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?
You will get a lot of different options on this.
For me, it’s split.
DAC - no, not after a certain point. they are made so well now you can get a great one for £100. I have tried more expensive ones and heard no difference.
AMPs - yes or no depending on what you want to get from it. Super clean signal - then one with sufficient power will suffice. But Tube amps or one that will colour the music, then yes - if that’s the sound you like. More so for the Tube option.
I’ve never personally noticed an issue with DACs, once you get to ~$20+ the DAC is usually not the issue. I’ve noticed noise and buzzing from interference on cheap amps though, so I second that part. I would get a nice quality amp before investing in a good DAC, they’re much more important.
I’d say buying a DAC is more about features than it is about sound. Some features on an rme DAC for instance wouldn’t be able to cram in a $100 DAC.
As for amps I’m a bit torn. I think it really depends on your headphones more than anything. The amp on my rme sounds a bit thin comparing it back to back with my burson but it very well could be it’s not perfectly volume matched. I did a blind test and had my gf switch it and I could tell, but who knows.
Burson has gobs of distortion, it’s in tube amp territory. RME is the exact opposite, very clean. This could result in a perception of the clean amp being thin vs the sprays of distortion adding more body, this is after all something people tend to say about tube amps as well.
I feel a bit different playing my Focal Stellia on Astell&Kern 3000 or on iFi Blu. Yes, it’s not a fair comparison as one is 200$ portable DAC/amp and one a very expensive player , but I feel the combination of better DAC chips and amplification in Astell & Kern makes it much better . I also btw feel like digital portable players are much too expensive , but it’s also much better to be able to play on the go. I quite regretted my electrostatic headphones purchase (4500$ for the Dan Clark Audio Corina, 1260$ for Stax SRM-D50 DAC/AMP ), because I can’t take it anywhere and it’s always annoying to set up .