I just bought the m900 from Grace Design.

While I don’t like mixing with headphones, sometimes I work late at night and have no choice.

There are several reasons that using headphones can be fatiguing. The weight, or the constant close and perhaps loud sounds, and a third reason I just learned: lack of cross fade.

To explain: A benefit of headphones is that you can check for phase cancellation and proper left/right placements of instruments that can place them in the forefront or background. But the ears become fatigued because this isn’t natural. Normal hearing means your left ear hears a bit of sound on your right, and vice versa.

Grace Design makes the m900 two-headphones amp with an analog cross fade option. It works! I think it makes me hear the headphone mix more like it would be without headphones.

Yes, this little box is expensive at $660 and it requires a S/PDIF or Toslink Signal. But it can serve as a first line DAC and even shut off the feed to your monitors if you want to use one of the two headphone jacks. And it can be used on laptops. If you plug in a second USB cord just for power, it can drive any headphone, even those that are less efficient.

If this interests you, Sweetwater has a fairly long review of this unit.

BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.