Mark V35 headphone jack vs mixer headphone jack

Hi everyone!

First of, thanks for the immense wealth of knowledge posted here. It's been very helpful for a new Boogie owner. Now on to my question...

I'm relegated to headphone practice about 75% of time I get to play these days due to having a small kiddo. I'm using Audio Technica M50X cans plugged into the headphone jack of my Mark V35 with the speaker cab switched off in this situation. Because of the master volume controlling the headphone volume, I often get some distortion/clipping on Fat mode with the gain around 10:00, likely due to having to crank the volume up to around 12:00 to get a reasonable volume. I suspect this happens on channel 2 as well, but in mkIV mode with the gain around 2:00, it obviously isn't noticeable. :lol:

If I were to pick up a small mixer (like the Allen & Heath Zed 6 or Zed 10) and use the on-board Cab Clone to run to the mixer, and then connect the headphones to the mixer, would I see an improvement in the sound quality through the cans?

TIA!

Bummer, no one has piloted anything like this?

I cant answer you specifically as i neither have the Mark V35 nor a cabclone so i have no idea how good, or bad, the headphone out is. However, i have the 90w Mark V and used PA equipment for years. I would say at a guess that headphones into a mixer ran from the cabclone would work very well provided you keep your levels set properly. Can you borrow one, or trial one from a store before you buy? Having said that, i would also assume that the headphone out of the amp shouldn't clip to begin with. Not at least until you really start to crank the output. Or, are you running the gain high and getting mild breakup in the clean channel anyway? What are the rest of your settings? Proper gain staging is critical in PA and studio setup but this shouldn't be too much of an issue here.

Unfortunately, the design of the V35 is such that the channel master controls the headphones volume, so to get a decent volume you have to set the master around noon on channel 1. The gain is at 10:00, so I wouldn't expect it to be an issue - no breakup through the cab. Everything else is below noon, except maybe the treble (1-2:00? Not in front of my amp.) The geq has the 80 boosted so the top of the slider is just below the top line, 240 is boosted a little less, 750 hefty cut, 2200 & 6600 are flat.

Good idea on borrowing one, I'll see if I can get one. I guess I could always buy/return one if I have to.

Guessing from your settings I would have thought that clipping shouldn't be an issue. I dunno, maybe a flawed design then with the headphone circuit? Defo try borrow a mixer, with the trim (input level) control you should be able to get a strong but not clipping signal from the cabclone into the mixer and then use the mixer itself to get the volume you want in your headphones. Just a pointer, when setting the levels in the mixer, use the solo feature (most have this) and get the signal to peak at 0db, at most +1 or 2db for the hardest hits. You want as strong signal as possible into the mixer without overdriving it at the heaviest of playing.

Thanks for the tips!

Yeah, I would have liked to see MB put some kind of guidance in the manual. Even something as generic as, "For best results use heaphones with a minimum impedance of X." Oh well, I completely understand that the primary function of an amplifier is to make things loud! :lol:

A bit late to the party but I would recommend using a headphone amp to get a decent sound without having to disturb your tone settings on the Mesa. I run headphones via a Samson C Que 8 headphone amp (https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/samson-c-control-c-que-8-c-com-16 ... only because I had one for our silent jam nights).

I spent quite a bit of time trying all the different ways of wiring the Mesa to the headphone amp and the tone changed significantly between options (On Samson: headphone input, unbalanced stereo inputs, balanced inputs). I've often found that the sound on the headphone out is nothing at all like the balanced XLR output just to confuse matters more.

If you've got a computer with a decent sound card and DAW you could use that as an alternative to a headphone amp - I've got a little Focusrite Scarlett and it sounds great through that.

I run the XLR to my audio interface or a board and use headphones. It works great. I never spent time on the phones out.