My main audio system is integrated with the Tivo, DVD, screen and shared by the family. This is great since everything we watch is in full fidelity. But it becomes a pain when I want to do some serious listening separate from the family. A few years ago I mentioned (see comments at end of that page) that if I were building another headphone audio system I'd build it differently. Time and technology has changed, and it's now possible to build an excellent quality headphone system for a small fraction of what it used to cost. So I took my own advice.

The Sound Card

This second system consists of only 2 things:

The sound card is an ESI Juli@. I bought in online for about $150. The nice thing about using a computer with sound card for audio source is you can listen to pretty much anything. Pop an audio CD or DVD into the computer's player. Play WAV, MP3, AAC, FLAC files on your hard drive. Plug a separate component into the line in (analog or digital).

The sound quality is surprisingly good - even excellent. I didn't know it was possible to get sound this good from a computer. It's detailed but not bright or harsh. It has deep bass with grip and control but not bloated. It resolves complex music smoothly without any veil. It has neutral tonal balance and realistic voicing on natural acoustic instruments. It's comparable to my primary headphone system.

I did observe one minor deficiency of the Juli@. If I turn the amp up to full volume there is a quiet buzzing noise in the background. This noise is too quiet to be heard at normal, even loud listening levels. It becomes audible as the volume knob reaches the 3:00 position, and most listening is around the 7:00 to 10:00 position. I haven't measured the level, but based on similar measurements I've done in the past, it's about 90 dB below the signal. It sounds like the the Juli@ does not sufficiently regulate the relatively noisy DC power it receives from the PC. This is really a theoretical deficiency because it's inaudible at actual listening levels.

The Juli@'s analog outputs are pretty high/hot/loud. The MOH amp has a lot of gain so I use the Linxu ALSA mixer to drop the level about 6 dB, this puts the volume knob around the 7:00 to 10:00 position for most listening.

The Juli@ (listening from its unbalanced analog output) is as good as any audio component I've heard in the sub $1,000 price range. How can a $150 sound card compete with $500+ audio components? Some of the most expensive parts of any audio component are:

Installing the Juli@ reminded me why I hate Windows and switching to Linux a few years ago was the best thing I ever did on my computer. The Juli@ works out of the box with Linux built-in ALSA drivers.

Installing on Linux

Shut down computer
Remove old sound card, install new one
Turn on computer
Sound card works. Adjust settings to your liking.

NOTE: Linux apps like VLC will show a long list of audio devices for the Juli@. Notes on which to use:

Installing on Windows

Like the above, except the sound card does not work when you turn it on. Additional steps:
Install drivers from CD
Intall fails, so remove drivers, reboot, and install again
Install goes half way, then wants to reboot - still no sound
Install goes half way again, then reboots again - still no sound
Wait 1 hour for computer to shut down because it's installing 68 updates
On startup, computer boots up part way then reboots itself again ...
Repeat these reboots 4 times
Finally, computer comes up but sound is not working
Check devices, notice there are 2 of each driver installed
Give up because this is too much of a pain in the ass, and Linux works right out of the box so why deal with this?

Overall, at under $200 the Juli@ is one of the least expensive high end sound cards. Yet its sound quality is good enough to be a primary source even for the best recordings. And it is an easy painless install - at least on Linux. I could - and have - listened to it for hours with equal enjoyment to my primary headphone system. This makes it an unbeatable value.

The Headphone Amp

A sound card isn't designed to drive headphones directly. It has an output impedance of about 100 ohms designed to drive an amp or other device having a high input impedance (typically 10 kOhm or more). The headphone amp I'm using is my old Headroom Maxed out Home. I need to get another amp so I don't have to walk my MOH back and forth between systems.

I knew I needed a pure analog amp - not a DAC. The reason I got the Juli@ is because not only does it have good digital performance, but it also has good D-A converters and a great analog output stage. My primary room system is based the same way: analog signals. It's a bit outdated, and the cost to get excellent quality is higher than it would be to build a digital system today, but it's a sunk cost already spent and works very well. No reason to change it.

There are so many choices for a pure analog headphone amp. I knew I wanted solid state, not tubes. I've done tubes before and they can be magical but it's not the magic for me. My preference is to get as close as possible to the sound of the live mic feed. I don't care about fancy boxes and audiophile mystique. Good design and high quality internals beats that every time. I ended up getting a Meier Audio Jazz

Now the question is, which system gets which amp? First, I'll listen to them both to see if there are any audible differences. I don't expect any; they are both well designed amps built with high quality internals and should be sonically indistinguishable. If that is the case, the key differences are:

Based on these differences, the MOH should go into my computer system and the jazz should go into my primary room system. Why?