What does a secondary headphone amp do exactly?

[Elda Cartmill]

I have a question about headphone amplifiers and what they are supposed to do. Now many professional sources like manufactures say it amplifies the sound, making it louder. But many "audiophiles" claim that you need it for better quality sound which is independent of loudness, and they use a lot of subjective terms to describe that loudness.

I plugged a 300ohm headphone into the Microsoft zune, which is said to "work best with headphones 32ohms and under".

I tried the device with the stock earbuds, a 50ohm headphone and a 600 ohm headphone.

The earbuds were loud enough at volume 8, the 555 achieves the same kind of loudness (to my ears) at volume 11, and the 300ohm is also loud enough at volume 14. Ofcourse they all sound "different" as they have different frequency responses and different sized drivers etc... But the Hd600 really sounded fine at a high volume setting, I can hear the bass, different voices in the music, the voice separation was clear with each voice clearly heard on its own.

Now I know that it wastes more battery pushing the volume up so high, but still, does an amplifier just amplify the signal? Because the 300ohm headphone sounded fine with the zune.





--------------------
dr?dre?beats?headphones
Monster?Beats?Headphones
dr?dre?headphones