Headphones

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Please educate an old guy about why I will need a headphone amp (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by purplepat69@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community

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I would never call myself an audiophile, but I know what I like. I told Santa that I wanted a set of the cheap HE-X4 planar headphones for Christmas. I plan to use them for music from my desktop PC. I understand that if my audio card/chip can't deliver enough power to drive the headphones to a sufficient volume level, I'll need an amp between the PC and the cans. But being an old "stereo" guy, is there any reason I couldn't input the PC audio into a home audio receiver/amp and use the headphone output from that to drive the headphones? What advantage, if any, would I get from buying one of these fancy DAC headphone amps? What advantage do more expensive headphone amps have over cheaper headphone amps? At 66 years old, I have no hope of having "golden ears" any longer.

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[–] Sonoflyn@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

if your stereo amp still works flawlessly it's probably fine. But using an external Dac is definitely recommended. The inside of a PC is kind of an electromagnetic mess. Not as much an issue for digital on/off, but very much an issue for analogue audio signals. On top of that, the dac on the motherboard probably isn't a very good one either. But you don't have to go overboard. There are pretty good options at almost any price point.