Headphone Amplifiers

A headphone amplifier is used to monitor audio using headphones.

The audio signal coming out of your computer, mixer, phone, etc. is at line level and needs to be amplified for you to hear it and turn up the volume, etc. Almost all computers, interfaces, mixers and phones, etc. have built-in headphone amps allowing you to plug in your headphones and turn up the volume.

But sometimes you might need to plug in 3 or 4 headphones to allow 3 or 4 people to hear the same audio; in a case like this you can use a dedicated headphone amplifier which can have 4-8 headphone output jacks on it, and everyone’s headphones can be plugged into this one unit. You will also have a volume control for each headphones you plug in, so that everyone can monitor at their preferred volume (which btw should be as low as possible!- if you crank headphones too loud that sound will bleed into the person’s microphone!).

There are small inexpensive headphone amps (~$30) which can power 4 headphones, and there are many larger and more expensive units as well.

And of course if you don’t have that many people all needing to plug in headphones then you don’t need one of these headphone amps 😉

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