Quote Originally Posted by Reid Malenfant View Post
What I did say is that the headphone amplifiers built into DACs are generally a compromise A DIL IC is not going to be happy to drive low impedance headphones, where as it may drive higher impedances fairly easily. However if the voltage supply is low then it may well not even do that very well.

Hense unless some purpose built headphone amp that doesn't involve the use of a DIL IC (or maybe just as a driver) is built then the headphone output will be a compromise & an external headphone amp would be a wholly better proposition
You haven't been keeping up to date with headphone amp design technology . The TI TPA6120 IC has been used in headphone circuits for many years now by companies like Benchmark in their DAC, and by many others in stand alone headphone amps. Other ICs are also available that can be used for headphone output circuits.

As for your point on voltage output: can you expand on this for the benefit of all the readers of AoS? Maybe you can make a simple list of what current and voltage is required from a headmp in order to produce the maximum permitted power output to drive headphones at various impedances?