Headphone box

[buck_rogers999]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if anyone knows how to build. a headphone box so I can use my normal amps but with headphones instead. I see Orbital have some boxes (HBOX) that do it I was just wondering if anyone knows what components are in them so I can build a few.

 

Cheers

[olly_steel]

Orbital have two types, some with volume pots and some without, and alot of the straight through ones have been modded to match headphone impedance, I'm afraid I don't know the ins and outs of the much more than that.

 

Which are you after? And have you thought about giving them a call, the volume pot ones they've had for years, they might sell you one cheap if you ask nicely! That's assuming you only want one?

 

Olly

[themadhippy]

if anyone knows what components are in them so I can build a few

.

At a guess a few high powered resitors,or if there being flash a transformer,but to get a good frequency response it aint going to be cheap.

[J Pearce]

You can buy 8ohm headphones, these will work with normal amps but will require careful gain setup.

[ramdram]

Any good?

 

http://sound.westhost.com/project100.htm

[buck_rogers999]

Thanks for this guys, I am after about 5 with volume pots.

 

ramdram very interesting I might give that a go by putting in a volume pot in place of one of the resistors.

 

Cheers

[Sound Man]

Have you looked at the ones that Canford sell?

 

David

[ramdram]

Found this too:

 

http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pads/

 

A bit more choice than just that "tee" pad in the earlier link.

[FullRange]

Just in case you don't want to build one yourself or want to reverse engineer one, ART also do one: ART HeadTap

Seems to go for about £35.

[jamesperrett]

The simplest way to do this is to put a resistor in series with each headphone output. Around 100 ohms would be OK with the average hifi amplifier but you would maybe need to increase the value if you are using a high power amplifier.

 

Using a single series resistor has the advantage that the box will work reasonably well with headphones of any impedance. The resistor in series with 8 ohm headphones will have the highest voltage attenuation but this is OK because 8 ohm headphones require far less voltage for a given power output. Conversely, if you use 600 ohm headphones, the resistor will have little effect on the voltage that the headphone sees, but again, this is OK because 600 ohm headphones can usually be connected directly to loudspeaker outputs with no problem.

 

If you want volume controls I would use something like a 100 ohm wirewound pot but I would still have a resistor in series with the input end of the pot in order to prevent overly high levels with low impedance headphones.

 

In the studio I found that I needed to use 1 or 2 watt resistors in order to handle the loud levels that some people wanted in their headphones.

 

James.

[domroz]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if anyone knows how to build. a headphone box so I can use my normal amps but with headphones instead. I see Orbital have some boxes (HBOX) that do it I was just wondering if anyone knows what components are in them so I can build a few.

 

Cheers

 

 

The Orbital ones have a 1Kohm 2W pot with 220Ohm 2W resistors on either end. They can be daisychained on speakon across an orchestra pit off one amp channel and are an easy soution for click track distribution.

 

 

Hope this helps!

 

Dom

[Gareth Owen]

The Orbital ones have a 1Kohm 2W pot with 220Ohm 2W resistors on either end. They can be daisychained on speakon across an orchestra pit off one amp channel and are an easy soution for click track distribution.

I'm reasonably certain Dom may have designed the Orbital ones in the first place...

[domroz]

Actually Gareth credit to John Shemming and Keith Barnes for the design. I just remember building a lot of them in a hurry every December...

[TimmyP1955]

Before the advent of the IC headphone amp, the signal at the headphone jack was just the speaker out padded down by a resistor - 330 Ohms was common. 220 Ohms or 300 Ohms in series with a 1K pot also works fine if your amp does not have remote volume control. This does not have to be a high power pot - a standard 1/2 watt is fine, such as 313-2420F-1K. If you put the resistors between the pot and the jack, the attenuation curve is smoother at low control settings (as opposed to putting the resistors between the amp and the pot).

 

If you find that you have to run the amp's volume control unusually low, or there's too much residual noise, add a second set of resistors between the amp and the pot.