Headphone Amp... Beat that!

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Derrick
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Headphone Amp... Beat that!

Post by Derrick » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:28 pm

This is my headphone amp. The doctor says my hearing may come back in a week or so.... I said, 'what?' Seriously, is there a better headphone amp then this? I hear Nigel Tufnel used them during the recording of the Spinal Tap soundtrack.


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rhythm ranch
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Post by rhythm ranch » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:37 pm

The one Behringer unit that most folks agree is OK: Headphone Amp.

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JWL
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Post by JWL » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:06 pm

Mackie HMX56. I use it to drive headphones, and my active monitors. No better bang for buck available.

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Post by ctmsound » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:10 pm

Rolls HA43
Presonus HP4
Behringer crap

anything is better than that!

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Re: Headphone Amp... Beat that!

Post by Everybody's X » Wed Oct 25, 2006 11:06 pm

Derrick wrote:This is my headphone amp. The doctor says my hearing may come back in a week or so.... I said, 'what?' Seriously, is there a better headphone amp then this? I hear Nigel Tufnel used them during the recording of the Spinal Tap soundtrack.


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Post by Professor » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:33 am

I roll with a pair of these little guys:

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Connected to a handful of these:

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For those keeping score, that's a Bryston 2B-LP, 60wpc amp and the Proco HJ-4P. It's a good system, obviously with way more power than needed for a simple pair of headphones. But, when I have a group the size of our big band in the studio, I actually drop 16-18 pairs of headphones onto one stereo amp, so they ask for a lot of juice all together.
Those little Proco boxes are really helpful too. They daisy-chain easily, and the switches kick between stereo & mono on one side, and mono from left or right on the other switch. And the volume controls are for left & right ears separately in case you have the mix split with click on one side and music on the other... or whatever. I had the folks at Proco customize them with Speakon connectors so that my monitor patch points on the wall and across the floor are 'speaker level' connectors - that protects me from clumsy students plugging amp outputs into active speakers, or daisy-chaining mics into the headphone boxes, or whatever stupid things they might think up to do.

-Jeremy

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Derrick
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Post by Derrick » Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:11 am

OK Jeremy, well I am not to be outdone. I just got on line here and whipped out the creditcard for yet a newer headphone amp. This should be here tomorrow as I've overnighted it DHL.
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workshed
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Post by workshed » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:19 am

I got one of these Alto HP6 units, and really it's pretty damn nice. It was getting a little hum this last weekend, but I think I have some a/c noise issues in my studio that are causing that.

-Bret

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Post by floid » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:36 am

the first time i recorded a band, we decided to use something like that for the drummer's monitor, and he plugged into the speaker out. ruined a perfectly good set of headphones
Village Idiot.

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Post by Professor » Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:27 pm

I can dig the Marshalls, but it seems like that's an awful lot of drivers for a headphone system...
unles the plan is to duct tape a cabinet to each side of the drummer's head.

:rockin:

And believe me, I ain't trying to show off (much) with that rig. In my personal stash I have a used Symetrix 4-output headphone amp and a little home-made battery operated one I made for my location recording rig, and a little Rolls battery operated portable. I would use a combination of all of those when I would try to do overdub session with my location rig.
But I think I might be one of only a handful of guys on here who regularly has 18 people in the studio at once. Hell, next week we're doing a gospel choir that has 34 singers, so I'll pop the headphone drivers off the headbands and have them hold one can to one ear so 2 people share a pair... it seems smarter than buying another 16-20 sets of cans for one gig.

I also learned about that setup from the school studios at Univ. of Colo. at Denver where they had little 1-space, 30 or 40watt power amps (Symetrix, I think) running to passive headphone boxes.
That's where I was in school before here, so I kinda copied what I knew.

-Jeremy

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Derrick
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Post by Derrick » Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:29 pm

Yes, this monitor produces great AC/DC noises. Seriously, the idea here was also for our drummer to hear in tracking. Worked like a charm... just sent a mix buss to it via the line in jack. He had his very own EQ stack and volume right there next to him. :wink:
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Post by Jim_Boulter » Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:51 pm

workshed wrote:I got one of these Alto HP6 units, and really it's pretty damn nice.
Yeah, I grabbed a used one off of eBay, and I'm diggin' it.
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Post by analogcabin » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:39 pm

Anything but a Carvin. Whew.....what was I thinking. Thank God for eBay.

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Post by jimbob » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:45 pm

Anyone have any experience with the SM Pro Audio HP6?

Is it any better than the HA8000?

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Post by tateeskew » Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:27 am

yep, me too.
Jim_Boulter wrote:
workshed wrote:I got one of these Alto HP6 units, and really it's pretty damn nice.
Yeah, I grabbed a used one off of eBay, and I'm diggin' it.

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