Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Crystal Sound Group CMOY Portable Headphone Amplifier


The CSG high quality portable headphone amplifier based on the popular CMOY (Chu Moy - the original designer of the amp) amp design.

The headphone amplifier is a high-quality portable stereo amplifier for use with portable sources such as MP3, portable CD players and dynamic headphones. It designed to be a small battery-powered unit. This headphone amplifier provides high performance and excellent sound that does not match its size and cost. The headphone amplifier offers considerably improved sound when driven from the player line output and used with high quality headphones. The performance of headphone amplifier is so good; it could in fact serve as a dedicated headphone amplifier with home CD players and other sources without taking up much space.

Easily drives dynamic headphones from 32ohm to 300ohm, from Grados, AKG, Denon to Sennheiser. I will use it for portable use with my AKG K416P and Grado SR-60 headphones.

You may have not heard about Chu Moy (CMOY) headphone amplifiers before, you just only need to run a search on the web to see the numerous articles available and praise given.
Amplifier features:

  • Burr-Brown Texas Instruments OPA2134 dual op-amp, one of the best FET input op-amp in audio, suitable for battery use. Made by Burr-Brown Texas Instruments.


  • ALPS volume control with power switch.


  • Panasonic 0.22 mf high quality polypropylene input cap. This cap is one of the best choices in the audio signal path. It provides clear, detailed high frequencies and solid bass.


  • Metal film 1% hand matched resistors. All resistors are highest quality metal film 1% tolerance and hand matched, to ensure both channels are identically balanced.


  • Gold plated jacks.

Power supply parts features:

  • TLE2426 Rail splitter provide long battery life and stable amplifier performance, the power supply uses a high performance TLE2426 voltage rail splitter which provides precisely balanced positive and negative supply voltages.


  • Panasonic ultra low ESR 470uF power cap have a faster discharge rate. This results in the clear, detailed highs and low, deep bass.


  • Panasonic high quality polypropylene capacitors are for noise reduction.


  • Black ABS plastic enclosure, 9V battery operation.

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