Dumb Head Phone Question

I own the HD 700s by Sennheiser and like them very much. I also own AKG 7XXs and K701s in the past. They all sound very good using dedicated headphone amps. They aren't terrible using built in amps, like the from Oppo or other gear they just sound a lot better with the headphone amp. It is up to you to decide how much you want to spend but you really don't need to spend a lot to get decent sound.

Great headphones like amplifiers. Might I suggest Schiit Audio as a good place to start.

Also, The Oppo does not have a amplifier inside it to drive headphones. It has a 1/4 inch jack so you can plug a set of headphones into it, but it will not drive a pair of high quality HD700's you need a external headphone amp.

I don't get it. If there's no amp at all, then the jack is useless. Why put it there?

This is from the Oppo 105 product page:

"For a more intimate listening experience, a pair of headphones can be connected directly to the BDP-105’s built-in headphone amplifiers. The headphone amplifier is connected directly to the ESS Sabre32 Reference DAC and offers a unique performance advantage over standalone headphone amplifiers."

Looks like they do indeed have built-in headphone amps like I stated.

Here is the full link.

IIRC, almost all of the reviews stated that this wasa pretty decent headphone amp.