 The fractal design to find our four case gets featured on the WAN show build logs of the week section more than any other case. Click now to learn more about it. Welcome to my unboxing and overview of the Mayflower O2 or objective 2 headphone amp and we've actually also got the ODAC headphone amp combo unit as well. In terms of packaging, they're a pretty small company so we got I guess about the best you could expect from a smaller company so it arrived in a box with packing materials and all that good stuff. I took some pictures at the time but I have since gotten rid of it because I was on my motorbike and I couldn't take the box away with me. So let's start with what is a headphone amplifier? In the simplest possible terms it's a component of your audio setup that allows you to drive volume higher and assuming it's reasonably well designed it can also noticeably improve the audio quality on any device that it's plugged into whether it's a PC, phone, mp3 player or whatever else. So what is this thing specifically? This is a variant of the objective 2. It's from Mayflower as I said before and it adheres strictly to the original O2 design so the quality of the internals is undeniably solid and it features a rugged aluminum housing that is available in silver or black. There are other options available on the Mayflower website such as a quarter inch jack option, there's upgraded knobs which we do have here on the black one and you can check out all of the options in the pricing and availability link in the video description. There may even be a special discount for Linus Tech Tips for our members. Just throwing that out there. The O2 or objective 2 was designed by an audio engineer enthusiast guy who went by the name of NWAV guy or Northwest AV guy with the goal of creating a simple value optimized amp that purely does what it's supposed to do. Amplify the signal from your audio source without altering the sound signature so that is to say with a neutral sound signature or flat frequency response. This will allow audio files without spending a ton of money to get the most out of their expensive cans. He's basically dropped off the face of the earth at this point but not before giving permission to DIYers and entrepreneurs like Mayflower alike to manufacture the design that he created. All of the IO is on the front of this unit which is great because it can be put on a desk or even shoved into a bag due to its ability to be powered for 8 to 10 hours by two rechargeable nickel metal hydride 9 volt batteries. From left to right we see DC power in, the power button itself, the headphone out, volume adjustment knob, a gain toggle which is essentially a switch to increase the loudness of the signal depending on the impedance of the headphones you're trying to drive. You may need more gain for higher impedance headphones. The stock configuration is 2.5x gain and 6.5x gain but that can be changed if you want anything from 1x to 12x. And finally source input. That can be anything with a 3.5mm jack or even an adapter. Turning the O2 amp is simple, no drivers or anything, just turn up the volume of your source, like your phone, to the maximum, plug it into the amp, plug in your headphones, I would suggest turning the amp down initially because you could blow your ears out, and then adjust to the point where it's comfortable and you're ready to hear a difference in the quality of your music or other content. With that said, the amp is only one part of the audio pipeline so to speak. You may find that while a better amp can noticeably improve the listening experience, particularly with decent quality headphones, let's say in the $200 range and up, it can also draw your attention to deficiencies in other parts of the pipeline that you never noticed before. Low quality compressed mp3s will sound muddy and ugly and pops and random interference from particularly terrible audio sources like bad on board computer audio will come through loud and clear. Improving the source audio files. Audio files, sorry, that always cracks me up. The files, using higher quality files such as lossless formats or even 320 bit mp3s will help regardless of whether you've got a fancy new amp, but if your DAC solution built into your PC is still terrible, then you'll need a DAC. You can get a sound card or you can get an integrated unit that's designed to perfectly match the 02 amp, the O DAC. The second unit right here, so this is the silver one, the black one's just the amp, contains the 02 amp and the O DAC within the same chassis. It looks mostly the same other than that it shows off a different external finish and front knob, this is the cheaper knob, except that it has a USB port at the back. That USB port requires no drivers to be installed and works on PC and Mac. All it does is apply the same principles of striving for high quality with no changes to the sound signature of the original track and simple design to achieve very, very respectable results. If you're an audio geek, you can check out the performance measurements of the O DAC online, but if you're not, then you'll just have to kind of take my word for it. It's very, very good, especially considering the price. So who is this for? These two solutions are priced at around $130 and $250 respectively, which might sound like a lot, but if you're a budding audiophile and you're picking up a nice pair of headphones anyway, it could be argued that it is a great investment. There's cheaper stuff out there from the likes of Fio and others, and there's much more expensive stuff out there, but the 02 hits that sweet spot where the general internet consensus seems to be that spending less gets you a noticeably worse experience and spending more doesn't necessarily yield much of a return on your investment until you spend a lot more. Just the amp itself made my phone sound noticeably better with my relatively inexpensive IEMs, but I didn't notice much of a difference compared to, say for example, a decent sound card. With all of that said, other than my Sennheiser HD555s, my headphone collection consists largely of very unexceptional cheapo gaming headsets, so take everything that I say about my experience with it with a grain of salt. Speaking of salt, audible.com slash Linus is the place to go where for the same price as a packet of salt at a fast food restaurant, that is to say free, you can get an audiobook when you sign up for a new membership. They have over 150,000 audiobooks including Salt, Sugar, Fat, How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss and Salt, A World History by Mark Krulansky. So you can get one of those, particularly that second one for free if that sounds interesting or something else if you prefer. Remember guys, that's audible.com slash Linus for a free audiobook. Check it out. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave me a comment with your thoughts on the O2. Don't forget about that discount code that you might find on the Linus Tech Tips forum depending when you're watching this. And as always, don't forget to subscribe.