Looking to get my first audio setup

Personally as long as there’s nothing glaringly wrong with the measurements, I tend to not really pay attention to them lol

That’s my feeling as well, I look at them, and look for glaring problems.
One of the issues I have with Amir is his pushing of ridiculous minimum measurements.
A ZDT Jr won’t do better than 75 dB noise floor, Amir would have you believe that’s terrible, but it’s my most listened to amp.
For transducers there is some value in frequency sweeps, but those are gross errors, and even there it’s just a part of the story.

1 Like

Ok well tons of good info from you guys here…I’m leaning towards the m100, even though I’m not a fan of the form factor…I think it’s the multiple inputs that are moving it up, gives me more options for expansion and future upgrades to my equipment

Also wtf is that khadas tone board? Looks almost like I am supposed to screw that into my motherboard… Cool that it’s so small and simple but it needs a box…

The tone board is basically a retail hobby board. but yes you can buy boxes for them.

Could you make a high quality dac with hobby parts?

Like can you get the chipsets they install in these dacs on their own?

Here is a recent thread

https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/aluminium-boxes-cases/aluminum-case-for-khadas-tone-board-p-13626.html

Yeah I saw that in the 100$ dac thread. Looks nice and all, but they aren’t in stock and probably cost 40$+ total after shipping to the states. Kinda makes the board less worth it in my eyes since aesthetics are somewhat important… function moreso, but if it can be pretty too…

well with how small it is you could hide it maybe or make a case for it yourself or find one to your liking.

All true. I’m really looking for plug and play. I have a friend who likes to tinker with electronics, hobby boards, etc. Kinda cool that you could diy one…I just don’t know enough about the parts and components to even start to understand what it needs

I have a Khadas Tone Board in a case that I put together. It was super easy. If you have any experience with PC building, this is so easy it is laughable. The Toneboard is USB and Coaxial input…no optical.

has any of your other stuff arrived yet? your fake dac arrived super fast. so i wondered.

By the way Massdrop has the D50S for sale, for the same price I can get the D50 on eBay…
And the D50S also got bluetooth, and no “ESS Hump” (some distortion thing the D50 had).

The dac was from Amazon. I already called to see if they could send me a real one - they couldn’t. So refunded it, all I have to do is drop it off at a UPS store. My atom was direct from jds labs, tracking y says it’ll be here tomorrow. My 58x and 4xx shipped from drop yesterday and the tracking info basically says that it’s in FedEx’s system, but hasn’t gone anywhere. I’m thinking of grabbing the m100 and dtt880 off Amazon just to have some headphones sooner lol

1 Like

Make sure to go for the 600 ohm 880 lol. M100 would do ya just fine :+1:

do the 3 headphones I’m considering have significantly different sound signatures?

Yes, the 880 4xx and 58x would cover like almost every use case lol. The holy trinity of budget cans lol

1 Like

your not helping M0N…or maybe you are helping… :stuck_out_tongue:

not that significant IMO though. sound signature wise they are a bunch of all arounders IMO and all lean pretty neutral the 4xx less so. the only thing that differs the most about them is presentation. if you want completely different signatures maybe a fidelio or a dt 770 can be thrown in the mix for bassy cans. or dekoni blue. while I agree these are basically the holy trinity. I wouldn’t say the sound signatures are that much different from each other.

The 58x is warmer and more laid back, the 4xx is fast and energetic with a mild v shape, and the 880 is more balanced/neutral but a bit brighter, so I would say different enough imo

1 Like