Headphone Amplifier is the headphone power amplifier. It is a power amplifier specially designed for headphones. It is mainly used to promote mid-to-high-end high-impedance headphones. Can an amp improve the sound quality? How important is it? Do you need an amp?
The term amp is also a vocabulary that many fans often talk about. The amp is the abbreviation of headphone power amplifier, which is connected between the earphone and the sound source to play the role of earphone. Because relatively large headphones have high impedance, a small walkman cannot be carried. If you can't push it, you need an amp, which is active, and connects it between the sound source and the headphones.
The impedance of ordinary earphones is generally 16-32 ohms. In order to obtain better low-frequency response, high-density coils and long-stroke designs are often used in middle and high-end HIFI fever earphones. At this time, the impedance of the earphones will be as high as 200-600 ohms. Or power amplifiers are designed with low-impedance output. When encountering such high-impedance headphones, the output power will be doubled and the frequency response curve will be destroyed, because the final power tube at this time is not working in the linear region. The headphone amplifier can adapt to these high-impedance headphones. At the same time, the headphone amplifier can modify the sound quality and tone color on the basis of increasing the output power to form a personality.
There are two types of high-end headphones, one is high-impedance, low-sensitivity headphones, which are difficult to drive for the headphone output of ordinary equipment. If you use existing audio sources, such as portable audio-visual equipment that cannot be pushed, you must purchase a headphone amplifier to promote the equipment or further improve the sound quality. There is also a type of earphone with a low-impedance and high-sensitivity design. Such earphones are mainly for low-impedance devices such as walkmans, so they don’t need amps to promote them. However, some audiophiles use amps to improve the output sound quality of the sound source. Come to give full play to the effect of headphones.
In terms of volume, amps can be divided into desktop amps, which are generally larger in size and suitable for home use. There is also a portable amp, which is small in size, can be matched with portable equipment, and has a large volume. From the main components used, it can also be divided into two types: tube amplifiers (electronic tubes) and stone machines (transistors), with different sound trends.
The main function of the amp is to adapt the sound source and the earphone. Although it is called the headphone amplifier, it is more often used for signal attenuation. However, after the earphone attenuates the signal, it also provides the driving power and conditions required by the earphone. For example, when driving low-impedance and low-sensitivity headphones, sufficient output current is required, and when driving high-impedance headphones, sufficient output slew (slew rate) refers to the average value of the time rate of change of the closed-loop amplifier's output voltage when the input is a step signal. ), driving electrostatic earphones requires dozens of times higher output slew than high-impedance earphones, and at the same time, a booster circuit is required to provide plate bias.
Of course, most of the time people use low-impedance and high-sensitivity earphones, which do not have such harsh driving conditions, so simple signal attenuation can be used to initially adapt the earphones. Like current mainstream digital equipment, direct digital attenuation and direct D/ A is output, and the analog circuit has been simplified to the extreme.
As for the amp has a great impact on the sound, as to whether it can improve the sound quality, it cannot be generalized. It can be said that the benevolent sees the benevolent and the wise. Because the amp is not just a problem of power output, tuning and quality will have some influence. But for a certain headset, the more expensive the amp is not the better, the right one is perhaps the most important. Under all these prerequisites, of course the sound source also needs to be excellent.
By understanding the principle of amps and the ability to improve sound quality, everyone should have a comprehensive understanding of amps. So how important is it to entangle the amp? For the speaker, it is actually the biggest factor that determines the sound quality, because before the speaker, it is transmitted in the form of a signal. Compared with the last step of the physical conversion of the speaker, the loss is very small.
However, different speakers have different parameters. For many consumer products, because they can be driven well by ordinary consumers, the earphones use speakers with high sensitivity and low impedance, and the speakers also use built-in digital amplifiers. The practice of the power amplifier module does allow consumers to plug in and use it, but many consumers also find that high-end speaker products are not so "approachable". There are many high-impedance and low-sensitivity products in the earphones, and most of the speakers are High-end products are also passive designs.
For headphone products, the design of high impedance and low sensitivity is first because most high-end headphones are full-size dynamic units. Low sensitivity is necessary for overall sound control, and for large-size dynamic units, because The diaphragm itself cannot guarantee the ultra-thin thickness, so the sensitivity cannot be reduced in many cases. Only enough current can drive smoothly. The high-impedance design can also better filter out the noise in the signal, and if the driving voltage is sufficient, high-impedance will bring a higher conversion ratio.
The last thing to say is that headphones and speakers are different. Common speakers have only two impedance matching: 4 ohms and 8 ohms, and there are a small number of 6 ohm products, but there are nothing more than these three. But earphones are different. It can be seen from impedances of more than ten ohms to 600 ohms, so there is a problem of impedance matching. There are also headphone amplifiers designed for different impedances on the market. Users also need to follow the actual situation of their headphones. Choose an amp depending on the situation. If impedance matching is difficult to guarantee, the more expensive it is, the better.
Having said so much, do we need an amp? The need for an amp depends on whether your device can push your earphones. Normal earphones don’t actually use amps. Even Zifan can say with certainty that many people don’t know what an amp is before reading this article. It. The amp cannot improve the sound quality of your voice. It mainly depends on the player and the sound source. It can even be said that it has nothing to do with your amp. Some inferior amps may also reduce the sound quality.
So the same sentence, the benevolent sees the benevolence, the wise sees the wisdom, for the amp, it is not just necessary, unless your device can’t push your headphones, of course, if you are an enthusiast, there may be several decoders, amplifiers and so on. Set it up!
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