The Mini is small, but it takes one honking power supply to drive it. Rotenberg's a big believer in the, ahem, power of a stable PS. He observes that the Mini puts out about 1W output, which means it can pretty much dominate (if not humiliate) any headphone out there.
HeadRoom's Tyll Hertsen was showing an apostatic product: a non-headphone amp called the Desktop ($895). "Most audiophiles don't realize it, but we've been building preamp outputs into our Desktop amps all along. Even I don't listen to headphones at my desk all day. Heck, no! I listen to speakers, too—and those crappy self-power computer speakers are an insult. So, I'm making a Desktop amp, using a class-D module and you can hang your headphones up, flip a switch on the Desktop pre, and listen to speakers when you need to." Hertsens was also demoing a desktop speaker stand with built-on headphone rest for that very purpose.
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