I’d like to know what are the best cheapest amp and amp/dac combo for dt 1990, also I’d like to know if you need a DAC and how much does it improve the sound or only an amp is enough for them to soud good>
Look at the Schiit Magni 3+ or Heresy, or the Liquid Spark or the JDSL Atom. they’re all $100 amps.
Depends on your budget and use case. Desktop? Portable? What are you using now and what do you want from an upgrade in amp/dac? Also I usually don’t see much of a reason to buy an amp without a dac. Kind of defeats the point of trying to improve your signal chain while still using an onboard dac. There is usually never a “default” choice for any headphone at any price point, especially at the cheaper end. Maybe figure out what your budget is and what you want from the sound. Otherwise you’ll get the common pick of Heresy/Modi stack. They’re not bad options but I think there’s a lot more interesting and potentially better preforming options depending on what genres you like to listen to, if competitive game audio is important, and what your daily use case of the equipment would be. Hopefully this helps.
I’ve never had an amp or dac because all my other headphones were really easy to drive, I’ll use it at home. I play cs;go and I listen mostly to asian music (k, j pop, rock, eletronic sometimes accoustic, vocal music). I really don’t won’t to spend anything over 100$ so maybe smth like heresy or magni3 would be the best?
@Au12 Considering it sounds like your primary usage is for gaming not so much for extreme music listening or picking out details, I would say not that much of a requirement. DACs don’t offer a very large difference in sound to my experience while it’s noticeable it’s not by a very large degree unlike amps which sound different. In this case if you really wanted a DAC in your budget perhaps a combo unit of amp/dac would be more beneficial of which I would say Soundblaster X3, Soundblaster G6, Schiit Fulla, Fiio E10k or K3 would work fine just keep in mind that a seperate amp and dac will sound better than a combo unit in most cases. Heres also a Guide on that written by Zeos of his recommendations and pricepoints. https://www.reddit.com/r/Zeos/comments/9v45wr/zguides_dac_amp_combos/
hmm, this makes it pretty limiting. In this case, I would agree with @Marzipan if you weren’t going to go after a DAC I would say the same for recommendations here. More so towards the Spark as outside of the Tygr 300R this amp is fantastic for beyers albeit magni 3+ I think was a little cleaner and more detailed. I still would think perhaps a combo unit would be better since later down the road if you decide you want an amp you can convert the combo unit into a Dac and use the new dedicated amp bit of a side route.
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At an entry level, of the headphone, amp, and DAC chain, the DAC makes the least appreciable difference in sound. You can definitely make due sending your mobo sound into an amp using a 3.5mm TRS to dual RCA cable as long as it’s a decent audio chip and you don’t have a lot of noise. For the 1990 specifically, I think the $100 amps to go for are those that offer a little warmth or upper end ‘sweetening’, which would be either the Liquid Spark or Magni 3+.
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This would be my recommendation as well.