ART HeadAMP4 Eight Output Stereo Headphone Amplifier

I rarely write reviews for Amazon, unless I find a product that is truly worthy of mention (good or bad). I am somewhat of an audiophile. I take my music very seriously and I am VERY picky about sound. Until recently, I was using a portable headphone amp made by Fiio (which I will continue to use with my iPod while on the road). I wanted a good amp that could hook into my Denon 165 watt receiver, that would deliver great sound and would drive my phones well. I did my research and chose this ART HeadAmp4. Quite honestly folks, this amp has been such a great improvement, that I don't know how I got by without it before. This amp is the real deal. It amplifies your headphones in a way that improves the sound stage so much, you will be very pleasantly surprised. I have about twenty pairs of headphones. Some of them have been more difficult to drive than others, and my receiver alone was not giving them the boost needed to get the most out of them. This is no longer an issue. I am now getting so much more out of my headphones....from bass to mids, to overall sound stage........the difference is amazing. My wife is not nearly as critical as I am when it comes to sound. I had her listen to some songs utilizing just my receiver, and then switching to the amp. She was floored at the difference in sound. It's just so much more lush and warm, with the use of the ART. The amp is well constructed; a good portion of it is metal. It allows for the use of eight headphones, and it can easily drive them all at once.........trust me.....I have already tried it. There are eight inputs on the rear of the unit....four small and four standard size inputs. The four knobs on the front of this unit allow you to adjust the amount of amplification on each of the four channels. I keep my knobs at around 5........I don't want to blow my head off, or damage my ears, by moving it much past that level. Others may want more amplification, but this setting is perfect for me. Setup is super simple on this ART unit. Plug the amp into the electrical outlet, and run a decent patch cord from your headphone jack on your receiver, to the input port on the back of the ART. Violla!!!!.........you are ready to listen. Again, I cannot emphasize enough what a difference you will encounter. I listen to several genres of music. My primary choices are some alternative music, blues and blues/rock, downtempo/chillout music, and classical (with emphasis on chamber music). The ART HeadAmp4 wonderfully enhances all of these genres,and I am sure that it is fabulous with others as well. My equipment is a Denon 165 watt receiver, a Polk Audio subwoofer, and two Sony tower speakers. My audio equipment is very good, but certainly not the best. Whatever type of equipment you have, you will benefit from this headphone amp. I do not work for ART or any other electronic entity. I am just a guy who has been enjoying music for over forty years and using headphones since I was 15 years old ( I'm 57 now). I wrote this review, because I wanted to help answer any doubts that some prospective buyers might have. I am sure that you can find better amps if you spend more money. But for just around 60 dollars, this ART unit is a true gem. Honestly. Thanks for checking out my review, and I wish you good listening.

While this item is marketed mostly to musicians, I bought it as a headphone amplifier/splitter for my TV. Cheaper battery-powered headphone amps are available, but the specs and features of the ART HeadAmp4 made the difference for me, the higher price notwithstanding. There are four separate outputs (and four separate volume controls), making the amp a splitter as well. It's powered by a small wall transformer instead of batteries. The case is extruded aluminum, not plastic, and it has rubber feet that won't scratch furniture. Sound is very clear and there is plenty of amplification for any type of headphone. The amplifier will work with any headphone level output. That is, you could use it with any computer, video game, TV, radio, MP3 player or other device with a headphone jack. You do need a cable with a 1/8" (3.5mm) male stereo plug on each end. This is not supplied with the amp, but is available from Amazon or other vendors. My only minor gripe is that there is no power switch, so you have to unplug the wall transformer to turn it off. I plugged the wall transformer into a small switched plug strip which works fine but does add yet another cord to our increasingly tangled TV/audio setup. Overall, we're very pleased with this high quality unit. Update: A few months after we bought this amp, one channel died. Didn't bother to return it as we use only one channel at a time. About a year after purchasing this unit, we bought another for a different location. We really like 'em, as you can see.

Quiet, compact, solid build quality, easy to set up and reliable. I'm a musician/audio engineer. With the right variety of quality cables, I can cover pretty much any monitoring situation, from rehearsal to recording to mixing. It has a nice smooth range, topping out at about +6 db over line level, with a clear/flat sound. This has served me very well, fits easily in my laptop bag. Aside from some potential for the odd "lemon off the line" unit as with anything else I suppose, some of the lower ratings/complaints here seem related to components down or up stream more than anything. Personally, I've been at this for a long time...plagued by lower quality cables, connectors, headphones, inputs/outputs, adapters (the worst), splitters, audio cards, etc. Especially 1/8 Inch, sadly everybody loves earbuds. In fact I can't say how many times someone has brought something or another to a session to discover they have an issue when it seemed just fine at home and I've had to provide a replacement. What is it that makes us want to doubt new components over the old junk we've been toting around for years? Sentimental value on random accessories and cables is definitely something to lose in a hurry. There are many possible weak links in an audio chain...this unit certainly does not appear to be one of them. Be sure to check them all before you go tossing perfectly good units out the window or into a return box...when what you should really be tossing in the trash is that dusty kinked radio shack 1/8" flaky splitter cable behind your PC under your desk that you taped tension to one side so it does not cut out in the left ear...all of which you forgot was in front of this unit or another.

My application is splitting the fixed level, recording output from a stereo receiver into 3 external, independent volume controlled zones -- Kitchen, Living Room and Breakfast Room. Plus, I will have an extra channel to power a pair of wired Bose noise-canceling headphones with a 3.5mm plug and no need for an adapter. For this project, I also needed 4 sets of 1 meter cables with 1/4" TRS male split to RCA stereo jack pairs. The Art HeadAMP 4 quietly feeds a Parasound HCA-1206 six-channel home theater amp to create three stereo pairs. Each channel has an input gain which allows for setting channel balance and maximum volume. Volumes are running around 10-11 on both the HeadAMP 4 and power amp to give plenty of listening volume with no perceivable noise or distortion. The master stereo receiver in the study has PC soundcard, Logitech Squeezebox, AM/FM and CD inputs. It powers a 2.1 HSU audio system with the receiver's volume-adustable pre-amp outputs going to a powered sub. My wife or I can select a different source to feed the recording output (multi-zone) than what we're listening to in the study, which is sometimes needed. The power amp is only turned on as needed to power 1 or more zones. Previously, I was using a passive speaker splitter box, but was not happy with the sound, and the inability to set different volume levels for each zone was frustrating. Plus, I was on my 2nd unit, and like the 1st even more expensive one, a speaker would sometimes cut out and I would have to jiggle the selector button several times in and out to get both speakers working again. When I decided to add the 3rd zone (Breakfast Room), I re-purposed the old Parasound home theater amp for this multi-zone use. The speaker splitter box is now a paperweight (like the first one). The Art SPLITmix 4 passive splitter/mixer might have worked OK, but for only $15 more I opted for the HEADamp 4 to ensure good output levels and the bonus to power a pair of headphones for quiet listening. Headphone distribution boxes by Behringer, Mackie or Presonus would probably have worked OK for less, or more money in the case of Presonus. However, I preferred the Art's front facing controls, left to right channel 1-4 orientation and expected quality (from past experience), so chose it over the others. I should mention that it has a rubber edge that runs along each side to firmly grip the surface, keeping it from sliding around when I adjust the volumes. Nice! Also, I should mention that Art did NOT respond to my questions about using the HEADamp 4 for this application, which was disappointing. Enjoy the music, however you listen to it, but please don't play it too LOUD. You only have one set of ears, and they are definitely NOT indestructable!! Cheers.

I am always leery to buy anything if it doesn't have all 4 or 5 star ratings. This product had a few below average ratings and so I was concerned about that because it is not an inexpensive item. I took a chance anyway because I was dealing with Amazon and they always make things right. Now to review the product. It seems to be very sturdy and it's construction doesn't feel cheep. The volume control knobs turn smoothly and have a quality feel to them. I tested it using my laptop headphone out jack. All 4 channels worked great and I didn't notice any audio distortion at normal listening volumes. Believe me, the top volume with the headphones I used would have made my ears bleed. Each output can be adjusted from zero volume to it's max which was at least twice the volume (=>6db) of what my laptop can provide by itself. There were other products I looked at that cost less but what sold me on spending the extra bucks was that it accommodated both 1/4" & 1/8" inputs and outputs. In fact, you can use both outputs of each channel at the same time. I did not actually buy this to drive headphones though. I record songs that I've written into my computer using the Audacity DAW program (Because it's free). I have been taking the output from my TC Helicon Voicelive 2 and Roland GR-55 guitar synthesizer straight into the mic input of my computer. The recorded result was a low volume with the Voicelive 2, even with the mic input sensitivity set to max as compared to the GR-55. The GR-55 has an output level adjustment knob that the Voicelive 2 doesn't have. I can increase the audio level from within the Audacity program but I wanted to drive the input to the computer a little harder instead to match what I can get from the GR-55. This Headphone amplifier should do the job nicely. Update 3/15/2014 - I wrote the above review after the 1st time I used it. It did not work the 3rd time I used it. Turned out to be a bad power adapter. Not worth the hassle of returning it so I'll get a replacement adapter at the store.

This ART amp is very nice build, very solid, feel's like it would hold up for a while and the sound quality was surprising to me with a quality cable there is no hissing or static of any sort. I would certainly buy this product again the only drawback was no on-off switch but at this price it's hard to complain.

I'll start with the conclusion that this product does exactly what it is designed to and claims to, and that is the reason that I gave the product 5 stars. This product will work as a signal multiplexer and headphone amplifier whether you are in a home studio or a professional studio, or just need your signal amplified. This device is extremely flexible because it has both size sockets on the input and outputs. The volume controls have a sturdy feel and are very fluid when adjusting. The sound is clean providing that the correct level of input is used. The rest is elementary. This is a very well made study box with a rugged feel. It is nicely stylized and has a convenient compact form factor. This was an impulse buy for me, but I would highly recommend this product to anyone that would like to either amplify their existing headphone signal, or amplify and use up to four headphones at the same time. In addition to the product, I am ecstatic about the service that I received from SameDayMusic. They performed well beyond my expectations in promptness.

This product is really a great deal, sounds good, no distortion or buzzing or anything i could detect, even when you crank it up. Its very solidly built (metal case); the design is nice too. I've been using it nearly everyday since I got it, it's been holding up great. *Just a note: this is an amp only...so that means it is only good for volume increase and more appropriately powering outputs than the originally source might. My only complaints are small: -all the jacks are in the back (can kink cables if they are ultimately fed forward; can be a good thing if you don't want a mess of cables showing on your desk) -no power switch (I don't really care though, I just leave it on for the most part) -the knobs are little too close to each other -power supply is chunky, can block other outlets Not much else to say, if you are looking for a solid headphone amp on the cheap side, go for this. UPDATE 4/28/19: I have been using this every day for just about 9 years now. It still has held up and I am very happy with the purchase. Some of the painted on letters and numbers have worn off in places, but it still functions like the day I bought it.