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.
A speaker driver functions best with adequate power driving its magnetic motor. Too little power means poor control, distortion, and a brightening of tone at higher volumes (although all this still happens when ragin reaching the mechanical limits of the driver).
It’s mainly a question of if the source device supplies adequate power.
Power needed is also volume dependent. At quiet volumes you use very little power, but at medium to high volumes the driver motor may want more than the source device can offer.
From what I’ve found, most devices have a surprisingly low power output limit, and it’s rare that headphones get enough. I find this to be true even with small IEMs, let alone full sized cans.