Graham Slee Novo Discrete Headphone Amplifier

The Novo headphone amplifier beat the similarly priced Lehmann Rhinelander, Creek OBH-21SE and Project Headbox SEII headphone amplifiers in the April 2009 What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision Group Test..

"...performance has to be the most important factor, making this test-express a head to head between the Lehmann and the Graham Slee - and for us it has to be the Novo... "
[Graham Slee Novo, What Hi Fi? Sound and Vision, April 2009]

It then scooped the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision Best Headphone Amplifier award 2009

Not only would you expect such a great sounding headphone amplifier to cost considerably more, you'd think a discrete component headphone amp should be in the highest echelons of price! But as many more people are finding from Graham Slee, good old down to earth honesty is the name of the game.

The Novo headphone amplifier has a single chained phono (RCA) jack input allowing you to drive it from your favourite music source and then run another interconnect on to your main amplifier. It can also be fed from a preamp output or recording output.

Dynamic headphones of between 16 Ohms and 600 Ohms are driven to similar volume levels and the full rotation of the volume control can be used to make up for differences in headphone sensitivities.

With very sensitive headphones the Novo headphone amplifier volume control should be used with care to avoid hearing damage.

Specification

• Dimensions: L. 10.5 W. 10.5 H. 5 (cm) approx. excluding controls and connectors
• Output: 150mW rms into 32 Ohms, 40mW rms into 600 Ohms (both channels fully driven - 0.05% THD)
• Frequency Response (worst case): Flat: 43Hz to 16kHz (-1dB), 22Hz to 30kHz (-3dB) (volume control at 3 o'clock position)
• Channel Balance: 0.5dB typical
• Hum & Noise: -80dB CCIR Q-pk 20Hz-20kHz (into 30 Ohms)
• Stereo Crosstalk: -64dB typical
• Distortion (THD+Noise): 0.02% at 1 kHz into 30 Ohms, and 12 o'clock volume control position.