What do these amplifiers do exactly?
I have no clue about audio and a guy at a shop recommended me to buy a portable amplifier for my headphones because it supposed to make it much better but he couldn't really explain simply how it works.
Is this snake oil?
If you have hard to drive headphones they are needed.
Hard to drive?
Can you explain what you mean and why I need them exactly?
Does it make the sound so much better?
It's an amplifier. It amplifies. Your headphones sounds too low, they need an amp to make them sound louder.
You need current to drive head phones. Some head phones need a lot of current that your laptop or computer just can't put out.
Some headphones require more power to drive properly. Even if you max the volume they still don't sound loud. An amplifier can amplify the signal and make it sound loud.
P.S. Your earbuds aren't high impedance, so yeah it's snake oil.
So they sound louder and better without losing quality?
Just louder. If your current headphones sound loud enough, you don't need one.
That depends. If you buy a good amplifier, the sound quality will be the same. I can make you an amplifier myself for $5 and it will sound like shit.
This guy knows English but not his tech
>You keep your gin in it
if you're going to drop the dosh, at least get one with a DAC and USB input
If you have to ask you don't need one.
Don't listen to retard best buy employees.
I highly doubt you have headphones that your onboard audio can't drive.
You can think of it that way to some extend.
Imagine the default signal as really really quiet. To get it to be played by your headphones, it has to be amplified. Some tiny part on your motherboard does that.
You know how playing something loud on shitty headphones makes it sound distorted? It will be similar when you use a shitty amplifier, the way the signal gets amplified is not so good. If it only has to amplify a little, it won't distort as much though.
Now if you have headphones with a high resistance, the signal has to be stronger to have the same loudness. But that means the amplifier has to work more and distort more, and some motherboard amplifiers might struggle with that and make it sound too quiet.
If you get a good amplifier, you can have louder and better quality sound, but only if your headphones have a high resistance.
Yeah, the naming convention of these devices is pretty confusing, no wonder you don't understand what they're for. Despite the name, in reality they're actually used to amplify sound.
Like this user suggests, if your earbuds are regular impedance, a headphone amplifier may not give you much if any appreciable improvement in sound. A good amplifier will increase volume but also improve dynamics, and, to use a visual analogy, improve the resolution of the what is produced sonically the way the contrast control of a monitor can make a dull image appear with proper tones and hues. With harder-to-drive headphones with higher impedance, an amplifier can improve certain features of output, which can extend the bass, so the bass sounds like a real explosion rather than a slap, or give the midrange greater expansion so vocals sound full without being strident because the capacitors of the amp can release a greater amount of voltage and current without struggling; and the treble can sound better, so some tracks have a real cymbal like sparkle rather than a hiss that's buried under muddy midrange.
But its hard to say if most earbuds can mechanically reproduce these dynamics to begin with.
Amplify is an energy drink so I just thought it was marketing term meaning high energy
Well an amplifier energizes the sound waves, thereby making the sound waves travel faster. So amplifiers are recommended for fast paced music like rock, but they're usually bad for classical music and such.
Yeah, it's literally like shooting cocaine into the sound waves. For classical music, I'd recommend not using an amplifier at all and just literally smoking marijuana.
Actually, just screw the amplifier and smoke pot.
Actually screw everything and smoke pot
>sound waves travel faster
amplifier literally distort space and time.
That's why you sould only use them with gold plated cables, with lower quality metals the sound particles would start running wild and cause a black hole on the molecular level inside the amp, destroying all your equipment connected to either side of the amp.