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> but THEN comes the amp question... and the rabbithole deepens.. and then the DAC and in the end I give up, every time..

Well I have some great news for you!

In 2024, you don’t need to spend mega bucks to get a good DAC or amp. You might not need one at all!

One of the better performing and measuring DACs out there right now is the $9 Apple USB-C dongle: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

I’m not suggesting you need to rush out and buy it, but it’s a good reminder that modern tech is so good that even a $9 Apple part measures so well that nobody could hear the difference between it and a more expensive DAC.

As for amps: The amp story has been exaggerated a lot. A $70-$100 amp could give you more power and better performance than you could ever need (barring exotic headphones that need specialty amps). That’s if you even need one at all.

Don’t drink the kool-aid or take advice from people who learned about Hi-Fi from 1990s or 2000s tech.

> I guess what I hate about gear, is what others love, that there's no one right, no one truth, and that subjective experience has to be taken into account..

Sadly, subjective and placebo are two sides of the same coin in the audiophile world. People will swear up and down that their $1000 amp or DAC or cables are superior to their $100 version, but the claims disintegrate under blind testing conditions.

I was reading the parent comment and just could feel myself itching to recommend AudioScienceReview, but then was glad to see it was already the top answer. It's such a relief when you finally have some hard data to compare options in that snakeoil-laden field.

I built my stack based on the reviews there, and I've been completely satisfied with my Topping D10 (for DAC) and JDS Atom (for an amp), which cost me like $200 total a few years ago. But of course, there's already a newer model of the Atom that seems to blow the old one out of the water: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j...

And btw OP, for headphones I'm using DT1990s, which might also be worth a listen if you are looking to upgrade from the 990s :)

Sennheiser HD600 and Topping DX3Pro+[0] are the combination I recommend today.

The Atom doesn't hold up as well as when it launched in today's market at that price point. That DX3Pro+ is a strongly measuring dac+amp single unit at the price.

As for HD600, they're the time-proven, neutral, uncolored, accurate timbre kings. Great overall balance.

0. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/t...

+1. Great advice

The DX3 Pro+ seems like a great recommendation, I might have gone for that as well if it had been available when I was researching.

And I concur regarding the HD600, it's a great choice for many people. I was trying out both a HD650 and the DT1990 before making my choice, and for me the 'precision' of the 1990s was just too enticing compared to the laid-back sound of the 650s -- but it was a hard choice, because sometimes you don't want precision, you just want comfortable listening, and there the HD600/650 really excel in my opinion.

Note the HD650 are warm and laid-back not just relative to DT1990, but also relative to HD600.

>One of the better performing and measuring DACs out there right now is the $9 Apple USB-C dongle: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

Shows how bad the entire industry is. Especially on the DAC side. Lots of snake oil that measures worse than very cheap solutions.

In practice, the amplifier matters more, and there the Apple dongle doesn't do so well.

> Especially on the DAC side. Lots of snake oil that measures worse than very cheap solutions.

-Which, cynically speaking, is really a requirement. After all, many manufacturers of such gear claim a 'house sound' - but how do you differentiate between sonically transparent gear?

You don't. Hence you need to add some imperfection to the sound in order to claim an (audible) edge over others.

Or, as (signal processing major) me liked to quip to audiophile friends - "Tube sound? Tube sound can be DSP'd!

yeah, I have HD600s and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t tell the difference blind between my amp+dac setup or onboard audio on my desktop & thinkpad having a chunky volume nob on the desk is nice I guess

HD600 are hard to drive, they should sound notificably better on a dedicated headphone amp versus a ThinkPad. Many years ago I did this comparison and the difference was very significant, I've never used a stock headphone jack since.

This can vary across onboard sound devices, like for my HD600 headphones, I ended up doing a quick check across various headphones jacks and got very mixed results:

- 2 of my 3 monitors audio outputs: Good

- Desktop rear audio port: Good

- MacBook Pro audio port: Good

- Third (different model) monitor: Usable

- Desktop front audio port: Usable

- Framework laptop: Usable

- Nintendo Switch: Poor

- Surface Go tablet: Poor

what the fuck that USB-C Dongle has great Signal to noise ratio. wow. probably because it runs on battery?

If you would just commit all the way and get an atomic clock you could save yourself from the tyranny of jitter in the 1MHz audio band and then it'd all be worth it.

There are chip-scale atomic clocks now for only a few hundred dollars. As ridiculous and unnecessary as it is, it could totally be used as a clock for a DAC!

Here you go: https://en.antelopeaudio.com/products/10mx/

I went the customcans hifiman route after my open dt 990 pros blew from feedback

https://customcans.co.uk/shop/product-category/home/headphon...

Not quite the thousand dollar Arya but I like the dampening/venting work and signal testing he did + nice cables + I switched to a balanced xlr setup with my amp as I have grounding issues in my house.

I personally find the amp the most interesting part over headphones. I really like the tone of tube amps. It's fun testing out the (noticeable) differences. As long as headphones are relatively flat I'm happy. Not sure the planar thing is as dramatic as people say but I only have a modified entry level one.

If I was going this path again I'd probably get a (modified) 990 Beyer again cuz I loved that one and I don't find much value in spending a couple K since it's never just the headphone purchase... I know from experience a new fancier speakers/headphones means you then notice how bad your amp is, or your phono preamp, or turntable, or your DAC, etc and you invest a tone of time/money on upgrading everything.

I love how much HD25 stuff that site has. Brilliant piece of kit from Sennheiser, especially when looking at both sound quality and tinkerability.

In my humble opinion the sound of the headphones is just preference. Of course some people will tell you the arya is great or the hd800s or whatever, but in the end it just is a sound preference. Do you prefer airy highs or warm mids or whatever the terminology is.

When it comes to DACs and amps its just simple: get the one that has the best signal to noise ratio. Usually they should not alter the sound profile at all.

Also most DACs you will find on audiosciencereview for example have such a good signal to noise ratio (>100 or whatever) that is is imperceptible to the human ear anyway. You can go higher, but you won't hear a difference. And some of these cost less then 100$ or even less.

I would go for something that looks ok, is not too large and fulfills your user experience preferences.

In my example I bought separate DAC and AMP to have the best signal to noise ratio, but I have more cables and 2 boxes on the desk and the AMP is huge. I would rather go back for an integrated solution that maybe can also drive my monitors. But here we are...

it's not all about perfect measurements.

then, of course, if you buy into all the snake oil it's a different story ;-)

>Do you prefer airy highs or warm mids or whatever the terminology is.

There is no terminology, that's the problem. What is "airy"? What is "warm"? You're right, subjective. We can only care about what can be measured.

Is your username a SOPHIE reference?

> my subjective experience of even cheaper studio monitors have been on-par with even the most expensive headphones, I should go all-in on that account instead

That's certainly an interesting experience, I've heard that a good pair of speakers costs much more than an equivalent pair of headphones. You can get "audiophile" level Sennheisers/Audio Technicas for a few hundred dollars, but that's close to the starting price for any half-decent pair of speakers, with "good quality" setups probably costing in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.

There are a few things you could do to make headphones more speakers-esque - use an external subwoofer or rumbler, add a bit of cross/mix between the channel and perhaps use a dsp plugin for HRTF (Head related transfer functions). Assuming your amp/source is good, it should definitely smoke a fairly more expensive speaker system out of the water.

> I guess what I hate about gear, is what others love, that there's no one right, no one truth, and that subjective experience has to be taken into account.. I don't want subjective, I want the objective truth, accurate reproduction.. but what is even that..

But you already found the objective truth: people experience it differently.

Maybe it's not the truth that you wanted but rather whatever that you wanted to be the truth

I think at some point you just need to focus on listening to the music as opposed to listening to the hardware, and spare some time thinking about the aesthetic considerations of the gear you’re buying.

Anything else and as you’ve noticed you’ll always be chasing for something “better”.

I have Sennheiser HD800S with an RME ADI2 DAC. They sound absolutely incredible for classical and jazz music - amazing soundstage and detail. Possibly not the best for rock/pop (HD600 might be better). The RME ADI2 DAC is great, although I don't need to use the EQ for the HD800S at all. There must be something cheaper out there with less features, but an equally good amp.

For headphones, unless you need an obscene amount of bass, I've never heard any headphones better than STAX (staxheadphones.com). Because they're electrostatic, there aren't a lot of amplifier choices so that also makes things easy (and they make those too of course).

Their flagship model SR-X9000 are by far the best headphones I've ever listened to. EStats are insane and it's a new goal of mine to get the whole setup.

>> Of course, audiophilia is a sickness, and it never ends

Thank you for helping diagnose one of my obsessions for me.