I write this article for two purposes: firstly, because of recent personal experiences, and secondly, because I can duplicate these experiences with a new product that will well represent my work and further our company’s good name.

For most of my years as an audio enthusiast, I never owned what I would call a serious audiophile headphone setup. Consequently, I also never really experienced one. This is not to say I haven’t spent plenty of time listening to headphones. In my studio, we record live every Thursday and have done so for nearly 10 years. I listen to headphones regularly in the studio.

One day, somewhat spontaneously, I called Sowter to discuss the transformers they make for our signature phono stage. Before ending the call, I found myself asking if they had any decent headphone transformers. A few days later, I had a pair on my bench. The timing was perfect as I was in the mood for something different. I had just completed building six of our Sony SACD players and couldn’t face another one.

I won’t delve into the specifics of the design in this article, but I will say that I’ve been researching headphone amps for the past four years due to numerous customer requests. By then, I had a clear idea of how I wanted to proceed, so when the transformers arrived, the layout and chassis considerations had already been resolved. I had my first working unit by the end of the day.

The following day was spent voicing it. I didn’t get very far before I realized I needed better headphones. Compared to my studio, I was getting results that exceeded my expectations. After returning an hour later with a pair of Beyerdynamic 250-ohm headphones, I was again surprised at how much easier the voicing process became. Within two days, I had explored every possibility and settled on the best circuit.

Now, this is where it gets fascinating. All the epiphanies that hit you in rapid succession – things I feel compelled to share – make me think perhaps most of our customers and audiophiles in general have overlooked headphones as a serious alternative to setting up a listening room. Personally, I never cared much for them because I enjoy the illusion of a 3D image in front of me, coupled with the fascination of watching two large speakers disappear in my room.

As a designer of loudspeakers and amplifiers, you could say my life revolves around the success of that illusion. I have always viewed the space between a pair of loudspeakers as a three-dimensional canvas where I work to create deep, lucid images of sound. I just never seriously considered working without that canvas or in any other medium until the last few years. Gaining a deeper understanding of good sound has made me increasingly aware of the other elements of good sound that have nothing to do with conventional imaging.

It used to really bother me in my younger years when I heard a stereo that didn’t image well. Sometimes it still sounded good, but without the illusion, I wasn’t fully immersed in the music. The biggest explanation for this turns out to be not the lack of imaging but overall fidelity. Since listening to Zen Triode amplifiers for the past 10 years on countless speakers, I’ve had many opportunities to hear them set up in situations where there was no real sound stage. Yet, the playback was so good that it didn’t matter.

Consider how challenging it is to achieve perfect sound from your stereo. The journey starts with significant investments in gear and room treatments, often involving a variety of loudspeakers until you find something that works. Then, you discover truly good gear, which may or may not be expensive but makes you realize that your previous system was lacking. For some, this process becomes an endless cycle. Each time you replace a component, making the previous one sound inadequate, represents a step toward a higher awareness of good sound. You wonder where the ladder actually stops. With each successful step, you can’t imagine how it could get any better, and that’s the thrill of this hobby because it usually can!

Good sound is a delicate balance, and when it is disrupted, an underlying chaos hides its true beauty. Most people, including audiophiles, have statistically never heard its true beauty due to one or more weak links in the component chain: the power from the wall outlet, the power cord, the connections at either end of the cord, the source, the cables, the preamp, the cables, the amps, the cables, the speakers, and all the associated connections. Then there is the room, speaker quality, speaker placement, reflections, room treatments, the listening chair, its location, etc. All these variables, without exception, make up the complete chain of components in your stereo. The fidelity of your stereo can never exceed the single weakest link in this audio chain. The delicate balance is exactly that. Ask me which single item is the most important, and you’re missing the concept of delicate balance.

You could divide the chain into two parts: gear and room. They would be chains of equal length and merit. Most people focus all their resources on the first half of the chain while remaining in denial about the existence of the second half. For this reason alone, I can confidently claim that headphones, even without the natural depth of image provided by loudspeakers, will sound better. But that’s just one of many reasons why they do.

Loudspeakers are high in several forms of distortion compared to every other component in your stereo system. This problem increases with volume and is aggravated by standing waves in the room that further alter the frequency balance by as much as 20 dB. Headphones do not have these problems.

Loudspeakers also have limited frequency response. Low bass is often influenced by the longest distance between two opposing corners in your room due to standing waves. The average listening room starts having serious problems with bass peaks and holes around 80 Hz. It’s not uncommon for a room to kill the bass below 35 Hz. Headphones do not have these problems. Their response typically extends well below 20 Hz.

The bulk of all dynamics in music, as well as the majority of the magic itself, resides in the first watt. The second watt adds only 3 dB, with exponentially diminishing results from there. To achieve bliss, a Zen amp, for example, driving an efficient speaker, will captivate a listener with no more than 2 very serious watts. However, no matter how efficient your speakers are, the sound is always better at night. The reason is that the ambient noise floor in your listening room drops significantly at night, potentially by as much as 20 dB. This means that music played back at night, adjusted to the same level it was played during the day, will have 20 dB of added dynamics and detail, with perfectly black silence between the notes. Headphones, particularly closed-back designs, offer around 18 dB of ambient noise isolation. That’s enough to turn day into night and night into heaven.

And while we’re on the subject of dynamics and efficiency: 2 watts on a Zen amp is plenty loud on the right speakers, but A) how many people use the right speakers with one, and B) can you ever have enough power for those moments when you just want to crank it – even with the right speakers? At some point, it’s bound to get ugly as the gear begins to distort, aggravated by the room. Headphones do not have this problem. No distortion, and no apparent limit to volume. For example, the Beyerdynamics I am using are around 96 dB – the same as our top-of-the-line High Definition Tower speakers using the Fostex drivers. My new headphone amp has a maximum clean output into these headphones of about 300 milliwatts. That’s three times what the headphones will handle. You might think that with only 100 milliwatts, a 96 dB system wouldn’t get any louder than a Zen amp on our reference speakers, but don’t forget that in the case of headphones, the speaker diaphragm is located about ¼ inch away from your ear and is automatically 18 dB louder due to ambient noise rejection.

I have never been able to get the volume control past ¼ on my headphone amp and can safely say it sounds about 100 times louder than I’d ever want to listen to it. So in short, there are no limitations to how loud you can listen, and a BIG BONUS – no one else will hear it, even in the same room.

Resolution – for this, I use my Acoustats with custom servo-charged tube amps driving the panels directly with no crossovers, offering 20Hz – 20kHz response with no phase shift. This system is a benchmark for resolution, but even as good as it is, the headphones are still better. To illustrate the kind of detail extraction possible with good headphones compared to good loudspeakers, do the following experiment: If you have a watch that ticks on your wrist or a clock in your house, wait until night time and listen to it from a distance of 1 meter. What you hear is the maximum resolution you can hear at that distance. Now, put the watch or clock up against your ear. The tenfold increase in information you hear is similar to the difference between good headphones and good loudspeakers.

Returning to the weakest link concept, it stands to reason that a VERY good headphone amplifier is crucial to make good headphones sound their best. Perhaps I got lucky and invented the world’s best-sounding headphone amp, but I’m sure there are many that would be good enough to get you as excited as I am about it. One of the biggest surprises is that I’m using one of our modified CD players with this headphone amp and comparing the results against my reference vinyl rig, enjoying it with similar enthusiasm!

I can’t help but think that especially for someone just starting out in the hobby, this headphone amp and a pair of decent headphones the total of which is less than $1000.00 in 2003 prices would be an intelligent alternative to trying to set up a listening room. And I suppose that if a person was to start out this way, and later wanted to set up a listening room with similar sounding gear he or she would have a reference which could never be topped throughout the process. That would undoubtedly affect their buying decisions because by comparison most everything they try would sound inferior. That would really help a person choose the right stuff the first time.