SMSL SH-8S headphone amplifier, US $ 229.99, seems good. Amir's summary:I'd take the HK any day of the week. No room? Then buy a bigger desk.
I'd take the HK any day of the week. No room? Then buy a bigger desk.
Also weigh in, Vintage:Absolutely.
Not sure of how many times I've told these basement-dwelling, gaming-chair weiners to buy a bigger desk and put some real hifi on it.
And play some proper rock music. And. Get off my lawn.
I have an HK 930, lovely old thing that would cost thousands if made today.
I did have it in a second system that was entirely 1970s vintage except for the stylus on the cartridge.
It pains me that I don't have a use for it anymore.
My brother still has his 3020, although not in regular use. He used it as just a preamp for a number of years and then retired it. We opened it up and cleaned it up a bit last year and it all still works. The one thing I remember about the NAD was that it sounded fine until you moved a control, then the noise level jumped. Construction quality was definitely to a price. Sort of like the 70's Advent receiver, nice circuit design, cheap hardware.I think it took about a year to blow up my first NAD 3020. Liked the sound, found the quality of manufacture below par. Got the receiver version later, didn't like the sound as much.
Folks mention classic Harman Kardon receivers, I've owned four different models in that series. The plum is the 430, low powered but dual powered, excellent receiver section, a tad overbuilt. The 330 is nice but the 430 is nicer, has the best sound quality overall of all their receivers, the higher powered models tending to sound a little coarse in comparison. However, their headphone outs are garbage compared to something like a Topping L30. But of all the lower cost receivers of that era, 1970's/1980's, the HK models were overall the best.
Buy one now.I owned and loved my NAD 3240PE integrated. Should have kept that little gem.
Sorry, but this is an example of incompetence of the amp circuit designer. He must have considered such situation (input overvoltage), and the amp should have done nothing but clipping.Feeding the CD output to the phono input resulted in a terrible noise for about 2 seconds and silence I was told followed by smoke being let out.
Thanks Solderdude for the answer. It was as I suspected.No not continuous.
The lack of emitter resistors allowed these amps to deliver the power (shortly, but music is dynamic) in 2ohm as well as in 4ohm and 8ohm.
Just not 2x the power as in 4ohm or 4x the power as in 8ohm.
It also meant these amps blew up regularly when OP devices overheated and had thermal runaway.