Hello everybody this is my first time posting. I am looking to upgrade my setup possibly. I just got a pair of Fidelio X2HR and I am currently running them on a FX-Audio Dac-X6. It sounds good But I am not sure if getting a better Dac/Amp would improve the listening experience. Any advice would be greatly appreciated thank you
the ugly truth is that cheaper entry level headphones (sub 300$) tend to be unchanging even with the upgrade to better source gear, this is by no means an universal rule, just my anecdotal experience but one i think many may share. I would much rather upgrade the headphones you have myself, and the EMU teak would be a pure upgrade across the board and will be much more of a noticable change than changing your source gear for the Fidelio, definitely.
But its also a good bit more money than the Fidelio, but the change really is huge, the clarity will go through the roof, so will the quality of the bass compared to the Fidelio, the EMU’s have some of the best bass you can get and comparable to 1500usd headphones in certain respects. i have the Hifiman Arya and the Focal Clears and the EMU teak while not being as detailed as those are extremely close in CLARITY, thats what my memory tells me anyway
The emu is the best bass headphone you can get under 1000usd imo, i havent heard the variants but people tend to agree that the EMU teak is one of the better fostex driver implementations there is.
Am i completely out on this? @M0N
yeah so once you get a good 100 to 150 dollar dac you have to spend very much more to get noticeable improvement. My rec is to invest in better Headphones and speakers before you look into a better DAC. Overall I would say Cans>Amp>Dac>source files.
for good cheap DAC stuff you cant go wrong with an S.M.S.L Sanskrit 10th MKII or a topping E30. For Amps you have loads of options but the crowd favorites are the topping L30 and JDS Labs Atom.
i feel like its fine up until you get into the 500-800usd territory of headphones to just keep your entry level source stuff.
what do you think? however i have heard people say that the HD line scales and those are sub300usd
For the most part I think that is true. You run into issues tho whenever you need to drive hard to drive Items. 250/600ohm 880’s and most planars.