INTRODUCTION

   Over the years although I’ve had both the pleasure and privilege of testing a very large number of earphones and headphones by numerous manufacturers in the market i never did ask for more since i always found that the volume levels offered by most models were more than just sufficient for my taste. However we always seek to expand our reviews so when some of you asked us if we could start doing headphone amplifier reviews i really found it interesting and so without delay we all started looking for the best solutions currently in the market. As usual i won't lie to you, there are numerous interesting models by many manufacturers currently available that can boost volume levels but one topped our search both in terms of quality and features, the O2+ODAC Combo by JDS Labs. Now JDS Labs doesn't make just one of these tiny devices so you can choose between 3 different models (black, silver and custom) the third of which you can partially customize according to your liking (and we did).

   JDS Labs brings you headphone amplification true to sound, all made in the USA. We go above and beyond American manufacturing. We built our in-house machine shop and production line to achieve product quality that we're proud of. JDS Labs's success comes from our obsession with brilliant audio engineering. Performance of our amplifiers and DACs pushes the market forward.

   The O2+ODAC (Objective2 headphone amp + ObjectiveDAC) amp+DAC combo is based on the original "open-source" design introduced back in 2011 by a blogger named NwAvGuy (his blog is still online) who claimed that he could build a low-cost device which could match the audio quality of the almost ten times more expensive Benchmark DAC1 in a blind listening test (he gets no profits but under his license manufacturers need to follow his design). JDS Labs however is not new in the industry since they were first introduced back in 2007 with their premade (and again open-source) CMOY headphone amplifiers and although i had the chance to take a closer look at one (looked more like a candy/cigar metal box) i never did use it. The O2+ODAC model however is much more than just a headphone amplifier since the integrated Objective DAC (ODAC) allows you to connect it with PC or Mac via a powered USB connector to get audiophile digital to analogue conversion. This sounds great and to be honest with all of you we can't say whether or not the O2+ODAC model actually compares with the DAC1 since we don't have that model here but what we can do (and did) is for all of us to test it and see (or better yet listen) how it performs.