I thought I had a great headphone amp(which it is) with the Grace Designs 901. However, I borrowed a friend's EAR HP4 for a couple of days. Good God, what a sound! I bought it from him yesterday. The Grace was the weakest link in my chain. I use a custom Howard Gale designed condenser micropnone, an EAR 824 mic pre, custom Exacte cable from Ken Gorres directly to my HDCD and then to my MX2424. Eveything comes back with the utmost bandwidth and accuracy I put into it.
The real importance here is that the better the sound from the Headphone feed, the better the performance cause the Artist is put into a vibe that is kinda like overdubbing between the finest near-fields. I'm also using the Ultrasone Pro-Lone 750s which are quite cool. Back to the HP4. It's pricy but well worth the bread condsidering the results on tape. You can get it from Mercenary Audio. This is not a commercial. I'm just all warm and fuzzy. The high end of the Grace and EAR are fairly similar but the midrange down is most exceptional. It has both high and low z inputs(2) and unbalanced an balanced inputs plus a balanced output to a power amp or whatever. Just wanted to share a bit of Ectasy. To look at it:http://www.ear-yoshino.com/productdetails.asp?page=12&id=34

That's certainly a pricy looking piece of kit! How much? BTW, I tend to agree with your hp philosophy, especially when it comes to less experienced (with recording) musicians. The vets don't seem to mind the basic sounding headphone mix, and rarely use it as an excuse for why they "can't play the f*cking track"!

The price at Mercenary Audio(nice guys) is $3267 complete. Yeah I know, a lot of bread, but it's the last one I'll ever buy. Don't know if I'll keep the Grace or sell it. It(the Grace) does have dig ins. I bought mine from a friend for $3K. He rarely used it and needed the money. Oh, and thanks to Justin for closing the Oak Lawn microphone dudes thread. Justin.....please don't let one of these drag on so long. Though it was fun for a while. Maybe you could create a separate page for classifieds only. You could take a fee for making it happen.

Uh,huh, at that price that's about 11 6hr sessions just to recoup the cost of the hp amp. No thanks, I'll just keep my Rane HP-6 humming along.I think I paid $450.00 about 15 years ago-recouped many times over...