[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?