You’re driving way up north to get away from it all for a little more than just a few days in the summer.  Way past yuppie cottage country and their multi-million dollar lake front less than hours jaunt from the big city.  Now that the BMWs and commercial rigs have thinned sufficiently the highway is reduced to a two lane stretch of asphalt that divides the hilly north woods.  Not even walls of granite bar your way as you pass between jagged faces of blasted rock.  A lone spruce leans over the edge of sheer stone high above the road.  Its twisted limbs tell of westerly arctic winds only short months away.  Silence and peaceful calm is what you came for and no digital wireless service in sight of your most clever handheld assures your isolation.  But when the gorgeous vistas you meet out on hike need a momentary musical interlude, that’s where battery powered portable MP3 players can get your tech-on, even out here.

Forget the anemic headphones found in the aisles of the big box store that sold you that iPod.  Being accustomed to a complete Home Theater system means you’re acclimated to an immersive sound experience.  Those dinky discount headphones powered by the MP3 player’s headphone jacks are kids stuff.  You follow the no compromises route  to the roads less traveled and that route takes you to high end headphones, the likes of which require external amplification.  But wait, these big beefy cans can be powered by portables too.

Most Home Theater enthusiasts don’t associate the best headphones on the market with portable sound.  Sennheiser with models like the HD-650 and even the 600, 595 and Grado Labs 325i, RS1 or 2 the kind of headphones that bring you a complete sonic experience and fits easily in a backpack or around your neck.  The trouble is headphones like these need a little more power than the headphone jack on most portable devices.  But there are options for providing your gain challenged portables with more oomph.  Enter portable headphone amps.  These are battery powered boxes no bigger than an iPod and clip comfortably to your belt while you’re on the go.

Simpl Acoustics has made a product called the A1, a headphone amp that grips onto the iPod itself like it’s giving a permanent piggyback ride.  The power output sounds impressive and the manufacturer’s promised 16 hour batter life is big enough to outlast your iPod.  Although as with any portable headphone amp you lose a certain amount of flexibility, but this one seems particularly troubling.  Looking at the clip-on design of the A1, it clips on to the back of the iPod itself, so forget about your iPod case.  Most troubling is that the A1 receives its audio signal from the iPod’s headphone jack and not the docking port.  They say in their FAQ it’s because they wanted to retain the iPod’s own volume control which makes sense considering their annoying clip on design.  Although the solution probably provides clean power, the headphone output doesn’t give me confidence that it’ll be superior to any that use the line out from the iPod’s docking port.

The height of cool for your high end headphone powering needs is the true guerilla gadget, a home made headphone amp built into a mint tin.  If you have some skills with a solder iron and electronics circuit level components you can probably wire one up yourself from any of the available recipes online.  You start with a mint tin, the entire headphone amp will fit inside and nothing screams bad moto-scooter-cool like a mint tin strapped to your belt with a pair of high end Grado’s plugged in rocking your melon like a bobble-head.  If building one yourself isn’t for you the head-fi boards have loads of friendly advice and people put them up for sale all the time.  

The iPod’s docking port should be used to connect to headphone amps that include its own volume control.  A Sik Din is the connector that makes it possible.  If you have a cMoy headphone amp on order you might as well get your Din rolling too.  Doing head-to-head comparisons of the sound provided through the headphone jack vs the sound of the iPod’s docking port leads to no comparison, the docking port is clearly superior. 

So, catch the sunset over the lake to your favorite tunes immersed in acoustics that rival a complete home system.  Kicking back in your Adirondack sipping a cold one you’ll be reminded exactly why it’s always worth it to go the extra mile.