Behringer MicroMON MA400 Monitor Headphone Amplifier

I needed a clean headphone amplifier to drive my Koss Pro-4AA & Sony MDR V6 headphones from the line/record outputs of my various short wave receivers. I enjoy listening to strong stations 'clearly', ie, not colored by the typical SW radio's muddy power stage. At 65, I need some help with the middle audio frequencies on up. I couldn't put one together for what I spent ($20 shipped!) on the MA400 - and it has a 12V power supply. The blister pack arrived from Amazon not heat sealed/welded, but 'professionally' stapled - same spot and parallel on each side. It was easily opened, the wall wart power supply's cord was wound and tightly tied - nothing had been used, thus the 5 stars. Minor gripes include wishing it had a power switch and maybe +6db more gain, but I knew it had neither when I ordered it. I also 'knew' it would be small... and it really is! I can use it at uncomfortably high levels without distortion - and no background hiss/hum is noted at max levels - quality product. The Mono/Stereo & Ground Lift switches are useful as is having both 1/8 " & 1/4" stereo headphone jacks. I have a radio background, having chiefed at several stations since getting my First Class Radiotelephone License in 1968.I tried it with a decent 12V 1A regulated linear power supply and it's small power supply with no difference noted. Their small power supply does not radiate noise, like a switching supply, so it must have a transformer. It doesn't have regulation, either - a check with a DMM revealed 21.1 V, while my 'regulated' power supply measured 12.1V. To the junk box with the MA400's power supply. Luckily, I have other power supplies. Perhaps under the load of the op amps in the MA400's circuitry, it'll drop to 12V or so - or, more likely, it doesn't really matter. I'll run mine off 12V just the same. In any case, I'd buy it again in a heart beat!

If you use a Click track or a metronome then this is a vital part of your set. My brother is a killer drummer who has been recognized by Guitar Center, and also he played behind Christian Artist Eddie James. I bought him one of these for his birthday cause he complained about how he never could get a good mix with his headphones. I saw this on Amazon and decided to try it. BEST PURCHASE EVER!!!!! Now when he goes and plays at different venues all he does is require them to send him an even mix of the music and he can control how loud the click track is as well as the mix. It doesn't stop there, it works as a DI box as well, he can send the track to the mixer and they can separately control it to the house or other mixes on stage. It doesn't stop there either, this Bad Johnson has some sort of ground lift or noise cancelation technology in it. I'm not sure what it is cause I've never just looked at it closely enough, but most the time when something has a complete loop through the system you'll get some sort of buzz, hum, squeal, or echo, well this thing completely eliminates that problem, it also cancels the click track from coming back through.I'm a pianist and sometimes I use my laptop to add certain sounds to accompany what I play through Midi, I'm going to buy one of these to hear my own mix to hear it cleaner through my headphones, I'm also thinking about getting one for everyone in our worship team in our church. These things are handy and you can always find a place for them. My brother brings this thing along before he brings his custom set of cymbals, snare, or foot. If you are reading this, just go ahead and buy it, its worth 3x more than what its priced for....believe me.

We are converting the church sound over to in ear monitors. All the musicians I've put onto this have really liked it because they can hear themselves much better and I can do partially custom mixes for them (up to 2 people share a mix). It's working really well except for one thing.I get complaints that they can't hear themselves, which is weird to me because when I first set them up they said they didn't have any trouble with it and felt like they could really hear themselves well.Here is what I think happened. Initially they had the "me" channel all the way up, then asked for more X, Y, Z in the mix channel. Then it got to the point they couldn't hear over what was in the mix channel. So I try getting them to turn down the "mix" channel while leaving the "me" channel up all the way but it seems there is just not enough head room. If you turn the knob to half way it doesn't cut the volume enough but turn it much more and it cuts the volume too much.It needs slightly more amplification and a smoother control so that what is "half way" is closer to half the total possible volume with room to spare turning up the system. This would allow more fine differentiation between the two channels and fix the issue I keep coming back to.So far my solution has been to put more of them into the channel mix, but since I've got up to two people sharing a given mix, this has caused a few issues. I guess I need to get the second half my board in place with the digital snake, which will give me enough sends to provide a custom mix to each person. It's just frustrating to need to do that when the concept here should resolve that for me.