[Mike Rivers]

On 10/15/2012 11:33 AM, Arny Krueger wrote:

The headphone amps in personal digital players are usually limited in terms
of output voltage, but can be very sophisticated in terms of providing low
source impedances. Most personal digital players also provide 5 or 6 band
graphic equalizers under listener control.

One more thing to fiddle with that wastes time getting ready
to play a show.

One direction that may evolve is individual musicans listening wirelessly
via headphones and earphones connected through *pad personal digital devices
to services on the studio's LAN.

At present, none of the monitor systems that can be
controlled remotely by an iGizmo actually send audio through
it. I'm told that it can't be done in a direct manner due to
the way WiFi communication is handled. I suppose you could
send the mix through a streaming server, put it on an
internal network, and get audio that way, but I suspect that
latency would be unacceptable.

What I can see (and maybe it's already here) is DSP in an
individual headphone amplifier (wired or radio wireless)
that can be used to optimize a particular headset or
earphones, sort of like how hearing aids are tuned for best
performance when coupled to an individual user's ear canal.

The intent of the article, however, was to address the
people who need (or don't know that they need) a headphone
amplifier now, and hopefully circumvent the experience of
buying what's advertised as a 4 output headphone amplifier
and finding that all four outputs can get the same mix.


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff