Burning Blue Audio produce a $149USD USB Headphone Amplifier that in their own words "uses a digital-analog converter (DAC) designed explicitly for high quality headphone amplification," so we want to assure you that we're testing with headphones capable of distinguishing between shoddy sound, and the good stuff we all crave. Now that you know what equipment is involved in the testing lets begin. The USB Headphone Amplifier is actually a little aluminum box about the size of a package of mints, and draws all power from the USB cable itself. From a distance the unit does have the appearance of an MP3 player, but it is definitely not one. The amplifier simply takes a digital signal from a USB connection and translates that into an analog signal regular everyday headphones can pump out as sound. There are two black buttons on the unit to control volume levels independently of the computer itself, but neither were labeled on the unit we evaluated.