Amps, DACs, and Audio Interfaces

Hey man!

That’s actually a great question. Amps and DACS are becoming sort of a meme, and I’ve been harping on this point for over a year now. I was just talking to someone on Instagram the other day about how phone dacs are closing that gap between bad quality and really good quality. In fact, whenever someone new asks me about a dac and they’re primarily using their phone, I ask them immediately which one it is so I can get a better sense of if they actually need a dac. I still think an amp/dac is necessary in many cases, but to answer your question: Absolutely. Smartphones have come a long way. I personally do most of my listening on desktop so I really do have a need for a good DAC.

As for your second question, you’ll find different schools of thought on this. For instance, Metal571 prefers the Harman target AFAIK, and yeah, generally speaking, my preferences fall in line with it as well. I mostly prefer the Audeze house sound which is similar: Flat bass, slightly elevated mids, rolled of treble. I mostly find myself EQ’ing to to this type of sound. Similar to the Harman target, but not exactly in line with it.

As you may or may not know, Classical does extremely well with some added bass emphasis (not too much), because the genre is really volatile and can easily sound tinny, bright, scratchy, and obnoxious due to it’s seemingly unpredictable variations in decibel level. I’m sure you’re at least partially aware of what I’m talking about. I find it to be very irritating at times, as most headphones don’t do too well in handling these discrepancies. Interestingly enough, I found the Philips SHP9600 to do very well with it, and really any amp/dac that has a warmer tone can also help mitigate those unwanted side effects.

So if you wanted to take the plunge on something to pair with the X2HR, definitely give the hip-dac a look, as well as the FiiO Q1 MK II. Both of those have a warmer sound that pairs well with the genre. 🙂

Let me know what you think!

Thanks man! If you are getting the Objective 2, I believe you should get an OL DAC to pair 🙂

Keep me posted!

Yes! I love the K3! Agree about power output. It was a bit disappointing unbalanced, but it still does pretty well with most headphones. I can technically run it with my HD600’s, but there’s hardly any headroom. I wish they would have just used the same power output unbalanced that they provided with the E10K, and then used even more than that for the balanced 2.5mm jack.