MG30dfx headphone jack

[Conker09]

Hey guys, new member here.

I have a little MG30dfx which I got for practice in my room while at college. It can get pretty loud, but when I plug in to my headphone jack so as not to disturb my roommates the sound is cut in half. I have to turn it up to max to get decent sound out of the headphones.

I use AKG phones for listening, so I don't think it's a problem with those. I was wondering if all amps have this problem, or is there something I could do to fix it.

[techineer]

It may be due to the impedance of your headphones. Find out what that is first.

The headphone output of the MG30 is a rather high impedance, and I would bet that it was intended for use with 32 ohm headphones such as are supplied with most portable music players. If you are using 8 ohm headphones, you will get a much lower signal level from them.

The owners manual for the MG30 doesn't specify the preferred headphone impedance, but from the circuitry I would expect the optimum headphone impedance to be about 150 ohms.... not readily available off-the shelf. But the closer your headphone impedance is to that value, the more volume you will get from it.

[Conker09]

It may be due to the impedance of your headphones. Find out what that is first.

The headphone output of the MG30 is a rather high impedance, and I would bet that it was intended for use with 32 ohm headphones such as are supplied with most portable music players. If you are using 8 ohm headphones, you will get a much lower signal level from them.

The owners manual for the MG30 doesn't specify the preferred headphone impedance, but from the circuitry I would expect the optimum headphone impedance to be about 150 ohms.... not readily available off-the shelf. But the closer your headphone impedance is to that value, the more volume you will get from it.

I currently use AKG k77's when playing through my amp. Is there anyway to replace components in the circuit in order to help with the sound?

[techineer]

I currently use AKG k77's when playing through my amp. Is there anyway to replace components in the circuit in order to help with the sound?

Doing so would degrade the quality of the emulated line out function and could lead to overload and damage of the heaphone output circuit.

A simpler and more flexible (and possibly less expensive) option would be to use a separate headphone amplifier designed for higher output. Here's an example that is 4x overkill, but it would certainly do the job for around $30: BEHRINGER: HA400

Or look around for any of a wide variety of headphone amps that are available.

[Conker09]

Thanks for the advice, I may look into getting one of those.