Periodic Audio Nickel headphone amp: Make your smartphone sound like a high-res digital audio player

Periodic Audio’s Nickel portable headphone amplifier will break you of the habit of listening to music on headphones plugged into your smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

And that’s how most of us listen to music these days, right? Dedicated high-resolution digital audio players deliver superior audio performances, but mobile devices are just so much more convenient—even when we’re using the type of high-end, high-impedance cans that more general-purpose mobile devices find so difficult to drive.

Modern computers and mobile devices have much better digital-to-analog (DAC) converters than they used to, but the headphone amplifiers on those products remain the weakest link in the audio reproduction chain. The Nickel is a high-end, battery-powered, portable headphone amp that promises to wring peak performance from just about any wired headphones, including high-impedance models.