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.
Audio is a very subjective hobby, and whether headphones are driven well enough is also quite subjective. I have definitely heard many headphones where enough power made a difference, but I’ve also owned many headphones that don’t benefit from extra power - or it defeats their whole purpose. And contrary to popular opinion, I would say for a lot of people, the PC headphone jack is often the better source they need - it’s usually got extra power over many portables, possibly from the PC system having a higher voltage power supply.
I do the following as a rebellion. I grew up listening to radio, FM is the origin sound for me. So I plug an FM transmitter into my source, and use Sony’s pocket radios as my headphone amp. What’s funny is this for me has fixed all issues where the sound wasn’t good enough, even though those radios all have low or miniscule output on paper, they’re always very loud, very smooth and satisfying in a way audiophile gear can’t be to my ears. So I feel like instead of sticking to conventional wisdom, you can probably do very well without new equipment to drive those headphones.