NuForce has come out with its Mobile Music Pump (MMP), a portable headphone amplifier that is meant to pump up the audio quality of compressed music files, like MP3s, to make them sound better.
Part of the rationale behind the Music Pump is that NuForce contends most handheld audio devices, be they MP3 players or smartphones, aren’t able to adequately power quality headphones available on the market. The pump’s enhancement would let music lovers use their favorite headphones without settling for any degradation.
With the recent push the headphone market has undergone, there are more and more expensive models wrapped around peoples’ heads, and not all portable devices are designed to work smoothly with them.
The Music Pump is not only meant to bridge that gap, but it’s also designed to be agnostic to what type of headphones or earbuds are plugged in. NuForce says over-ear headphones exhibit lower sensitivities than in-ear ones do — about 10dB worth of difference — requiring ten times the power to pump out the same volume, which may tax the device they’re plugged into.
The Music Pump works to fix that, and is supposed to do so right away. All users have to do is plug the headphones into the pump on one end, and the audio device into the other. There is an adjustable gain button toggling between 3X or 5X to go along with the one 3.5mm input and two 3.5mm outputs.
A microUSB port for charging the unit is also on the back. A full charge is said to last eight hours.
The Music Pump is available in retail and NuForce’s website for $60.
