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.

  • heeplr@feddit.de
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    10 months ago

    input the PC audio into a home audio receiver/amp and use the headphone output from that to drive the headphones?

    You not only can but depending on your amp it probably outperforms the average headphone amp in every aspect.

    Also decent loudspeakers + cheap amp (+ cheap subwoofer) will likely outperform your average PC-Speakers.