HeadRoom Micro Amp

The boisterous claim of headphone enthusiasts is that audiophile headphone systems offer much better price-to-performance ratios versus speaker-based rigs. Well, the clamor is about to get a little louder; We also like to say the musical detail resolution of reference headphone systems will blow away most pricey speakers. Our newest HeadRoom Micro Amp is specifically designed to bring the finest possible electronics into a still-affordable & space-saving headphone amplifier unit ready for a nook on your desktop, nightstand, or any other listening situation where there's access to an AC-power wall socket. (For a battery-powered, mobile-use amp, please check out our Portable Micro Amp.) With the Micro Amp, we shed the upscale cost of the superb power supplies & input/output connection array found on our HeadRoom Home Amp, but kept the exact same internal circuit design. The result is audio quality normally found in gear twice its price and five times, maybe even ten times its size. (If you’re a little bit crazy about great sound, and a little less worried about cost, check out the Ultra Micro Amp -- same small size, but with the astonishing full-on reference sound quality of our Max electronics!)

Electronics

The headphone amp electronics inside the HeadRoom Micro Amp is a 'Class-A' biased output, emitter follower design based on the famous Walt Jung Diamond Buffer. It’s a DC-coupled amplifier (no caps in the signal path), and the left & right channels are completely separate back to the power supply and separately decoupled as well. The excellent Texas Instruments OPA134 op-amp is used throughout, and all resistors are of truly extraordinary audio quality; All Micro Amp active stages except the gain stage are fully biased into true 'Class-A' audio performance; The gain stage is an excellent 'Class A/B' topology.

Features

Sure it sounds great, but the HeadRoom Micro Amp is also an all-singing, all-dancing, fully-featured headphone amp. It has an 1/8” (3.5mm) headphone jack on the front, but it also has a volume-controlled ["variable output"] 1/8” jack on the rear panel that you can employ as an audio source feed for your self-powered desktop/computer speakers. It also has two line inputs on 1/8” jacks that are switch selectable from the front panel so you can easily juggle the source duties between an iPod and a computer, for example. A gain control switch allows you to adjust the volume range to easily control headphones of a variety of impedances and efficiencies. And, of course, the famous HeadRoom Crossfeed circuit that improves the audio image on headphones … subtly and carefully.

Build

All that lovely gadget goodness is wrapped in a lustrous and amazingly sturdy black anodized aluminum enclosure and urethane bezels. What’s a bezel? It’s that rubber piece around the front and back panel. They’re pretty handy as they act as bumpers protecting the amp, and they allow you to securely stack the Micro Amp and the digital-input HeadRoom Micro DAC units together.

All HeadRoom Micro Amps are hand-built in Montana, USA.

Accessories

An external AC power-supply "wall-wart" comes included with the HeadRoom Micro Amp. An upgraded international-use Astrodyne Power Supply is optionally available for audiophiles wanting to fully maximize the audio performance of the Micro Amp.

*The Micro Amp does NOT include any interconnect cabling. To hook up your Micro Amp to a portable audio player, you will need a mini 1/8 to 1/8 (3.5mm) cable. We recommend the Cardas 6 inch or 12 inch mini to mini cables. For longer runs, we suggest the Cardas 1 meter or 2 meter versions. If you are using an audio source with RCA outputs, this portable cable will work, or browse all of our cables.

Measurements:

The Micro Amp is 1.5" (3.8cm) high, 3.5" (9 cm) wide, and 4.5"(11.5cm)long. It weighs only 8.8oz (250 grams)