Hi, new the forums and audio gear in general so I apologise for my mistakes and misunderstandings beforehand.
I have been using mostly headsets (mistake #1) whilst on the PC.The usage mostly boils down to: games (non competitive), movies and TV shows and some music. I rarely listen to music on my PC due to having a better audio setup with speakers in another room.
Having had the Astro A40s (mistake #2) for quite a while, I was really unimpressed with the sound quality and bought a Sennheiser HD 6xx. And whilst it was a better experience, it still felt like I was not getting the most out of them due to connecting directly to the PC mobo.
A friend lent me his Audioengine D3 (small usb DAC/AMP) to try out and it does help, but I am hopping it could get better with a quality DAC/AMP combo.
Being new to all this, I am quite overwhelmed and feel lost amongst all the terms used in the reviews.
I do want to upgrade my listening experience but am not ready to spend all too much due to lacking knowledge of the field and who knows, maybe I can’t even tell the difference between different ranges of devices.
What would be a solid choice for a desktop AMP & DAC, or a combo unit, for say, 200-300€ (so think Europe in terms what is available)?
Usage will mostly end up being the same as mentioned above.
Naturally, I would like to stay with the HD 6xx for now as I do like them, but I feel I could like them even more with the proper setup
Yeah, I wish I got in when stuff was this cheap and readily available. Although with my growing collection I don’t regret being a part of this hobby at all
Also personally I prefer the k5 pro over the schiit stack, but that’s because imo the magni 3 has gotten beat out by cheaper chinese amps in the recent years
I find it’s harder to actually choose an amp around $100… Which is a great problem to have. If you listen to any of the magni 3 , liquid spark, or jds atom… it’s hard to be upset with any of those
But the sound is not that great imo if you compare to the price. There is more to a good sounding amp then just power output. I would much rather have a jds labs atom for a lot more transparent sound, or the liquid spark for a warmer sound, or for more demanding headphones
The jds labs is a really transparent amp for the price and does not color the sound, and is very clean, and imo very close to the thx 789’s single ended output. The spark is tilted more towards a sound with a bit more low end impact vs the jds atom which is pretty uncolored
The magni suffers from a bit of compression and that kinda bothers me a bit, but it has a fairly balanced sound
I think he means in terms of sound. That’s subjective though. We have a spark and magni 3, depending on the headphone and music type I could make an argument for both… side note I email geshelli and haven’t heard back. I work for a tech review website and wanted to know about possible review unit…
That’s said of the 2 if I could only own one it would be the spark. The sound is more refined… And paired with bright light lively headphone and IEM it is a match made in heaven.
