[Karl Engel]

Some gear, especially portable, doesn't offer line out sockets, so there are
times when a headphone out must suffice for transferring audio. Minidisc
players, FM radios etc.
Once the gain's correctly set, is this really any worse quality? Depends on
the electronics, right? And the sort of small gear that doesn't have line
outs is just the type to have crappy headphone amps I suppose.

I had another case where I needed to get a feed out of a (Klotz) radio
broadcast console and he only output I could access was the headphone out.
Sounded fine to me, but is there an intrinsic reason this should be
significantly inferior to an analogue line out if I could have accessed one?

[Mike Rivers]

Karl Engel wrote:

Once the gain's correctly set, is this really any worse quality? Depends on
the electronics, right?

Right.

And the sort of small gear that doesn't have line
outs is just the type to have crappy headphone amps I suppose.

Headphone amp chips aren't that crappy. What some headphone outputs
have, though, that you may or may not be able to defeat, is some
equalization that adds bass to the headphones. You have to watch out
for that.

I had another case where I needed to get a feed out of a (Klotz) radio
broadcast console and he only output I could access was the headphone out.
Sounded fine to me

There's you proof. If it sounds OK, don't worry about it. There's
enough bad gear out there that you shouldn't worry about what works OK.

[Scott Dorsey]

Karl Engel wrote:

I had another case where I needed to get a feed out of a (Klotz) radio
broadcast console and he only output I could access was the headphone out.
Sounded fine to me, but is there an intrinsic reason this should be
significantly inferior to an analogue line out if I could have accessed one?

Just that the headphone amp stages are usually pretty junky, because they
are often an afterthought to the design and somebody just grabs a circuit
off a datasheet and drops it into place.

There are some pieces of gear out there (and the Tascam 122 is an example)
with headphone amps that are very noisy.... the headphone output will be
noiser than the line outputs in back.

There are other pieces of gear where they really stretched the limit of
the output stage to drive a set of headphones, and often dropped the output
stage bias a lot to get more power out of an undersized output stage, at
the expense of distortion. And you get that higher distortion level, even
when you don't need much current.

On the other hand, there IS equipment out there with careful and well-designed
headphone drive stuff... hell, on the Ampex 440, the headphone outputs can
sound _better_ than the balanced output in back since they don't have
transformers in the signal path.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Laurence Payne]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:26:44 +1100, "Karl Engel"
wrote:

Some gear, especially portable, doesn't offer line out sockets, so there are
times when a headphone out must suffice for transferring audio. Minidisc
players, FM radios etc.
Once the gain's correctly set, is this really any worse quality? Depends on
the electronics, right? And the sort of small gear that doesn't have line
outs is just the type to have crappy headphone amps I suppose.

I had another case where I needed to get a feed out of a (Klotz) radio
broadcast console and he only output I could access was the headphone out.
Sounded fine to me, but is there an intrinsic reason this should be
significantly inferior to an analogue line out if I could have accessed one?

Inputs are much more forgiving than they used to be. Often :-)

No-one's FORCING you to transfer from a device with an unsuitable
output.

[WillStG]

Karl Engel wrote:
I had another case where I needed to get a feed out of a (Klotz) radio
broadcast console and he only output I could access was the headphone out.
Sounded fine to me, but is there an intrinsic reason this should be
significantly inferior to an analogue line out if I could have accessed one?

Well if it was the digital Klotz's, most of these kind of boards
have racks for I/O where components are modular, everythings pretty
much the same. Which if so which would probably mean it sounds about as
good as one of the puppies is going to sound.

Will Miho
NY TV/Audio Post/Music/Live Sound Guy
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits