Multiple Headphone Monitoring

[Newbie-Doo]

I need a cheap way to hook up 4-6 headphones for monitoring during recording.

I thought about trying to build something myself but I don't know if I have the patience for that. If you have any suggestions for under $100 I would greatly appreciate them.

[crankz1]

If you've got an old stereo .... I'd just roll yer own.

Build a headphone patch panel that consists of 1/4" stereo jacks, as many as you need to get a headphone feed to everybody.

Wire each jack through a separate 2.2K 1/2W resistor in series with the positive leads for L and R channels.
With the 2.2K common resistor value you should be able to run headphones with impedances from about 4 ohms on up to a couple hundred ohms without any problems.
Good idea to use impedance matched cans, though if you don't install separate volume control L-pads as described below, the guy with the 150 ohm cans will have lower volume while the guy with the 8 ohm cans will get blasted.

Wire the paralleled jacks and resistors to the SPKR terminals of the unit.

You can easily and safely run at least 20 sets of headphones maximum this way, and most don't need that many.

If you need separate volume control for each headset simply wire in L pads, 8 to 16 ohm wire-wound dual pots designed for stereo speaker fading, which you wire in after the resistors to each headphone jack.
L-Pad goes between each resistor and it's corresponding output jack, pin 1 to hot, pin 3 to Common and pin 2 to the jack output.

Other than that, you could check out some of these.

[Leeking]

There quite a few of headphone amp under $100...

some good ones are behringer HA4xxx, Rolls HA43, Art, Yorkville....

[tubedude]

The Rolls and the ART ones cant handle the volume/power requirements without breaking up into a farting sound. They suck.
The Behringer, of all things, is quite frigging good. And its $100, and has lots of blinky things. Beat that. If it breaks (ahem, Behringer) then buy another. $100 surely isnt shit.
Peace
Paul

[tmix]

Tube is right, for the money the Behr is the way to go.

It is the only piece of Behr I own.

Tom

[Newbie-Doo]

Looks like there are several good inexpensive options.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[xstatic]

I own two pieces of Behringer gear. First is a headphone amp, second is a composer (compressor/limiter) wired directly before the headphone amp to keep those little pieces of Behringer from blowing up. What I like about the Behringer is the ability to mute or mono earphones (even muting just one ear) from the unit, and the cheezy two band EQ. Give the drummer and the bass player a little more lows and the guitar player a little more highs. There are 4 volume knobs, each of which can control 3 seperate headphones, and even an aux input.

[Jeffrey.Cooper]

I've got an old Fostex 5-channel unit that served this purpose quite well...it was pretty inexpensive too.

[tollbooth]

hey newbie-doo

i think in the US it's about $160 new (so i guess about $100-120 used) but i have a Samson S-Phone, which will allow complete control over 4 pairs and slave control over another 4 pairs. sorry it's a bit over budget brand new.

mine's given me a year (so far) of sterling daily service.

very good, very clear, well laid out.

i think they also do a slightly cheaper version as well in their 1/2 rack range.

hope you find something.

paul d

[TamaSabian]

I have one HA43 and it works fine for me.

[acidrock]

Another vote for the Behringer,great value at $99.

[turnitdown]

The Presonus HP-4 is a nice unit, especially if you have powered monitors.. It has a control room volume /mute built in ... handy...

[Cosmic]

Hi,

Samson Q5 if you can find one. 5 hp inputs; volume for each plus master. Balanced ins. Mono switch. Half rack, separate power supply. About $80 new. Did the job for me.


Best,

CC