Can the DAC of LB563 directly drive headphones? Are there any compatible or recommended headphone amplifier chips?

Can the DAC in the LB563 directly drive headphones? Are there any compatible or recommended headphone amplifier chips?

It cannot directly drive ordinary passive headphones, especially the common 16 Ω/32 Ω ones.

The LB563’s on-chip Audio DAC mainly provides analog audio signals and has limited current capability to drive low-impedance loads. Direct connection may not achieve the expected results, and issues such as low volume and high distortion may occur.

In the SDK, the eh-lb563 board also adds an AW8155 analog power amplifier after the on-chip Audio Codec. See the configuration in board.conf (SiFli-SDK/customer/boards/eh-lb563/hcpu/board.conf:28) and PA Kconfig (SiFli-SDK/customer/peripherals/pa/Kconfig:14).

However, the AW8155 is mainly used for speakers and is not suitable as a headphone amplifier. If connecting active headphones, an external amplifier, or a high-impedance line-in, the DAC can be directly used as a signal source, but DC blocking, biasing, and filtering still need to be handled according to the chip’s reference design.