Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
For normal headphones this Audioengine is very good and has the pre-amp you need. It is unusual in that it's speaker amp class A/B.....so a bit larger and runs a bit warmer to the touch than the digital T-amps most use these days. (You might check out the very similar (also class AB) XtremPro 11111 amplifier...which also has an Optical & Coaxial DAC...plus the pre amp outs you want.
The best I can find is the Emotiva BasX A-100, but it's not exactly small and is total overkill for my needs, as well as being more expensive than I'd like. It doesn't have output switching other than silencing speakers when plugging in headphones, so no way to swap from passive to powered speakers.
The Grace Digital GDI-BTAR513 looked promising at $100, but still lacks the ability to switch between speakers and line out.
https://www.djkit.com/images/products/large/bigknobpassive.jpg