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?
In some cases yes. In some cases no. In many cases money doesn’t have anything to do with it.
I have some Aeon2Noir headphones that I like a lot but they are hard to drive. Rednet AM2 is not cheap but it falls apart with them, the Grace M900 however runs them nicely. The AM2 is more expensive. I should do a test with the Atom to see how it sounds honestly.