Many conventional headphone amps focus on lowering output impedance at the expense of temporal accuracy. To address this issue, the Sprout II makes use of a new low-impedance Z feedback circuit to drive virtually any pair of headphones with perfect transient impulse response. Slew rate (an amplifier’s ability to reproduce transient musical information) is critical to the lifelike presentation of sound. The human ear reacts instantly to temporal shift and this sensitivity helps us to determine our surroundings. Built with careful attention to phase shift and temporal accuracy, the Sprout II’s headphone amp slews at an unheard-of 1,300 volts per microsecond: 100 times faster than that of its predecessor. This allows for lucid spatial detail and acute tonal retrieval—plus noise immunity, so you can listen at low levels or high.