Gramophone Dreams

Manufacturer's Comment

Many thanks to the venerable Herb Reichert for his thoughtful column on our Z10e electrostatic headphone amp / integrated amp. We know it takes a lot of time to dive into such a versatile product, and we appreciate the effort Herb put in to so thoroughly explore the Z10e's capabilities.

Herb mentions that the dynamic headphone output fell a bit short of expectations with the hard-to-drive HiFiMan Susvara, and laments, "Why can't Linear Tube Audio give the headphone output the same power and gain it gives the speaker output?"

Since sending Herb this amp for review, we have heard the same from our customers. So, we reworked our original, conservative headphone outputs to be more powerful.

The “HI” output now puts out the same voltage and gain as the speaker outputs, about 3W into 32 Ohms. We are certain that this is ample power for the Susvara and other hard to drive headphones. The “LO” output provides 240mW to 32 Ohms. —Nicholas from LTA