anomie life

One thing that’s almost a necessity, especially when recording multiple musicians/instruments simultaneously, is a headphone amplifier. Most mixers (such as the Phonic Helix 24) or interfaces have multiple auxiliary outputs on them, but the signals from these are unpowered, which pretty much means the audio is going to be nearly inaudible if listened through headphones. That’s where a headphone amplifier comes in.

The Behringer Powerplay Pro XL HA4700 is a 4-channel headphone amplifier, which means you can take 4 separate auxiliaries from your mixer and have 4 completely separate mixes. This is especially helpful when you’re recording a full band all at the same time because the lead singer probably wants to hear his voice really well so he doesn’t sing off key, the guitar player probably just wants to hear his guitar, and the bass player probably wants his bass and some drums in his mix.

So each channel has an “Aux in” input, but the whole amplifier also has a stereo XLR “Main in” and “Main out”. What this allows you to do is take say the Left and Right outputs of your mixer and run them through the headphone amplifier. One might think this is redundant, but its actually very useful. One reason would be if you had a main mix that everyone had and then people could boost what they want. But an extremely great reason I’ve found is to run the click track through this input.

Everyone having control of their click track volume is an amazing plus because the singer probably doesn’t want it pulsating in his ear if he can already hear the drums just fine and the drummer probably wants the click track blasting away so he stays on beat.

The way you adjust this volume is through the great set of controls on the front of the amplifier. Firstly, there’s a master level for all the headphones. I usually just keep this one in center. Next, you have 4 sets of controls for each mix. Each one of these has a treble and bass knob so you have a little control over your personal equalization. It also has a personal volume because the drummer probably wants his volume a lot louder than everyone else so he can hear over his own noisiness. The last knob is a balance knob which allows you to mix between the aux in and the main in (in my case its the click track). Lastly, there’s three buttons that are immensely useful because they allow you to select whether the aux in is stereo and if its mono, select whether its coming in on the Left or Right channel.

If you look at a popular music equipment store, such as American Musical Supply, for a headphone amplifier then you’ll quickly realize that the HA4700 is so far above everything out there as far as value. Yes, many music professionals shun Behringer because they make low cost equipment, but this piece of equipment is just amazing. If mine died after a year or two I wouldn’t care, I’d just go out and buy a new one. Its $120, but most Furman or Samson headphone is 2x the price and it only powers 1 channel!

Behringer’s Powerplay Pro XL HA4700 is an amazing piece of equipment, not just for its great value, but its quality and features. This piece of equipment is a great addition to any home recording studio.