šŸ”¶ Beyerdynamic T1 Gen2

I f you donā€™t mind me asking, what DACs, besides the Soekris (Soekrii?) pair well with the espressivo and the T1ā€™s. I might end up selling the Audio-gd for something smoother, and my first choice is Soekris but I canā€™t find any for sale even used.

The soekris probably isnā€™t what you are looking for actually, itā€™s a brighter more analytical dac, and while good, I donā€™t think it goes well with the Feliks imo. Generally in that price range, I like the bifrost 2 or ares ii, the bifrost 2 for neutral warm, with a bit of smoothness and extra width, very nice timbre, imo would work well with the Feliks. The ares ii would make the Feliks a bit more energetic and punchy while remaining a bit warmer, a bit less width but more depth to the stage. Imo both are equally detailed but present in different ways (although the ares ii is a bit faster). If you want something very smooth, something like a mhdt orchid is a pretty easy-going dac, warmer, thick, smooth, generally pleasant imo. And going a bit higher the Holo cyan is real nice for something resolving without fatigue, a bit of a step up from the aforementioned options (but also in price lol). If you look used you can probably find some good deals on older more totl dacs, but it would depend on whatā€™s out there

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fantastic. Thanks a lot. I think youā€™ve nailed more or less what Iā€™m looking for. Also thanks for the note about the Soekris. I had it down as a no brainer and Iā€™ve never heard any opinion to the contrary.

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It is a good dac, but itā€™s sensitive to amp pairing, and not everyone is after a more neutral analytical ish dac

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Could you roll out a list of a few of these when you have the time? (unless you refer to the ones youā€™ve already mentioned)

@MON never mind, I just found this post, I assume these are the oneā€™s you would have been referring toā€¦

Ok so thatā€™s an old post, and personally my thoughts regarding dacs have drastically changed since then lol, this was before I really went into the deep end of dacs in my own setups for headphones

The adi 2 is nice if you will actually use all the features it has to offer, but otherwise imo I might prefer other dacs in the range for the price, neutral and capable but nothing really mind blowing or anything

The gumby is still a solid dac, but personally only something I would recommend if you can get a nice used one under 600ish, as I think the bifrost 2 offers more for the money (and an actually good single ended output as well thatā€™s better than the gumby), warmer smoother neutral, slightly relaxed but capable

The ifi pro idsd is a nice dac, although at new price, I really canā€™t recommend it as I think there are other dacs in that range that outperform it, but used around the 1.3k range it would make sense if you wanted a warmer more thick and forward sound thatā€™s pretty energetic

The chord is indeed a solid dac but itā€™s kinda not got much going for it at MSRP, but if you find a good deal on one used, itā€™s a pretty neutral and revealing dac thatā€™s pretty refined

The spring 2 level 2 or kte is still something I really like for the price, very solid

The thing I said about the higher end dacs is actually pretty false from my experience now lol, itā€™s easily worthwhile but you have to make sure you get synergy right. Iā€™ve always been around higher end dacs and demoed many of them, but never really decided to use them in headphone setups, I was too obsessed with the headphones/speakers themselves for the longest time, but clearly that isnā€™t the case now lol

I would disagree today now lol

This one is still something I would agree with

This is a yes and no for me, in the end there are analytical, neutral, and colored r2r, as is there for sigma delta, so it depends

I donā€™t know if itā€™s super unique tbh but they do have a house sound lol

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Thanks!

Reminds me of St. Augustineā€™s Retractiones at the end of his life, when he revised errors of judgment in his youthful writings.

this is the one thatā€™s been attracting my attention a lot - out of my range new, but if I can find it used I might go for it after selling off other stuff to fund it.

I like what I hear of the Bifrost 2 gen 5 too (difficult to find here though)

Lol - how would you rate the order of importance in upgrading? Would it still be Headphones then Amps then Dacs then Source?

The closest thing you can get to that would be a Holo cyan

So this one really depends. Letā€™s assume you have a flagship or near flagship headphone you really like and donā€™t want to change from. Generally with a budget of 2k for your source gear, I would be spending about 50-65% on your amp and the rest on the dac. But with a budget of 5k, I might actually say spending more on the dac (like a 2k amp and 3k DAC is very reasonable), and the higher you go generally I would spend more on the dac. I think in the real high end the dac starts to matter more than the amp, were in the lower end the amp is going to make a bigger difference.

With more mid-range or entry high end headphones this would change and things would depend. I mean things depend anyways lol, synergy is extremely important the higher you go up, and yada yada

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Ok I get your reasoning. Very interesting. Cables and source donā€™t even come into the picture?

Oh they so for sure. If you have shitty music then I donā€™t know what to say besides rip lol. You need good quality music and if you donā€™t have that then nothing is really good to fix that. Regarding cables, thatā€™s a touchy subject but generally I would say if you have good high quality cables you are well off for the most part

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and would you recommend any of the streaming services in particular? Qobuz, Tidal, Primephonic?

I mean so far the best all rounder I have tried has been quobuz but I really donā€™t stream so Iā€™m probably not the best person to ask on this lol

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ok, thankyou. Maybe Iā€™ll create a streaming services thread

There are a ton of threads on that here, just search for streaming service and they should pop up

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ok, will do. thanks for all your time today.

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have these on the way. Second beyer (had the 1990 briefly), so should be interesting.

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Iā€™ve tried them all.

I had Tidal the longest. I like Qobuz the mostā€¦HiRes sounds a bitā€¦(I suck at describing these things)ā€¦cleaner.

I feel Qobuzā€™s library isnā€™t ever changing like Tidal. Iā€™d constantly have albums in my library unavailable in Tidal then return. Also felt the interface for Tidal - leaning more toward the ownership and friends + hip hop wasnā€™t for me. While Qobuz isnā€™t quite as intuitive and deep as Spotifyā€™s interface, I find its at least more sterile in a good way, especially for new releases. Qobuz is also cheaper.

With that said, I did enjoy my time with Tidal, was a very early adopterā€¦paired it with Roon for years and it was great, but Qobuz was just better for me and also compatible with Roon.

OH ā€“ and if you like buying your music ā€“ Qobuzā€™s ever-rolling sales and FREE offerings are an extra bonus. If you sign up at the highest level (forget the sales point) you get a pretty significant sale price on HiRes purchases, too.

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Hey thanks a lot. Qobuz is I think the one Iā€™m leaning towards now, especially after your comment. Tidal want right for me either, I cancelled it. Primephonic is the other one in my sights, but itā€™s only for classical.

So I just jumped ship from iems to Headphones and bought a Beyerdynamic T1 2nd, which I bought a Zen DAC to power it with.

Apparently according to the store owner I bought the Zen from, the Zen wonā€™t really (and will only barely) fulfil the whole potential of the T1, so I wanted to ask 1) do you think itā€™s true 2) does anyone have any amp/dac recommendations for this headphone?

Many thanks in advance!