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Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

Building headphone amps doesn't make any sense, IMO. You are not even going to outdo a $1 opamp with all this tube stuff. For headphone amp I use a Mackie Onyx mixer that I bought used on ebay for $80. It also includes a bunch of ADCs and, you know, the entire mixer. And it's more similar to the stuff that was used when actually mixing the songs I listen to.

Where tube stuff still _does_ make sense is guitar amplification, where particular flavors of distortion and frequency response nonlinearities are a feature, not a bug.

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Well building anything with tubes makes no sense at all but that doesn’t rule out making headphone amps. Many small devices are unable to drive many kinds of headphones so you need something to bridge that gap. The other reason you might have is devices that can drive your headphones but have a lot of coupled noise from nearby digital electronics. This goes for most laptops.

As an example I have a Zoom F4 portable recorder. It has a headphone output but it can’t drive 30-Ohm headphones worth a damn and even with high-impedance headphones there is audible noise that doesn’t exist on the recording itself. So if I want a realistic feedback on what I am recording I have to monitor through an external headphone amp.

Yes, I should have said "building tube based headphone amps" makes no sense. Opamp based ones make sense for low impedance headphones if the source is not designed for low impedance loads.

These days modelling (Helix etc) has reached the point where tube amps, cabs and individual FX pedals can be replaced by a single piece of hardware. As a bass player I ditched my SVT and individual pedals in favour of a Helix Stomp; it's the best musical purchase I've ever made.

Guitar/bass player here. I own a few tube guitar amps (Fender Blues Jr, Peavey Ultra 410) and also have a vintage 70s Ampeg V4b. For nearly 100% of my daily playing and recording needs I use Helix Native; it's simply easier, more versatile, and sounds better than anything I can do with my real amps.

I use Axe FX myself. It's good, but for me it does not really replace _all_ tube amps. I still have a few that do what Axe FX can't do.

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