AAA Sized "Driver"?

Interesting question here... I just got a battery powered headphone amp that normally runs off of 4 AAA batteries. They say it'll work fine on 1.2V NiMH batteries, but not as well as 1.5V alkalines. I'd prefer not to use primaries if I can though, so I phoned the company to find out if I could use 10440s instead. They said the higher voltage would help with the amp power, but 9V max was recommended. So that means I could use two 10440s plus two spacers, but I have another idea...

Two 10440s won't provide me nearly as much runtime as four primaries would, although they would sound better. But I could get better runtime with three 10440s, plus something to regulate the voltage back down under 9V. That's where my question comes in. Does anyone make or is able to make a AAA sized voltage regulator that I could use in addition to three 10440s in this device? Given the Li-Ion nature of these batteries, we'd be looking at 11.1V nominal and 12.6V max, which would have to be regulated under 9V, ideally right around there.

The headphone amp in question is a HeadRoom Total Bithead if anyone's wondering. Just got it today, works fine and sounds nice under my Linux system.

Voltage regulators just drop the extra voltage as heat, so that's a big pile of no.

Use a 2x2 series-parallel combination instead. Then you have double the voltage and double the current capacity of a single cell.

Cyparagon said:

Use a 2x2 series-parallel combination instead. Then you have double the voltage and double the current capacity of a single cell.

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I had thought of that, but I was preferring to keep the amp as stock just in case I needed to return it or something. I agree, that would be ideal though.