Interconnects, IC for short, are the cables that go between your player and another device with an input jack - a car stereo, home stereo, or a portable headphone amp. The problem with the latter of those setups is that the amp is often directly under the player and so you really only need 2cm of cable to make the connection, but they don't make cables that short. As a result, a lot of people drag around long cables that are just inthe way. There's no need to. Read on for a guide on how to make your own tiny bridge-interconnect.

There are a small but enthusiastic subset of users that try to push out every bit of sound performance though expensive headphones and amps. A good example is this recent post showing off one of Martin’s rigs. Headphone amps add warmth and character to your music and they provide enough power to heavier high end headphones. But as you can see the amps detract from overall portability.

The HifiMAN HM-801 aims to solve this issue with the first audiophile player with a modular headphone amp bay sporting a renowned Burr-Brown DAC. Battery life is far off from today’s standards at between 6-8 hours, but this is reasonable for a player with a beefy amp. The unit is still in the planning and production stages but we are in contact with the maker and will have a detailed review upon its release.

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So are you in a crafty mood? Break out your soldering iron and choke down a tin of Altoids- MAKE Magazine has a nice little project for the audio geeks. In the forums and frequently in our IRC channel we often discuss Headphone amps. These amps typically sit in between your MP3 player and your headphones. The amp will drive more demanding headphones and can also enhances sound quality. Headphone amps can range from $9 to thousands of dollars.

Interestingly, the basic function of a headphone amp, amplifications, requires relatively few components so it’s even a great beginner project. Check out the video below, then head over to MAKE to download the schematics.

I've been using this incredibly tiny and cheap headphone amp we already mentioned earlier for a few days now and I'm really impressed with its performance. My expectations weren't exactly high when I ordered it, but after testing it with several phones I'd say the Chinese FiiO company managed to design a really fine product.

The amp's construction is very simple. It's powered by one AAA battery and sporting only a 3.5mm input jack that connects to the headphone output of an MP3 player and another 3.5mm output jack where the headphones plug in. The output also acts as the power switch. A red LED lights up when phones are plugged in, indicating that the amp is active. Rumor has it that a National Semiconductor LM4917 op-amp works at the core of the amp. However, this has yet to be verified.

The FiiO E3 was not designed to work with line-out connections since it lacks a volume control. However, what it does for low- (and not-so-low) powered headphone outputs can be quite nice - when one's headphones synergize well with the amp, that is.