Description

The recent increase in popularity of high-fidelity headphones and lossless audio formats has caused many manufacturers of personal electronics to add high-quality audio outputs to their devices. As a result, 24-bit/192-kHz audio digital-to-analog converters (DACs), once reserved for home highfidelity systems, are now being incorporated into mobile devices such as cell phones, tablets, and portable music players. These DACs deliver extremely low-distortion signals, but are unable to drive headphones directly. To take full advantage of these high-performance parts, a well-designed headphone amplifier must also be added to the system.