive current and protects the phone that in terms of
reinforcing failure. Considering its simplicity, this scheme works well resistive limit, although it will cause distortion if the
load is non-linear - a prospect that may be most headphones. In addition to eliminating potential sources of distortion,
there are a number of other reasons why you might consider to build a separate headphone amplifier.

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To get started, not everyone has a pair of headphones or even the top-rated high-performance power amplifier. After all,
an amplifier that equals or betters the performance of this new headphone amplifier will set you back more than a few
money!

Another reason might be for use with the latest "high-tech" audio electronics gear. The headphone outputs in much of this
gear cannot drive low-impedance �phones � or at least not to decent listening levels. In addition, available output power
in portable devices is deliberately limited to conserve battery energy. This means that lots of distortion might be present
at higher listening levels, even with sensitive headphones.

One way around this is to feed the line-level outputs of this gear into your power amplifier and then plug your low-
impedance headphones into that. That works but then you�re tethered to an immovable object. Besides, the power
required to drive headphones is around 1/1000th of that required to drive loudspeakers, so a large power amplifier could
be considered a tad oversized for the job!

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