can anyone rec me the best bang for my money for a balanced desktop amp/dac combo or seperate units idc
and cables for my HD 660S?
How much are you looking to spend? Also just curious why do you want to go balanced?
Below 500$
after using my 660s balanced on my q5(got it with a balanced cable from a Redditor) i like the sound of it.i don’t know what it is but it sounds clean and more open for some reason…can’t get enough of it LOL
That’s moreso because the q5 preforms better balanced than balanced making the difference itself, but if you wanted a clean balanced amp you could get a klipsch heritage headphone amp and that will be a slightly warmer amp. If you wanted something cleaner perhaps the sabaj d5 or topping dx7 pro. I think getting separates might be above your budget by a bit, but if you could get a cayin iha 6 and an enog 2 pro that would be pretty awesome
How about the Monoprice 788?
I’m personally not a fan of thx but it does check all your boxes
Why is that?
Because of the loud bwaaaaaaaaa sound thx makes at the beginning of movies 
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IMO I think the thx amps are outperformed by something like a mangi heresy or jds atom, they kinda have poor timbre and also pretty meh leaning bad spatial recreation and separation. Presentation is also kinda off being way too forward with everything imo
Holy sht is that right? Thanks for the heads up 
That’s just my personal opinion but I do know some others feel similar
I haven’t tried thx yet but I was tempted and M0Ns opinions steered me away.
I’m so tempted to find a sp200 for cheap just to try it out and see the difference.
Yeah go for it if you are curious and think you would like what thx has to offer, can’t hurt to try something if you really want to
I kinda feel that thx would pair well with really warm headphones since they tend to be really analytical. But who knows.
Ha i don’t even know if I’d like it but I just want to compare a good solid state to the thx for fun. I saw a video by josh velour where he pairs a thx amp with a tube preamp and gets good results for a tube hybrid setup. Although I guess I could just do that with my jotunheim as well ha
I believe you
MON>ZEOS
I think I just gonna stay away from balanced desktop world the amount of money I need to spend just for 5—10% maybe(coming from nfb-11.28) performance increase are not worth it
I just gonna stick with my trusty q5 balanced output from time to time 
Honestly I think if you wanted to get something super solid for a desktop setup, you could use your q5 as a dac and grab an asgard 3, and have loads of power and quality on tap
I didn’t think that. I will try that I see a lot of sales of that asgard 3 everywhere thnx
Yea just make sure it’s the asgard 3, the 2 aint that great from my experiences. Also what headphones do you currently have at the moment (depending on the headphones I might actually route you to a different amp but who knows lol)
if you like the way the q5 sounds with it, why buy anything else? what are you hoping to gain still with a new amp? just curious more then anything to be honest lol. schiit has asgard 3 b stocks atm, a route to consider.