Alien DAC + Chu Moi = Headphone bliss in a box

Regular listeners will know that I'm always searching for high quality headphone audio. In the past I've built a CMoy amplifier and an Alien DAC USB audio device.

Yeah it's a bit rough but it fits nicely under my computer monitor.

It was time to put them together in one box and dispense with the excess wires.

I started with some 0.5mm sheet aluminium:

Marked out to make a box 50mm x 100mm x 100mm. It was cut with tin snips and simply bent over the edge of a bench by hand. The sides were joined using angle aluminium stock drilled 4mm and tapped.

For now I'm powering the amp on 12V supplied by an external AA battery pack with 8 cells. Can't wait for GreenPlug to arrive..

I thought I was doing the right thing choosing metric screws but even in a metric country the range is severely limited and I've had to saw off the rather long machine screws I got.

This is not a bad way to make a small project box. Even 0.5mm aluminium feels pretty rigid with the help of the angle stock.

Sounds great with my HD560s by the way.