Headphones

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Do headphones that are easy to drive – such as the Hifiman HE1000se – benefit much from better amps? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by jnscmttmyr@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community

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The Hifiman HE1000se are my daily drivers and known for not being too power hungry. I have two chains in which I listen to them:

Living Room: Marantz DAC-1 -> Schiit Asgard2
Desk: Schiit Bifrost2 -> Schiit Lyr3

I wonder whether the HE1000se benefit much from better amps, and if so, what price range we are talking about… Are amps like the Feliks Audio Euforia or the Flux Labs Volot a complete overkill? Is there something worthwhile in between? Or is even the DAC the better component to tackle here?

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

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.