Daisy-chaining headphone amps - any consequences?

[drumlesstrance]

I’ve just bought a pair of headphones with quite low sensitivity. As a music producer, I primarily got them to check the low-end when producing and mixing, but also for enjoying music when I'm not making music. I’m trying to drive them from the headphone out of my audio interface (RME Babyface Pro original) but I’m finding that it doesn’t get loud enough. Thus, I’d like a standalone headphone amp to pair with it.

However, I have my interface linked up to everything already (studio monitors, ADAT expanders etc) and I don't really want to get a separate DAC. This is as, if I switch to the DAC drivers in the middle of production, I will lose all my mic / line inputs and won't be able to monitor my hardware synths live through the headphones. An alternative is something like ASIO4ALL to combine the interface and standalone DAC, but that will add tons of latency which is also not ideal.

Are there any downsides to daisy-chaining the headphone out of the interface through a RCA splitter to something like a JDS Atom? Will there be a degradation in sound quality doing it this way? Are there any other consequences that I should be wary of? I'm sure it will definitely work but I'm worried about introducing unnecessary noise or distortion, or worse yet, losing transparency in the audio out of my DAW.

And as an alternative question - what would be a better way of routing this whole setup while spending the least amount of money possible?

Thank you very much in advance!

 

[solderdude]

see:

Looking For Headphone Amp With Always-On Passthrough

Per title - looking for a relatively well measuring but CHEAP headphone amp that has an always-on passthrough, similar to how the THX-789 did it. Have been looking at the Topping lower-range stuff but seems like they only have passthroughs that are active when the amps are off, which is a no go...

www.audiosciencereview.com

When both connected devices are powered and on and have about the same input voltage levels splitting source signals will go fine.
When input sensitivity differs substantially or one of the devices could be switched off then there might, in certain cases, distortion be possible.
In such case a switch (routing the signal to amp1 or amp2) would be a trouble free connection IF both amps not in use at the same time.

splitting is not exactly the same as daisy chaining. In some devices the through-put is buffered. In most cases it is not or the line-out is merely the headphone out signal.