$200 for an amplifier

And that would be for the "cheap" Creek amplifier! I took a look on the headroom.heaphone.com site and some of the pricing for dedicated headphone amps is pretty jaw dropping. I don't think my ears are good enough for that kind of treatment!

I *could* see getting a separate headphone amp under some circumstances, though. I've used some noise-cancelling headphones where they sucked up so much output from the portable that they wouldn't play loud enough to be worthwhile. In the end, though, I've soured on noise-cancelling jobs and have stuck more with earbuds for air travel.

I have thought about getting some nice over-the-ear headphones for boat use (listen to music while reading without annoying neighbors and also drown out all those oscillating sanders...) and I wanted to find a little remote amp with a built-in gain. That Creek looks just right. 200 bucks??? Ah, next year, maybe.