Graham Slee The Voyager Portable Headphone Amplifier

When I connected my AKG K551 headphones to my iPod touch I was immediately impressed by the improvement in the sound quality compared to using decent in-ear phones. However, the big drivers must be quite hard for a small device and amplifier to drive well. These are lovely headphones and I felt sure they could deliver more.Seeing as I now do a lot of listening on headphones through my iPod rather than my excellent Musical Fidelity/Roksan Hi-Fi (due to having a young child asleep in the evenings) it seemed that a dedicated headphone amp could be a good idea. I do like the sound of high quality recordings played through decent kit and love the smooth, dynamic sound from a turntable rather than the brittle and compressed mush from many Mp3 and mobile devices.This Graham Slee Voyager gets very well reviewed so I was hoping to be impressed. Like many good devices the initial impression is one of a definite improvement but not overwhelmingly different. It is when you extend the listen and begin to increase the volume that the true quality of this little amp begins to show. Much like when you sit in a chair that feels too firm at first but feels great after a few minutes! The soundstage is very open with a very black noise floor. Bass is not loose or overwhelming and could even be described as fairly light, but the sound has a lively, involving and addictive quality that is never fatiguing or harsh. I am sure it will only improve with burning in as mine is still a very new unit.You actually have to be careful not to crank the volume too high as the sound from this combo is so sweet that distortion or harshness never feel like the limiting factor in setting the sound levels.The AKG and GS amp are not the most practical portable solution but for taking away on some holidays I would gladly make the space for the additional leap in the quality of the listening experience. At home its a great way of getting something near Hi-Fi performance from a portable player. I have yet to try the effect of the amp on my usual in-ear phones as this would be a practical travel solution.Tip; sound is even better if you use an Apple connector to 3.5mm jack cable that feeds directly into the headphone amp input rather than using the headphone out jack as the feed from the iPod to the headphone amp. I assume this bypasses the player's built in amp and lets the Voyager do all the amplifying.

It is quite a good amp. But it is not very strong or well built for that matter. I accidentally dropped it from an height of about 500mm onto the closed lid of my laptop and it completely stopped working straight away after that. So you can not have the slightest butter fingers to hold on to this unit. So really in the end I can not recommend it.

Good amp, but quite frankly, I fail to see how anyone could justify the asking price. Let down badly by the crude "home made" look. At this price I would expect some effort to be made to make the looks match the price.

Like everyone else reading this review, I purchased this item on the basis of all the incredible things I had heard about it. And while it is unquestionably a good amp, there are certainly limitations as to how much it can enhance listening pleasure or provide improvements to the sound.My set up is as follows:iPod Classic 30GB -> Belkin connector via dock -> GS Voyager - > Sennheiser 595 or PX100I use a mixture of Apple lossless and various mp3s (192k minimum)The Voyager takes a substantial amount of time to break in. I would say you need at least 160, maybe 200, hours on this thing before you start to hear the benefits. And when you do, they are quite subtle. The GSV eases the treble sharpness of the stock iPod and provides a general "meatiness" to the sound that wasn't there before. My favorite quality is the aggressive, growling midrange - great for old-school '70s Punk! It's a sound that's oozing character. On lusher music, it sounds pleasingly full and provides a transports-you-somewhere-else quality. Walking around the street with PX100s, you can easily obliterate what's going on around you. It really does feel like your not even there in the real world (I consider this a good thing).On the other hand, and I'm not sure wether this is the iPod or the GSV, but the overall tone is hard and brittle. I find this feature on both Apple Lossless and 192k files (interestingly resolution doesn't seem to make an awful amount of difference generally on the GSV). I find this brittleness pretty unpleasant generally and much prefer to use the contour switch which gives it a huge bass boost that also softens the overall sound. Definitely more fun to listen to. Yet on the whole, the positive differences that the GSV provides are too subtle to justify its cost and this is further compounded by its treatment of poor quality sources. A poorly mastered recording will still sound poor maybe even more so on this equipment and while this may be the aim of Hi-Fi manufacturers, it doesn't exactly make for an engaging listen. Believe me, where mp3s are concerned you absolutely DON'T want a transparent amplifier. Another gripe is the lack of headroom on the amp. Push the volume past 12 o'clock and nasty distortion sets in. It's so nasty, you have to switch it off. As I alluded earlier, this could be the mediocrity of the iPod that's being revealed but until/unless I purchase another mp3 player, I cannot validate this for sure.People interested in the GSV are generally those looking to improve the sound of their mp3 players. I do not think purchasing the GSV is necessarliy the best way to accomplish this. The primary objective should firstly be to obtain quality headphones, then a quality mp3 player. And then if someone's really obsessed with optimum sound then they can experiment with the GSV. But as it stands this is neither an essential upgrade nor an audiophile delight.Mine's just sitting in the closet gathering dust.

Great little product for the price if you have a quality line-in. I use the voyager with a quality interconnect from my Asus xonar sound card and get great sound through my Sony V700s -really impressive! However, from my I-phone headphone-out there isn't much difference -a little more bass. I have ordered a dock to take advantage of the line-out on the phone -supposedly less noisy feed so we'll see..Construction is solid despite appearances.