Headphones

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Do your headphones REALLY perform much better with more expensive DAC/AMP? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by FrankieWilde11@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community

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I have the Sennheiser HD600, Neumann NDH-30, Audeze LCD-X.

I use these with my SSL2 hp out, and with Qudelix 5K.

I spoke to someone about my impressions and his first question was: which dac/amp? and when I told, he just winked.

So my question is: is the difference this obvious with a more expensive dac/amp combo? Should I spend another 6-800 euro to get one? Do your headphones open up/perform that much better?

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[–] k-groot@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I don't have really nice headphones, but i do have a really nice dac/amp.
Just two weeks ago i got out my old AKG K340 (the electrostatics, very hard to drive) and plugged them into my mid-tier audio interface (OctaCapture): it sounded absolutely shit.
Thin, no low end.

Then, i got to the living room and plugged them into my RME dac/amp and behold: that's how it should sound! I'm not under the impression a good and a very good dac make that much difference, but having a headphone amp with enough headroom and a low output impedance does matter. The SSL too has a pretty bad headphone stage if i remember correctly, they had to cut some corners somewhere for that price.

Now, i got myself a Sabaj A20d dac/amp to replace the audio interface and that was a big step up from the OctaCapture and guess what: it was a lot cheaper than the interface and about 9 times as cheap as the RME. Does the RME sound 9 times better? Nope, not even twice.