Does anyone here know what year the first headphone amplifiers first began to hit the market?
Bonus beer and cookies if you know who made it.
Bonus beer and cookies if you know who made it.
Odd Question For The Vets
- Thread starter Monsterzero
- Start date
ProtegeManiac
Headphoneus Supremus
Stax Energizer units that don't work out of the speaker outputs of a speaker amp have been around since the late 1980s I think; followed by the SAC K1000 and the HEV90.
Late 1990s and there's the Musical Fidelity X-Can and Creek OBH-11.
Late 1990s and there's the Musical Fidelity X-Can and Creek OBH-11.
HBen
500+ Head-Fier
According to my knowledge and some research it's pretty much impossible to say which one was the first headphone amplifier, since the first (kind of) headphones were around since about 1910 and there were obviously some devices that were running these and later headphones (for example for telegraph and telephone work), which could be considered a "headphone amplifier".
Development in that area happened in several places around the world simultaneously at that time and is unfortunately not perfectly documented, which makes it debatable and impossible to prove which one was "the first one".
Also it's kind of difficult to say nowadays which models and at which point in time these devices were targeted at the consumer market and which were only used or intended for professional use.
On a sidenote: The first headphone amp from STAX was the SRA-4S, which was released 1960 (thanks wikipedia
).
Development in that area happened in several places around the world simultaneously at that time and is unfortunately not perfectly documented, which makes it debatable and impossible to prove which one was "the first one".
Also it's kind of difficult to say nowadays which models and at which point in time these devices were targeted at the consumer market and which were only used or intended for professional use.
On a sidenote: The first headphone amp from STAX was the SRA-4S, which was released 1960 (thanks wikipedia
).
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Thanks for that. Ive had some requests to do a video on my channel about vintage receivers as headphone amps,and Im trying to get an idea of when dedicated headphone amps became a thing.
HBen
500+ Head-Fier
Hard to say when headphone amps actually became "a thing". I assume that means to you that sales of headphone amps crossed the line from being a very niche item to become more popular and more widely available.
Somebody please correct me if i'm wrong - but it seems to me (at least in my area) like it all slowly started when bigger company's started producing headphone amplifier's that were targeted at the consumer market, like the musical fidelity x-can and the like. Must have been in the late 90's like ProtegeManiac already mentioned.
Anybody a bit older than me knowing more?
Somebody please correct me if i'm wrong - but it seems to me (at least in my area) like it all slowly started when bigger company's started producing headphone amplifier's that were targeted at the consumer market, like the musical fidelity x-can and the like. Must have been in the late 90's like ProtegeManiac already mentioned.
Anybody a bit older than me knowing more?
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