this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Headphones

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If you had to break it down by percentage, how important would you rate source, dac, amp, and headphones/IEMs, in creating the best sound possible? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by 42dudes@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community
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With all the hyperbolic reviews of gear, I find it hard sometimes to quantify how important various components of a hifi setup are to achieving the best sound possible.

What do you spend the bulk of your budget on, and what can you get away with skimping on until you've got extra cash lying around, to get those diminishing returns on the last few % of upgrade for your rig?

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[–] sverek@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For Mid-Fi:

  • Source: YAAR!

  • DAC: 5%

  • AMP: 20%

  • Headphones: 75%

[–] _TooManyBoats@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

source pretty much can bottleneck the entire setup but its the easiest thing to acquire. after that headphones become the most important by a large margin because dac and amp exist only to support the headphones that need them

[–] 42dudes@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So you don't think the source matters with Mid-fi?

Spotify does the trick and until you're into a pricy signal chain, with a pair of prime headphones, you won't see a real advantage from a better (lossless?) source?

[–] sverek@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can't comment on Spotify or other streaming service, since there no way to verify the sound quality. If I have CD or sound file, I can at least verify the numbers.

Talking about numbers and formats, I can't tell difference between MP3 192kbit and FLAC (source file).

[–] Comma20@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Spotify VBR => Corda Stack => HD800.

I can only tell the difference on songs that I've extremely familiar with and am specifically looking for rather than general listening. So I don't think it matters in a meaningful way once you hit a well encoded VBR. The specific characteristics are probably more exacerbated at 192kbit (and 128kbit), but I don't I would be able to do it in a statistically significant way on unknown tracks for 192kbit either.

Maybe I stand a chance at 128kbit.

[–] 42dudes@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I can tell between mp3 and FLAC on my nicest studio monitors, but even then, its not a big difference.