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 just have to reach a level of competency and avoid the utter crap. I was driving my Audeze LCD-2 with a JDS Atom and it was fine, until I started to use EQ. Then it was missing just a little bit of headroom, so I got the THX789. That was fine except for a couple quiet tracks that I had to max out volume. Then I switched to a balanced DAC, the SMSL DO100 and now everything is just peachy keen. I’m getting reference level performance and the DAC/AMP stack did not cost a lot. Only the cans were a fairly large expense, but that’s how it should be.