I think element II looks much better too, but not sure about aio for the long term
(i cant tell if you have never had high quality gear by “looking at” or if you owned those things im assuming you havent ) honestly i think some people would not agree but something like a liquid spark amp is a great starting point for 90$ for over 1 watt of power non balanced output and from there the main difference in sound will be with headphones not with x amount better dac or slightly better amp for 5x the price. liquid spark with maybe a nice tube pre amp for some extra controls for manual EQ on it. a decent 125 or so dollar dac or even less, and then go nuts with some headphones. audeze lcd 2c, hifiman edition XX or focals massdrop edition, or Senn 660s or maybe a used set of Audeze lcd X that will blow everything else away for around 900 or so. maybe ZMF cans used as well. just like speakers , the driver containing device dictates sound much more than anything else as long as you have a solid base. i would NOT recommend the previous posts saying 350 -450 on a freaking DAC for your first one? hell no you cant tell the difference when you are coming from nothing.
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I feel a lot of options $200 and under are perfectly adequate if not more than enough to start.
Honestly to just start with decent audio, one may not even need a dac/amp depending on the headphone drivability.
One of my biggest fears is not initially spending too little in a hobby but wasting too much and realizing I could have been just as satisfied with cheaper. Maybe it’s just me because I am strapped by budget.
I guess an analogy would be:
is it better to canonball into the lake and get the best from the start
or
first dip your toes, test the temperature and depth, then take a dive when you’re confident in what you percieve.
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with that budget in hand, I have a lot of shit that I want to buy. Possibly a new CPU and a motherboard for my current rig and some new fans as well in order to make it look much more aesthetically pleasing to me. Some anime stuff like figmas of characters that I love that I can use to put it as a display in my room and as well as some manga collection where I can have a collection of Berserk to read if the budget is still enough. Lastly the rest of the money will be given to my family, for it is my way of paying them back for they have done so much for me and that is a least I could do to help them.
EDIT: If there is still enough budget for a DAC/AMP, then a DAC/AMP desk one is a must for me.
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I would go for one these two options, depending on the $
#1
Schiit Magni = $99
Schiit Modi = $99
Drop DT 990 Pro = $145
#2
Schiit Modius = $199
Schiit Magnius = $199
Drop HD 6XX = $220
You get quality things that are well known and you can take the sound you hear and read about how other compare this to other dac/amps/HP. So you can develop if needed and you have not spend all the $ yet.
Especially the Schiit is for me obvious, then the HP can vary a bit more, but the Drop options are giving you some good value.
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Best recommendation so far, going for RNHP over Rebel. I own and love it, and there’s a >1500 post thread about it on here if you want to read up.
The great thing about the HD600 is that everybody and their momma has listened to them, so they would be a good benchmark for you.
Other good DAC options according to what I’ve read are: JDS El DAC II (more expensive), and Topping e30 (less expensive).
Let us know what you decide!
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So imo to only comment on the source gear side of things, personally I would suggest grabbing a schiit asgard 3 and an allo revolution dac (with their cheap 15 buck psu for the time being), and stick with that for your source chain. This should be like 450 for source gear, but it’s an extremely capable and versatile combo that should power everything you throw at it pretty well, and is a setup you can really grow with (and also modify to your liking in some ways with the allo). You could make this cheaper by going with a topping e30 instead but I think the allo is worth the added cost if you can fit it in
I wouldn’t recommend going for something like a liquid platinum, rnhp, rebel amp, g111 level yet imo, as I think you really want to have the headphones you like solidified by then, and at this budget it’s just too much money to spend on source gear imo and those amps are more picky on what they sound good with and not as much of an all rounder so harder to experiment. I also wouldn’t go with something like the magnius as imo it preformed worse than the asgard in most every way from my experience, and also now has added cost because of the want to recable balanced. I also wouldn’t recommend something like a mangi + modi or e30+ l30 as I think some of the headphones you get might be handicapped more than you would want and you would want to upgrade more later on whereas the asgard 3 would bring them much closer to higher end performance
I know you want to have only one headphone ish, but what I would do if amazon would allow is order a few headphones that interest you, try them out for a week, and then keep the one you liked the most and return the others (make sure the ones you get can be returned). This really isn’t the most right thing to do since you are kinda abusing amazon returns, but it’s the closest thing to trying things out without having to hard commit. Generally many in this hobby will find that they just can’t only have one headphone, mainly because there really isn’t a headphone that can do it all, and there will tend to always be an itch to try something new, imo 2-3 headphones is the right spot to be able to cover all your bases and satisfy most needs in the end tbh if carefully chosen. I wouldn’t go for multiple higher end pairs right away, but for most that’s where they tend to end up
just my 2c here
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Listen to that ^^^ guy.
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This is just from my perspective here for what I personally have found and tend to gravitate towards if I had to pick a source chain that I could live with for a long time in this budget. I understand that 450 seems like a lot to drop on source gear here for a setup like this, but overtime it really will pay off if you really want to go in for the long run, and allow you to really maximize whatever you get. There are plenty of 500 ish headphones that are all great, and imo a source chain like I mentioned above will really elevate them and show you want can be done. IMO strikes a great medium for price to performance that can you really won’t be itching to upgrade any time soon until you hit those 1.5k range headphones
Also to further add on my scalability comment, the allo revolution has some interesting tricks up it’s sleeve. One of them is the ability to bypass oversampling and also adjust the 2nd and 3rd order harmonics, which can drastically change the sound and can really let you dial in a sound you prefer (to an extent of course). The allo also can be upgraded later on with something like their shanti lps which can give a nice sound quality bump if you ever move towards one of those higher end amps to support a higher end headphone so you can carry the allo forward. I think to really get a significant performance bump for dacs, you tend to be spending in the 600+ range with stuff like the schiiit bifrost 2, denafrips ares ii, or a soekris dac1421 or something like that
The asgard 3 for the most part is a slight bit warmer-neutral wider leaning, but it can be offset or increased by the allo if desired, and generally it’s very spatially accurate, dynamically capable, powerful, and pretty detailed with organic timbre, and it really tends to synergize with most headphones you can put on it, really honestly impressive for the price which most headphone amps in this price range just can’t pull off from my experience, so it’s a great place to be
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Wow lots of great stuff here and will definitely be looking into that gear
Thanks for the suggestions and I am starting to see the benefit of having more than one pair over time. I guess Amazon here I come…
I will definitely update the thread with what I end up with, but I’ll be waiting until the holiday sales start kicking in before purchasing!! Keep suggestions coming if you have them 
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M0N has had the most gear here by far (i believe) so to be fair i would listen to him. the e30 sounded great to me but hey ive never tried an Allo so maybe you would notice the difference. good luck!
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Don’t get me wrong, the e30 is a great dac for the price, all the features you could ask for the price, and a neutral smoother detailed sound that’s pretty impressive, hard to beat for all the things it has to offer in it’s price range. I do think the allo does offer more though in terms of spatial recreation, timbre, and refinement (and with an upgraded psu later on better dynamics and impact), and with the sonic features it has it can really be more tailored to ones preferences and source chain. It’s not going to be a game changing upgrade over the e30, but I do think it can bring a decent bit more to the table to justify the extra cost
I also know you mentioned the liquid spark, and while I really love that thing for the price, imo if you are going to be rocking things like an elex, 1990, edition xx, etc, I think the asgard 3 is a worthwhile investment as while it’s not going to transform the headphone, it will greatly improve most aspects about it and elevate it to another level of performance compared to the spark. But the spark is prob my favorite 100 buck amp out of what I have tried for my preferences lol
I also agree with what you said earlier as well to an extent, I would def not recommend spending that high up on a dac like a bf2 if you haven’t heard a more budget dac (ignoring that it’s totally inappropriate for this budget lol), and that goes for higher end amps as well, gotta take a journey, really learn what more money buys you and to appreciate the finer things about audio first. Also gives you something to continue your journey and whatnot, what’s the fun in jumping too far up right away lol
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Thanks for the recommend. ive never owned a better amp but i have heard them. i always try to get people to understand that you can have quality at that price but then again i dont want to limit them if they have the budget and want that level of gear. i do feel more strongly about that with a DAC than an AMP. but since you have heard things way above an e30 and i have not maybe it really is noticeable. I just think the real question is if they are coming from the dac on a macbook is it worth it? but i do think the options should be layed out to them instead of crapping on the idea like i did, lol and to be fair 1000 is quite a decent budget so a 100$ amp might be to low of a recommend to be fair even if its decent.
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So in the budget range, I think the amp is going to make the more substantial difference than the dac will as long as you get a decent dac, but when you really get to the higher end stuff, I would argue the dac is much more influential on the sound than the amp is, this really starts to set in once you start spending around 2-3k+ (used pricing) per component, if you had around 5-6k budget for a dac and amp, depending on the headphone I would most likely suggest spending more on the dac tbh, but again it’s all situational and in this budget range for sure I would prioritize the amp. What I ended up recommending is more equally prioritizing the dac and amp, mainly because it’s a hard range where I don’t think many worthwhile options exist, and if you ever reach into that 1.5k range for headphones you can now carry your dac forward (and upgrade it as well) while still being able to benefit for what that higher end dac has to offer as I think the asgard does let higher end dacs benefit more than other amps I have tried in the range.
The a3 + allo rec is mainly optimized for the a good balance of performance, flexibility, and scalability in this situation imo. You could go asgard 3 with e30 for more performance per dollar, but you still lose out on some extra performance and also now lose some sonic flexibility and scalability in the future. If you went for a bf2, I would now say that you really optimize max performance (but low performance per dollar and the asgard becomes a large bottleneck for sure), but not much flexibility (as now it’s more picky to source gear pairings), but at least scalability is really good depending on the future amp, but the value with the a3 is so poor that it’s really not worthwhile in this case. So it’s all about finding that balance if you really want to spec out a system for the long run imo
I would say as long as you have a quality enough amp then yes. Using a liquid spark, the line out of a mac vs an e30 is going to be noticeable but may not be worthwhile if you have a low budget and something like a 58x, but using something like an asgard 3 with a bit higher end headphones, the difference will be more pronounced and worthwhile imo
Everything kinda ends up being situational, it’s hard to make more absolute or generalized statements in audio lol
Yes that’s kinda what I was thinking, if the budget was like halved then I would have just been sticking with stuff like a magni 3+ with e30 or earman donald, or perhaps a liquid spark dac + spark amp, but when you get up to the 500 range for headphones, investing a bit more in the source gear becomes a much more worthwhile thing to do
Also man I went off topic lol
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no no thanks ive never gotten an opinion from someone with your experience so i really appreciate it. i guess as the resolution increases, and the staging and depth start to be the main goals and you leave the realm of “wow that bass is tight and smooth and the highs are smooth and clear” more bass or mids isnt exactly where you are trying to improve and a DAC will start adding those nice premium extras to the sound. ive just never been there yet so its nice to know it exists. i have the elac ub5’s and im BLOWN away by them. but i know its just the beginning in sound. always something to learn so thanks for spreading your knowledge around so often on here. ive read many of your posts over the past year.
So to me it actually isn’t about surface level resolution and frequency response once you go up, it’s moreso diving into the intangibles like spatial recreation, microdetail, presentation, timbre, dynamics, texture, etc other time domain things. Those get more and more impressive as you go up and honestly end up coloring sound more than frequency response and really contribute to the higher performance and realism that can be attained.
In the budget range the frequency response and tuning can matter way more as while you can throw technicalities at people in the budget range, if you don’t have a tuning or voicing that’s refined enough, it might not be that great. Like the 58x isn’t the most technically capable headphone for the price, but the tuning and frequency response is very refined and pleasing for the price so it becomes a viable option (also the 58x is nice since it doesn’t need higher end electronics to be brought to potential). Whereas if you compare that to a 4xx, while it might have some peaky fr and a tuning that’s good but not super refined, it offers pretty impressive technicalities for the price that makes it worthwhile for some on budget amps as long as they have enough power (magni 3+ or liquid spark does you just fine)
Oh nice those are pretty impressive speakers for the price (and that sale they had on them recently was pretty great), glad you are enjoying them 
, speakers are a rabbit hole for sure lol
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i got them for 220 dollars on crutchfield 
, it was an open box sale and its just a tiny piece of the vinyl that is not tucked under the driver. brand new. just got them today. when you are saying all of these things does it apply to speakers and headphones? or do you mostly use headphones? speakers seem to be a much deeper rabbit hole and maybe those micro details aren’t as apparent.
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Will continue this in dm’s, sorry for hijacking your thread for a bit @wall_o_flow lol
To actually contribute a bit, do you know if you have a specific sonic signature you are after here? Generally on what you are after, I think there are plenty of good options to try, the 1990 is great if you really like lots of forward detail and spaciousness, but it is more aggressive at times for some. The sundara is going to be something that’s very neutral and linear, pretty great detail that’s presented in a smoother way with pretty great depth, but might lack some body for some. I would give a nod to the focal elex if you can grab one, it is a pretty holographic and dynamic sound, lots of fun while being technically capable. If you wanted something that’s going to be warmer thicker more bassy and body with solid slam and control, but a really unique and spacious presentation, an audioquest nighthawk carbon is a really interesting pick (but the downside is that you would have to look used to find one). Also used you can start to find lcd 2 pre fazors around the 600 mark which are really great if you like something smooth, relaxed, linear, wider, and just an enjoyable listen. I would also mention the edition xx for something that has impressive slam and impact, a very grand and large sound to them, and are smoother warmer, but some may find they lack a tad of clarity
Edit: looking at your needs again though the hawks would not be suitable for editing imo
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@wall_o_flow apologies for the hijack, i totally forgot. please update with what you get and how you like it.
This was going to be a follow up q for you ha thanks!!
I have certain albums in mind for sound that I really want headphones to make worthwhile, can add them if that is useful for recommendations but that can probably start to get pretty subjective
But honestly not sure about the signature
yeah quick glance for some hawks, unavailable (might have better luck with used) such is the plight of 2020 stock supply
editing will really be infrequent and I doubt I’ll need something specifically for it at this point (sounds like a future addition!)