New British company Epiphany Acoustics is making its debut with a £250 headphone amplifier, the EHP-1. It's now available for pre-order, with the first 20 orders receiving a 20% discount to bring the price down to £180.
Company founder Oliver Freeborn explains that the company has come about as a result of some years as a 'DIY hi-fi' enthusiast: 'The more commercial hi-fi that I examined, the more I began to see that I could design and produce better quality hi-fi at a lower price.
'This is largely due to the fact that I would operate without any middle men and dealers, resulting in lower overall costs.'
The EHP-1 combines an op amp gain stage with a discrete MOSFET output stage, and operates in Class A delivering an output of more than 2W into a 32ohm load.
Power comes from a toroidal transformer chosen for its low EMI characteristics, high quality components are used throughout, along with an ALPs RK27 'Blue Velvet' potentiometer for volume control, and the circuitboard tracks are extra thick to lower resistance.
The EHP-1 has line inputs and outputs, along with a single headphone socket, and also provides variable level output on phono sockets, allowing it to be used as a minimalist preamplifier.
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