Precision Headphone Amplifier

Designs for good-quality headphone amplifiers abound, but this one has a few special features that make it stand out from the crowd.
We start with a reasonably conventional input stage in the form of a differential amplifier constructed from dual FET T2/T3. A particular point here is that in the drain of T3, where the amplified signal appears, we do not have a conventional current source or a simple resistor. T1 does indeed form a current source, but the signal is coupled out to the base of T5 not from the drain of T3 but from the source of T1.