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Rega Ear headphone amplifier
For dedicated headphone listeners
By Michael Jones
November 2002
Rega Ear headphone amplifier. $375
Headphone listeners – and I’m talking about people choosing to listen to their hi-fi system through headphones, not the Walkman users on the bus – are a breed apart.
Not for them listening to music in the air, through loudspeakers. But they listen to music direct into the ear.
Scratch any dedicated headphone listener and you’ll find a multitude of reasons for headphone listening. Some are strictly utilitarian – it may be the only opportunity to listen to music, as the family prefers the TV on all evening.
Others listen through headphones by choice. Headphones offer a different perspective on the music. Usually it is easier to listen into a recording, to hear subtle details buried in the mix – I must admit to much headphone listening while reading books about the Beatles’ recordings, for example.
But headphone listeners face a couple of problems. First, some good hi-fi amplifiers (and even CD players) lack a headphone jack, including Rega’s own amplifiers. In my system, for example, there’s not a headphone jack to be found.
Second, many headphone outputs – let me put this delicately – suck. On most integrated amps, the headphone jack is fed from the power amp stage, through a resistor to reduce the level. Usually this turns the bass mushy. Even when a little effort has been put in by the manufacturer, most “dedicated” headphone stages found in amps and CD players are cheap and nasty op-amps.
So what’s a poor headphone listener to do? Try a dedicated headphone amplifier.
There are a few models around, with the Rega Ear, Musical Fidelity X-Can [reviewed by AudioEnz] and a QED model available here in New Zealand. Overseas there are more can-amps, including several “you’ve gotta say yes to another excess” models from Headroom in the USA.
Transformations
A good headphone amp will transform your headphone listening. Everything
will sound clearer and better. You’ll be able to listen further
into the music, with far less listening fatigue.
The Ear, from Rega, conforms to everything you know from that idiosyncratic UK company. It’s a bit different from the norm, but offers superb sound at an extremely attractive price.
Using the same extruded aluminium case as their Fono phono preamplifier, the Ear is a mere 182mm wide and 50mm high. It will fit in just about anywhere.
The Ear is designed to be placed in the tape monitor loop of an integrated amplifier, and offers a tape loop to replace the one it uses. On the front panel are two buttons: one for power, the second for the replacement tape loop; a volume control and the headphone jack.
I hooked my Meridian 508.20 CD player directly into the Ear, plugged in my Sennheiser 580s and had a listen.
First up, partly inspired by a book I was reading about Pink Floyd, was that ultimate headphone album, Dark Side of the Moon.
Now this is fun! DSOTM is an album full of small and subtle details, which often get lost while listening through speakers. The Ear helped me hear the subtle little minutiae within this album.
Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony (the new Telarc, by Robert Spano and the Atlantic Symphony) is a big work, a choral symphony with large orchestra and chorus. It takes a lot to “decode” the scoring and the multitude of instruments in it. The Ear did a great job.
Bass frequencies were easy to hear, with the bowed double basses and tympani very clear to my ears. You can’t feel the bass on your body, of course, but that’s part of headphone listening.
Vaughan Williams’ music does not live by bass alone, of course. The strings, the brass and the chorus must sound right – at least as right as a large work can sound inside your head. And through the Ear the performance does sound right. Headphone listeners will know that screechy sound makes headphone listening very fatiguing, so I'm glad to report that the Ear does not add any sting to strings.
One of my discoveries in recent years has been the talented young bass player Christian McBride. Not only is he a superb bassist, McBride also writes melodic jazz tunes. McBride’s album Number Two Express, is another fine Jim Anderson recording (any jazz recording by Anderson will sound very good).
One thing I’ve found is that some hi-fi equipment doesn’t allow me to make sense of a lot of jazz music. The Ear does, as on Whirling Dervish, a quartet recording with Chick Corea on piano, Jack De Johnette on very busy drums, Kenny Garrett on alto sax and McBride on acoustic bass. This is great music, well recorded and well played and, on the ear, well reproduced.
Ear conclusions
This is really very simple: if you spend a lot of listening time with
cans on your head, then you need a good headphone amp, along with some
good headphones.
The Rega Ear is a great headphone amp and, at the remarkably low price of $349, is something of a bargain. Highly recommended.
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