![]() This accomplishes what the Banana part does but in a nicer way. They are more robust and not unwieldy like bananas. Think of SspeakON as the modern Banana alternative. SpeakON approach: This is a novel and more elegant option offered by Benchmark. Even at normal listening volumes on the pre while urning on, hard to drive headphones act just fine powering up. But people fret too much on this, just don’t. And you’re done! Or are you? Make sure to always put your preamp volume down before you start playing because at full power the headphones will be so loud, you might lose your hearing. What you do is plug in the Banana plugs in the AHB2’s binding posts and connect your headphones to the XLR female plug. They can be had from Moon Audio, LQI cables and probably other places too. I’ll explain both as I have gone through both choices and found the latter to be more elegant.īanana approach: Okay, what you need is a Bananas to 4-pin XLR female cable to plug in your headphone. The AHB2 has banana binding posts and alternatively SpeakON connectors as outputs, so let’s pick one of the two options. Speaker amp to headphones: This is probably why you are reading this.To recap, this is what the chain looks like: DAC->preamp->AHB2 (->headphones). Okay, so you are all connected in your chain at this point. If you want to go from single ended to XLR, Benchmark has their own ones and you have to use those (they are inexpensive). If you have balanced gear, use XLR interconnects, or you can use RCA cables. Now that your DAC is connected to a preamp, the preamp needs to be connected to the AHB2.(The video is relevant because it discusses why you need a preamp) But for simplicity, to reiterate, let’s take preamp to be a volume control in this case. If this sounds too alien to you, Golden Sound’s Holo Serene review video has a very good explanation on what this is. To keep it simple, let’s consider preamps just as volume controls so that the AHB doesn’t push at all its glory, hence the preamp is a volume control in this discussion. However, I use a Burson Soloist 3xp or Schiit Mjolnir 2 that are both headphone amps with preamp functionality. Goldpoint makes one of the best ones out there for this. If you just want a volume control to attenuate the AHB2’s signal then you want a passive one. Then in the chain, the DAC gets connected to a preamp.If you have a DAC/Amp combo, ignore the next point. I have a Holo Spring 3 and let’s consider it as a standalone DAC with no volume control. This is where the music starts (after the source/streamer/computer). Let’s assume you have a DAC with no volume control. The process is as follows and it’s not just how I do it but this is the standard regardless of what gear you have. So, this necessitates the need for a preamp to control the volume. Even if you are careless, it still won’t happen – as much as naysayers will warn you. Which is basically recipe for disaster i.e., blowing up your headphones. Before starting to talk about it step by step, we need to get the fact out of the way that the AHB2 does not have a volume control – it will just push with all its might. How do you connect headphones to the AHB2 (which is a speaker amp): This is likely the most asked question and one I struggled when I was starting out. Yet, here we are, trying to power the Susvara with all our might. Well, using a power amp for headphones is overkill to begin with. Apart from this, you can use a bridge mode to use two AHB2s in a monoblock configuration should you be so inclined but for headphones, that would be overkill if you ask me. Details on that later in the writeup when I tackle how to connect your headphones. The latter is a Godsend if you are want an elegant cable run. Instead of binding posts, the SpeakOn are more robust XLR-like jacks that can accept two 2-poles outputs or a single 4-poles. I didn’t know about these before buying the AHB2. Now for the cool part, namely, the SpeakON connectors. For output, they have the standard Banana and spade binding posts. As inputs, it takes balanced XLR and RCA inputs that are pretty standard. Inputs/outputs: It is a simple balanced power amp – nothing too fancy except for one thing which I’ll mention in about three sentences. For completion, it operates in full class A – if that matters to you. The THD+N numbers are off the charts (technically reverse of that as in they are so low that they won’t show up in a plot think obscene numbers of zeros before a digit shows up). As Golden Sound put it, it is the objectively best measuring power amp and it shows. It uses the THX tech, so it has two-way feedback resulting in ultra clean output. The Tech: I will keep the boring part short and simple because you will find all the numbers and parameters on their website hence no point parroting them here.
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