this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Headphones
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Yeah, absolutely. It's not just about power, it's about how faithfully your DAC converts 1s and 0s into an analogue signal, and you'll hear the difference in equipment in things like imaging, instrument separation, soundstage, decay, etc. A good DAC/amp combo will make your headphones sound good, but a great one will make music sound realistic.
If you're near a city my advice would be to either find an audio store near you that will let you bring in your headphones to try on their equipment or check out if there are any head-fi meetups near you where individuals and sometimes companies bring their stuff for people to try. But if you can afford the Euforia I'd get that first and upgrade the DAC later since you already have good equipment and the amp will probably be more of a noticeable improvement between both components.
That's what I'm currently looking for… Hamburg ⚓️ people, do you hear me?
As I got sucked into the head-fi adventure some two years ago (damn!), I'm experiencing this massive rabbit hole of audiophile seductions (being a hobby photographer, I know the "gear acquisition syndrome" all too well) with a limited budget, so I'm not really sure if things like the Euforia are something I could or should afford if there's something else that gives me more goose bumps for the buck.
Closing the cirlce, I'll never find out until I tried – which brings us back to the first advice you've given. ;-)
Funnily enough I'm also a photographer, so I know that pain well! And yeah, the two hobbies are very similar because you can go a long way on a budget if you're judicious and patient, but there's a point where you just hit a technical wall. I remember upgrading from a Canon 85mm 1.4 to a 85mm 1.2L and learning that some high-end gear is not a trick or a placebo, it really is substantially better. I still ended up selling it though, so better certainly isn't the end all and be all.
I'm definitely not in the market for a Euforia but I did just wipe out my budget on a DX240 and I'm really happy I splurged, it reintroduced me to my library and gives me those goosebumps. I wouldn't tell anyone to go broke doing this but at the end of the day we love music and want to know how good it can be before we're dead, so I say dive as deep as you can. :)
Stuff like imaging, instrument separation, soundstage etc. is entirely source dependent. A song has been produced/mixed/mastered in a certain way and once you have the final file/signal, no DAC in this world will „improve it by faithfully converting 1s and 0s“ or whatever that even means. This is way, way, way beyond its ability. The information is either in the source or it isn’t and measurements show that any half decent DAC does nothing to the signal that you can hear and even if it did, it wouldn’t be improvements to the instrument separation lmao
I understand that accepting this would probably mean that you wasted money on expensive gear that does the same job as some dongle at a fraction of the price, but your claims in the first paragraph of your comment are absolutely ridiculous.