On the face of it, this slightly awkward looking headphone amplifier is nothing special. True, it's housed in a pretty sturdy alloy case with a chunky fascia, but this looks like a bought off-the-shelf item and little attention has been paid to detailing; alien bolts protrude from the four corners of the fascia, and its volume knob looks like it has escaped from a 1960s Roberts radio The Fidelity Audio's fascia sports a single headphone socket - so no frills here - and proves nice enough to use without feeling anywhere near as special as the Musical Fidelity at half its price. Round the back, the only thing that stands out is the IEC mains input - unlike most others here, the HPA-100 has a built-in mains transformer. And it's a good quality item - look inside and you'll find a toroidal almost as big as would fit, and good passive components including bespoke smoothing capacitors, with Wimas and Rubycons doing decoupling duties. An Alps Blue volume control is an impressive fitment at this price, and decent wiring and short signal paths complete the picture.
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