On the power discussion, I tried my BTR5 with my Sundaraās using the 3.5mm SE, 35/60 volume and it is a good listening level. it is a bit odd because I thought it would take more because my 789 needs to be on gain level 3 with these headphones. I guess that shows a good comparison on how powerful the BTR5 isā¦
I need to get a balanced cable for my Sundaraāsā¦ 
Compression does mean you are losing not just dynamic range but also details and certain tones.
I slightly disagree with LeDechaine about Vinyl sounding more compressed. In theory yes, CD should be better, but oftentimes Vinyl sounds better because it acts as a safeguard against the things they can do to a track before putting it onto a CD, which could be compressing and losing out details and just making the overall track louder. Thatās digital audio. You canāt usually do that with Vinyl because it is a pure analog sound. It isnāt always necessarily better than one or another, it just depends on the master. But it is fairly safe to say that a great deal of vinyl masters have that something special to them that has a certain sound not like digital audio. If you like the sound of vinyl more, than go with that. One thing you could do if already have a vinyl setup is look into ripping software that can hook your computer up to your vinyl player, or a new one, and rip the vinyl recordings to lossless flac for on-the-go listening.
I use CDs mainly because I donāt have the money to buy an expensive turntable at the moment and collect vinyl. But if I did have the money I totally would. Vinyl collecting is pretty cool.
In theory this is true, but in practice itās never really been the case.
Many early CD masters were just directly off Vinyl masters and they sounded terrible.
The solution the recording industry came up with was to compress CD masters.
Compression is a necessary studio tool, but there are several earlier recordings that sound better on Vinyl than CD, simply because they exhibit more dynamic range on Vinyl.
i dunno why but CD and digital sound just sounds colder and blanderā¦ like its almost like i feel the needle moving on a vinyl masterā¦ is that what they call resonance?
Itās that special analog sound. It tends to be more natural sometimes and have a bit ofā¦ warmth to it? There definitely is something special about vinyl.
now i need a dac that helps get that kind of sound
Well, I suppose you could make a thread asking about vinyl like or warm sounding portable DACs I guess. The ifi Hip DAC might be a good dac.
Smooth DAC? Liquid spark.
Or tubes, maybe.
If it ever gets released lol. Getting a tube dac is most likely out of budget
90$.
Maybe worth a try.
Interesting, I wonder how it fares
Actually wondering about the Little Bear B4-X maybe?
No dac, so you would have to get another dac to chain in or use the phone dac
Right, just thinking it might give it a warmer analog sound maybe.
i dont trust lil bear (the first time seeing them was a bad ebay product techmoan spoke about that basically had a horrible hissing sound and bad wiring)ā¦ i already have an idea what im gettingā¦
Thatās an older product and the new little bear stuff is very solid, but I understand the concern
I get that.
Kind of the same thing happened with Schiit. Their products werenāt great until recently. Now they are solid though.
The way he says it, itās exactly like my little Tube-03 (tube pre), but with a DAC inside. Smoothens everything. Wider soundstage. Itās subtle, but obviously, you can change the tubes. Or just use the bass knob if you want āwarmnessā.
Hmm. I may order tubes now. Canāt go out much nowadays.
Here is stock 6J1 (chinese) tubes VS Voskhod 6J1P-EV tubes.
Shitty video but it seems to have way more bass.
Someone on Amazon also said 6J1P-EV added impressive āholographicā imaging.
This is the Tube-01ā¦ tube pre without the tube-03 bass/treble knobsā¦ and without the tube-06 dac.
btr5 showing instock on amazon us for 110 for any interested. Iām sure some shipping delays due to current events but eta on the site is about a week