Way to go? nah, sound good? course it performs very well and has been well recieved. others can confirm that and explain more on the sound. Darkvoice or Bottlehead Crack + Speedball would be fantastic.
Honestly, he might go a touch overboard in the review, saying it needs something like the Emotiva he uses for his Argons.
good idea. I think Iāll do that. I guess that seeing how close the 250 and 600 are in price and the need for a good amp anyway, it would feel like a waster to go with the 250 if it was noticeably weaker quality
If you donāt mind doing some DIY and soldering. I find DIY projects very rewarding when you complete a project personally.
definitely rewarding. But in electronics I just donāt trust myself to fiddle with the stuff
From what I can tell you would just need to get decent at soldering and do some practice, but if you donāt want to do that you could buy it pre-assembled, or just go for the Darkvoice.
dark voice I guess, Iāll try to find it used here
I have a Hip-Dac and a DT880 600. iFiās webpage lists the Hip-Dac as having a more powerful amp than the Zen. It struggles to drive the 880 600 and distorts in the low end as youāve heard with your 250 already.
What are you willing to spend on an amp? I saw above youāre considering an RNHP. If youāre going to spend that much, I would actually advise flipping it around and spending RNHP-level money on new headphones and DT880 600 level money on a new amp. Looking at a DT1990 and an Asgard 3 would likely be a better overall idea than an 880 and an RNHP.
If you can get a Liquid Spark, IMO itās the best solid state pairing with the 880 600 in the price range. The Darkvoice is also an excellent pairing for them, and also comes with the option of rolling tubes, which I find fun.
I checked out the Rupert Neve, too expensive. However you did give me an interesting idea about switching around the money. I donāt know if Iād go for a 1990. Iāve heard such good stuff about the hifiman Sundara and if it can power off of something like a liquid spark to its full potential it might end up being cheaper. Or the Dark Voice, which seems more appealing every day
uh, rnhp can be found for like $350 - $400 while the dt 1990 is $600 thats a bit of a gap there bud lol. The price setup in comparison here would be $200 for the 880 + $400 for an rnhp making it $600 meanwhile a dt 1990 is $600 plus the asgard 3 which is $200 making that setup $800.
Depending on where you live you can find Sundara for fairly cheaper around the $250 region minimum from my experience. Fantastic headphone but the company suffers from quality control. Neutral Bright and not the bass heavy type of headphone some people have described it as sounding Thin. Imo its absolutely fantastic in its price bracket
The Sundara is an excellent headphone and the Liquid Spark is said to be a good pairing with it. If youāre interested in the Darkvoice, either keep your 250 ohm 880 or go with the 600 ohm version. The Darkvoice is an OTL design which needs high impedance loads to sound its best.
Is the 1990 that much now? It seems common to find it for $500. The RNHP lists for $500. It seemed like a pretty close to break even example to me.
Yeah, its gone up in price quite a bit. Last year, if you check placed like head-fi you could get dt 1990 for like $350 - $400 not anymore sadly. RNHP is on reverb right now for $350 but everywhere has the dt 1990 from $550 - $600
I will agree with wave here though. I donāt really think a upgraded setup is worth it just for the dt 880. In this regard if you were planning to upgrade your amp and dac I would definitely say upgrade the headphone first to either the DT 1990 or the T1 depending on which sound you want as they do indeed sound different. T1 may be the better choice for you if you were planning to balance or buy the tube amp as it pairs and sounds better with them however, it does sound brighter while dt 1990 still sounds good on tubes and solid states it doesnāt do with balanced setups and is the more neutral bright analytical headphone. T1 is the more laid back headphone with more brightness and a rounder bass while DT 1990 is super analytical neutral bright
Sundara would be a fantastic choice but I donāt feel you stand to gain too much already owning the dt 880 which again is another Neutral bright headphone itās just more laid back and relaxed in comparison with a wide concert like sound. It may be a good idea to look into another sound to compliment the 880s if you already enjoy them as they are still a very great headphone to have. Up to you. I always think its best to find a way to audition all this stuff though before anything as you never know what youāll end up liking.
Lots of opinions here but my .02 is thisā¦ the 880 is just fine on the liquid spark zen dac stack and does the technicalities of the 880 justice imo and the warm nature and slight roll off in the treble area make it a good budget pairing for the 880.
The asgard 3 is an improvement overall (and also pairs well here with the zen) and has probably enough power as the 600 ohm would ever need (though I canāt confirm that) and the 3D presentation the a3 has is really nice with the soundstage and imagining capabilities of the 880ā¦ it also leans warm which is again nice imo with the 880
The darkvoice is my favourite pairing personality giving the soundstage and imaging space to play with but adding some warmth and body on top of that but lacking some of the detail retrieval of the Asgard 3
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Nice to get some info from somebody who has/had all of these and can do some real comparisons. 
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Definitely a good description. The dt 880 is one of those that has room to improve its sound quite a bit based on its equipment. Spark does work it gets loud it just doesnāt sound as good maybe itās just me but it feels like it pushes the spark quite a bit and distorts a bit for 600 ohm
I hear what youāre saying for sure and it does scale at least as far as the amps Iāve mentioned and probably further based on what Iāve readā¦ I just think for someone on a budget they shouldnāt shy away from these on something like the liquid sparkā¦ I havenāt experienced the distortion but I should mention I donāt listen at really high volumeā¦ dynamics and detail are really good at low volumes imo
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Youād need something like an Asgard 3 to get full potential out of the sundara imo
I donāt think Z is exaggerating in his review. They sound really good on the SP200 but those can put out 6 watts unbalanced. I canāt think of many other amps that can that for under $300. I donāt have a liquid spark, but itās not that much more powerful than an Atom, and the Atom sounds terrible in comparison to the SP200. The Asgard may work too. These headphones are really quite special and I think they are worth buying a good amp for, since it will benefit your other headphones as well.