Hi, i plan on buying some sennheiser 58X’s in a month or so and wanted to know what could be a good amp/dac to go with it. i haven’t had the biggest experience of improvement with DAC’s before (i had an audioquest dragonfly black and i didn’t really hear much of a difference with the M50s i used), but i feel like having a DAC would be really useful for getting the best sound out of hi res files and have an overall more satisfying experience…
i put the budget at around 150 or so because i feel like spending more money on the DAC than the headphones is a bad idea and it has to be portable because i listen to music on a laptop in my bed and thus dont have space for a big desktop setup… the only other thing that might be of use is maybe USB-C so i can use that port since i rarely use it but i can easily just get a USB A to C adapter.
The fiio btr5 is pretty sweet imo, you could also pick up a balanced cable to take advantage of it, type c with a decent amount of features. I think if you wanted to step up, the ifi idsd nano black label would be pretty sweet. If you wanted something in the middle of the two the xduoo xd05 is a good choice as well
definitely concerned with battery life… i would love if i could just plug it in to my laptop and forget about it… i use my headphones almost all the time
yeah after reading around and seeing the ifi i am certainly very very tempted… MQA support so if i ever move to tidal that can work, a lot of formats, small, USB C, power good… thats really nice… and slightly cheaper than the xduoo on amazon too
Yeah, the XD-05 or the Plus version, or a used silver ifi Micro IDSD would be amazing for the price. The latter punches way above its price, and can power almost anything and has practically everything you would ever need. The Xduuo has really amazing battery life and is a little smaller so more portable.
The non-plus version is still really good. I think maybe at this point whichever you can find for a better price.
Although I think the XD-05 has a 1/4 inch output on it, which is really nice, since standard 3.5mm can break, whereas a 1/4 inch is waaay more durable.