I have an original sprout I picked up a couple of years ago for $250 second hand. I like to consider myself an audiophile, but admittedly, I wouldn't say I actually own any audiophile gear. Subjectively, I have zero complaints about the sprout. It's an extremely well built kit that has perfect usability on a desktop. What really sells this unit for me is that I'm often switching between my monitors and my headphones at my desk and simply unplugging the headphones kicks the audio over to the speakers.
In a world where we have $99 JDS Atoms that essentially offer perfect headphone amplification for pennies, there doesn't seem to be anything comparable in the integrated desktop world - maybe even at any price. To me, it sounds pretty great, but then again, I like all of the gear that I have. That said, I've never actually been able to listen to truly high end or audiophile grade gear to understand if I'm missing something. Is the 70hz hump and subsequent rolloff negatively impacting the sound of my HE-4XX/AD200x headphones? I don't know. Is it negatively impacting my JamoS60 bookshelf speakers that serve as nearfield monitors? Less likely. Is noise worsening the sound quality? Not in a way I can tell, but then again I don't have much to compare it to.
I'd love to buy the atom to compare, but the hassle of switching sound outputs in a dozen places within my OS every time I want to switch between headphones and speakers just seems like a nightmare. Is there a small form integrated USB amp like the sprout that offers same class performance of the JDS Atom or THX 789?