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.
SEE ALSO: Best Headphones Round-up
