BHK Preamp and line out for a separate headphone amp

Audio Components Preamplifiers
1

I have a separate headphone amp, and I’m wondering if it is possible to get a line level out from the BHK preamp to feed it?

What are other people doing to feed their separate headphone amp?

Thanks.

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2

I have a BHK preamp and my headphone amp has both XLR and RCA inputs. You can do one of two things.

  1. Disconnect the XLR or RCA cables from your amps inputs and plug it into your headphone amp

  2. If you are using RCA cables to your stereo amp then use the XLR outputs from your BHK preamp to your headphone amp. If you are using XLR cables to your stereo amp then use RCA cables to your headphone amp.

What I do because of the location of my amp and preamp is use an additional XLR cable that stays connected to my headphone amp and leave the other end of the cable by my BHK preamp. When I want to listen to my headphones I unplug the XLR output cable going to my mono amps and plug in the cable coming from the headphone amp.

Hope this helps!

3

All preamps should have tape loops by law :slight_smile: …
…solves this and several other connectivity problems.

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4

Yeah. I don’t know why makers stopped adding a line out.

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5

I was afraid of that.

On my prior system, before I got the PS Audio Stellar preamp and BHK preamp, I used a switch box with a Wyred4Sound preamp. It had 3 inputs and 3 outputs. Two outputs were XLS and one RCA. I plugged my DAC and preamp on the input side and my W4S preamp and Woo Audio on the output side.

It sounded ok with the level of equipment I was using.

However now I have a Stellar phono and BHK preamp and I’m concerned that introducing that switch box will degrade audio.

Is there a mod that could be made to the switch box that won’t degrade my audio? I would like to avoid swapping cables, but would to avoid poor audio.

Thoughts?

6

If it’s a passive switch box, it is well worth trying - you will probably hear no difference, just the added flexibility :slight_smile:

If it is an active switch box (requires power in for more than just relays and lights) then all you can do is try and see if you can hear a difference.

Or take the suggestion above: feed the headphone amp from the spare output from the bhk pre, turn the headphone amp volume up high, and use the bhk pre volume control to control the volume on headphones too. Main risk is of the bad habit of leaving headphone amp volume up high.

1 Like
7

Joma, thanks for your thoughts.

The switch box is passive, I’ve opened it up and it looks like it’s made up of very inexpensive materials.

I’m already using XLR for my amp output, and that leaves me a pair of RCA which I don’t want to use.

Since the highest quality audio is my end goal, I’ll compare the audio from the switch box XLR with the audio from the shared amp output RCA and hear which is better.

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