What do you regret about the dac? What are you dissatisfied with?
Also what budget are you looking at for upgrading? You may want to consider a different headphone to upgrade first before really worrying about your dac. If anything if you really wanted to upgrade a component I think the amp may be worth upgrading first
That’s quite a budget for starting out and only for dacs and amps. What sound signature are you going for overall? I would really suggest spending more of your budget on different headphones more.
Here are some questions to ask yourself. Do you need usb 2.0 or higher (do you have tracks higher than 96khz)? Do you actually have dsd that you commonly listen to and also you can’t just convert it to pcm? Do you use tidal and need mqa?
I would really push for trying more headphones tbh
If you do feel like you want to upgrade your dac and amp more though you have plenty of options in that range
It’s quite the budget, but once you get something really “fancy”, that drops the budget a lot lol.
At this very moment, I want to start with something plain and neutral, something that I can always get back to when thing goes wrong. Besides the neutral setup, I don’t know, for headphones, I’m more into calm stuff like jazz and blues, so, maybe, a warm signature is what I would like to try in the future.
I listen more to cd quality flac rips due to the usb 1.0 limitations. I don’t need, necessarily, all the new stuff, but I definitely would like to try tidal and qobuz lol.
What you would recommend that can use the balance outputs of the amp? I wanna try that as my dac got a balanced outputs as well and that’s something that I would like to try.
It is something that I would love to try, but no pressure, I can wait a couple years or so till I get there lol
It’s just that kind of thing, I’ve bought an old dac that sounds great just to try to be budget conscious and then I thought “hmm…maybe that was stupid of me lol”
So if you wanted something that was balanced, has USB 3.0 (but no real difference from 2.0 for audio), and supported mqa, the ifi Zen dac fits the bill, but it does sound warmer which you aren’t really going for it seems.
The smsl su8 sounds up your alley imo, would be very nice with lots of features and a fairly neutral sound, but no mqa
If you wanted everything you say, the smsl m500 sounds for you lol if you can find one (seem to be out of stock on Amazon but you can probably find it elsewhere)
I would really just say stick with your dac thought, it’s very solid
I think if he’s listening to predominantly Jazz and Blues, he’s probably going to want something on the “warmer” side. Plus he’s already listening to a hybrid tube amp.
Assuming you love the headphones, I agree with Mon I think I’d look at the amp first.
Well, no pressure on time LOL, I’ll put both on my favorites list for the future and keep looking XD
Regarding amps, it blows my mind the options between new ones and used ones in general, what do you guys prefer, in general terms?
I was torn in between getting a used Lahmann Audio Rhinelander Headphone Amplifier or just a more basic one to start the hobby and again, went way too budget consciously lol.
Well, would you be looking for something with balanced or without? And also warmer or something more neutral? With 1k Euros you can get lots of cool stuff lol.
Regarding new vs used, used can yield some excellent deals for sure, used is typically the way to go for value
A, I assume 1000 U.K. pounds budget is fairly large, I really don’t keep up with euro gear anymore, but I agree in that price range I’d go used, gives you options to cycle through a few options with minimal loss.
I have the AKG 712 pro and love them. I use a jds atom and el dac. They power them good but I love using an eq with it. To fine tune all the details that the 712 bring out