Sorry, but “if it sounds good it’s good” is just not… good enough. With this principle alone you could spend your whole life listening to submediocre headphones and never finding out what hi-fi is and how much better sound you can get, even in a restricted budget. There has to be a place for advice and technical information about why what sounds good sounds good, and for reliably discovering new things that sound better than what you thought was best. And there also has to be room for technical information to save you from unecessary expenses on things that don’t actually sound better.
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I sort of agree and disagree at the same time. I do support that if you are going to recommend something to others or try and justify that something is “better” there needs to be technical info, measurements, or a large enough group of people that share your same experiences with the product. But, on the other side, “if it sounds good it is good” can be a great way to keep people satisfied that may not want more, and just stay happy. You need to find a balance between both and make sure you are at least grounded to some facts/logic.
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Another one that’s pretty widespread, especially among readers of Amir’s reviews: “if a headphone amplifier has a high output resistance it’s bad, stay away from it, look for something else” etc. Not true in many many cases, high output resistance only really does bad things to the sound if you’re using low-impedance dynamic headphones with small membranes and/or a very uneven impedance vs. frequency graph (so IEMs are mostly the ones to look out for). In fact, depending on the base FR of the headphone, the frequencies that get boosted because of the humps on the impedance graph + a high R-out amp could actually make the sound better (creating that oft-mentioned synergy), and do it through an “analog EQ” kind of effect, which the amp itself may not even have as a feature.
In general in headphones it’s acoustic damping that dominates, while electric damping doesn’t add much to it. For high-impedance headphones you usually won’t find high enough R-out on amps to matter. For planars the impedance-frequency graph is usually almost flat, so you can use any R-out you want.
Explained in-depth by Solderdude at DIY Audio Heaven: http://www.mediafire.com/file/82kf0r5kdckdcer/resistance%2C+impedance+and+other+issues.pdf
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Pretty much. Unless the output impedance is ridiculously high or you have low impedance power hungry cans, its really nothing to worry about tbh.
Just dropping my two cents here. As it was already mentioned, mastering makes a big difference. i have found this with my own little test. It was mostly Depeche Mode and The Doors albums I have compared.
I had cd versions of albums and dsd/sacd versions.
When comparing the the cd to dsd[and correcting volume], the dsd was clear winner. It just sounded better.
Wondering, whether this is because of hi-res file format, I have converted some of the dsd albums to 44.1kHz/16bit flac.
I have then compared my new flac files with cd version and the new flac files sounded better, again.
Then i have compared the new flac files with dsd files and it sounded the same. I couldnt tell the difference.
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That’s why I really like sacd’s. When they are mastered, they were held to a higher standard then CD, and had mostly more care put into the mastering. Some sacd’s are just rips of the master tapes without any extra mastering, and I still find those to sometimes be better then cd. Although I have heard some pretty bad SACD’s where they remastered pretty bad
Not to derail the whole topic, but reading through the thread has been very insightful, and confusing simultaneously. I see, and trust the idea that CD-quality rips are essentially all I need to enjoy good audio, but as a beginner to this world of high end audio equipment, I can’t shake the feeling that outside of a headphone amplifier and a better set of headphones, why should I grab an external DAC when an integrated audio chipset in any device is technically capable of reproducing audio in the standard CD format?
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The main benefit of an external dac compared to ones in motherboards for a similar price from my experience is less “extra” noise/hiss (lower noise floor), and the ability to provide a cleaner and line level signal to the amp. There are very very minute differences between dacs tbh until you hit a very very high level of dac with a crazy high end setup. Having a separate, better constructed power supply in the dac can eliminate noise and taking the dac out of a pc can reduce noise from other components in the pc. There is alot more to cover when it comes to dacs and I am oversimplifying way too much, but essentially the noticeable benefits are those that I talked about above.
Edit: I should also mention that if you want to upgrade your components first, the amp is going to make the bigger difference then the dac.
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I noticed earlier that at high volume my headphones produced a light, but audible hissing noise, so that would be the noise floor as you would call it. And given with how amps simply increase the audio signal, would that mean that the hiss would be more noticeable at lower volumes from using the amplifier alone?
So the logic of getting an external DAC by the audio focused consumer really began when getting a sound card was still a thing because either there was no sound output on a motherboard by default (e.g. the days when midi tones from a cheap speaker in a tower was your sound) or the motherboard implementation just sounded terrible. By the time of the Xonar Essence and more specialized sound cards, USB external DACs and amplifiers were becoming readily available because they sounded better and were able to output more power than most sound cards. Currently, most users do not care about the quality of audio so motherboard manufacturers really can get away with less-than-ideal implementations, but it is way better than it was.
But, even a DAC in a current ROG motherboard isn’t quite up to the specialized DACs found in reasonably priced DACs.
ESS ES9038Pro: http://www.esstech.com/index.php/en/products/sabre-digital-analog-converters/audiophile-dacs/sabre-pro-dacs/es9038pro/
http://www.smsl-audio.com/productshow.asp?id=153
In addition to having more capability, the Pro model of the DAC has the ability of generating a cleaner signal (again, most modern implementations may have seemly ‘great’ differences in measurements, but practically unless one is a poor implementation there is usually only a small difference in apples-to-apples comparisons which this is not).
This gets to M0n’s comment about upgrading your amp before a DAC. The likely thing to change out to clear up the hiss would be an external headphone amp first, and then an external DAC if there is still unwanted noise. The digital signal from the computer (usually USB or TOSLINK) to an external DAC is pretty robust in that to have enough interference to degrade the digital signal would mean the system would be doing no useful work anyways. The amplifier in the computer on the motherboard outputs an analog signal to the headphones and that can be messed with quite a bit, not to mention the possibility that the analog signal (after the DAC) on the motherboard might also be affected before amplification. End result, a higher noise floor than you’d like may be negative outcome that can be avoided by having an external DAC and amplifier.
By moving the power supply outside of the computer, relocating the switch from digital to analog outside of the case, and having the amplification occur away from other electronics, there is generally a cleaner signal output. External devices are better able to drive headphones to get the best sound out of them (for the general consumer this may not even be a concern, but with more sensitive headphones and harder to drive gear the output from a motherboard quickly becomes sub-par).
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Yep, this indeed:
In addition, more expensive DACs (or rather decent ones) will do extra stuff like oversampling to prevent artifacts, have more format options (although you can always convert the formats in what you need), more output voltage to be used with more demanding AMPs and a guarantee that what they output is a perfect flat line with no bias for any frequency.
Note that I am skeptic about VERY expensive DACs since they paradoxically seem to not output the same sound that was fed into them (not a flat line of response) to make it more “enjoyable”, which is probably the source for the good reviews. But that is a false benefit, having bias for certain frequencies won’t advantage you since you can’t trust the source to be accurate.
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Just wondering, do you have any examples of dacs that you are skeptical of?
For example Chord Hugo and that’s not even the most expensive one.
People were raving about how good it is, but more skeptical members of the community suspected that the fact that it has a higher output voltage makes the sound louder than you are used to at the same amplifier level, which gives you the instant feeling that it sounds better.
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There are some pretty pricey dac’s out there for sure. I do have an expensive dac but it’s because it sounded the best to my ears and my setup, and I’m not aiming for musical accuracy in regards to measurements.
Also I’m pretty sure the extra voltage on balanced is why people can tell the difference between a balanced interconnect with two components
So in essence, the only reason to have a reasonably inexpensive DAC such as a Topping D10, or so, would only serve to reduce whatever noise is left within the internal audio chipset in a system? I know it’s a gross oversimplification, but that is what I’m getting from this.
Realistically yes if your motherboard is competent, but theoretically no
True, I am also pretty sure that is the case. Or if you have like a 20m cable that crosses over a few other power cables, like it was intended to prevent 
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Although, I have been able to hear differences with studio gear when using unbalanced vs balanced that don’t relate to volume and regard the actual fidelity of the sound, but I think that’s because the unbalanced inputs and outputs have less care put into them then the balanced inputs and outputs, because they just expect you to use balanced.
I should also say it will provide a better line level signal that can help your amplifier
How about the Total DAC?
$15,000 with high noise and audible distortion products.