With more people spending decent money on headphones, and Hi-Res Audio making waves, now's the time to improve the sound coming out of your computer. A USB headphone amplifier is the way to do it.
The audio circuitry on a laptop or desktop is built to cost and size constraints, not because it does the job well. If you use headphones costing, say, £50 or more, you'll be amazed at the difference you can hear from using accompanying hardware that's built for purpose.
We've cherrypicked five of the best headphone amps that'll plug into a PC or Mac, suck your digital music through their built-in DACs (digital-to-analogue converters) and squirt it out of their standard 3.5mm jack sockets.
We tested using a wide range of headphones, from mid-range in-ears up to the astonishing £1000 Grado GS1000e over-ears. Music files were everything from old 192kbps MP3s to 24-bit 96KHz Hi-Res Audio, as well as streaming services such as Spotify and TIDAL.
Read on to find out which amp gave us real sonic delight, or use these links to head straight to the model you're interested in:
- Audioengine D3
- Fiio E18 Kunlun
- Arcam rPAC
- NuForce uDAC-3
- Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS
- AudioQuest DragonFly v1.2
SEE ALSO: Best Headphones Round-up