Headfile

MINIAMP AMP800; Ultra-Compact 4-Channel Stereo Headphone Amplifier

The 9.5″ silver/gray half-rack plastic casing of the AMP800 looked sleek and classy but it reminded us a little too much of the Samson C-que8. But buying anything Behringer, you need only look at one thing—the price. The AMP800 is listed at $74.99 which means you could buy one of these in most retailers for less than $50.00. Do not expect any Behringer product to compete with any audiophile-grade component because a standing theme for most of their products seems to be “cheap but decent.”

And so is the AMP800. It has a ton of features including 4 independent stereo channels—each of them having their own 6-digit LED output meter, with each channel having dual headphone outputs. So all in all, you can connect 8 headphones at any time. You also have 2 independent balanced stereo inputs, with which you can match any of the 4 output channels one input at a time, at any time.

So from the looks of it, this amplifier is not best suited for personal use, but rather more for studio or live use otherwise it’s just a waste of its channels. The MICROAMP HA400 might be better for personal use, because it “only” has 4 channels.

Probably the most important component of a headphone amplifier are the op-amps (operational amplifier), and what we found inside the AMP800 were generic 4558s. The 4558 op-amp is the cheapest and most widely used op-amps because it is very economical (has many replacements) and has a wide enough bandwidth.

The AMP800 was built adequately for its price. The casing does not look like “expensive plastic,” the knobs and switches do the job they were intended to, but the inputs looked solid. The paint looks like the kind that chips easy, but we were careful in handling the amplifier so as of now we have not seen any signs of chipping.

The sound had nothing special to it. If you have nice headphones, you might still find the amplifier quite amusing but it did not really bring anything special to the table. The overall feel of the sound is “bright.” Depending on what you pair it with, this can sometimes lead to harsh-sounding vocals especially from female singers. The bass is a little weak on this amplifier and could not properly deliver the lower frequencies. We would have to give credit to the mids simply because we did not find any (or found the least) wrong with it. But nothing special once again.

We wish we could listen to the Samsons and see if there is a reasonable alternative for something in this segment, but for now the Behringer AMP800 is an amplifier which you can use for applications wherein sound quality can be sacrificed for its flexibility (channels & inputs), i.e. live sound or live monitoring on a budget.

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