Hello, I am semi-new to the audio game. I listen through IEM’s exclusively, as full headphones hurt my ears after just very short periods of time. I have been using the FiiO e17k Alpen 2’s for ~4 years now, and it has served me well, but recently it has started glitching and randomly disconnecting from USB. The main reasons I picked it was because it was the only one at that price point with separate controls for treble and bass. I do not care about the portability of it, that was just a bonus. So the only real requirement for me is a DAC/AMP fit for an IEM, with separate treble/bass adjustment and preferably with minimal noise floor.
I have seen other people ask questions like this on other forums, and they just get recommended either some $1k+ solution, or building a schiit stack. Both of which seem extreme overkill for me.
I mean there are not really alot of amp dacs combos in this price range that have separate controls for treble and base adjustment. You can buy whatever combo you want and add a loki to it for that adjustment if you want but again it will be a stack.
Otherwise for IEMs I would recommend a DAP and you could do treble And bass adjustment with EQ instead. That would be my preferred method for this.
In that case something like a asgard 3 with dac chip and a loki would probably be pretty worthwhile with that budget. That is if you don’t mind being stationary.
My only concern about a DAP is that it will be plugged into power basically 24/7. And usually that does not bode well for Li-Ion batteries, and I would prefer not to kill it. I am surprised how well the e17k has held up, but I would still like to be on the safe side.
Yeah that would be a concern with any portable solution unfortunately. I havent had a lot of issues out of portable players but I also have not reached past 2 years on them yet either so… I would say maybe do some research and see what other people have experienced with longevity.
I think it’s posssible to replace batteries on some daps (I know you can with dx160) but it requires a teardown and voids warranty.
There are some dac/amp combos that can go into desktop mode where they either disable the battery or preserve it somehow. Not many daps do this to my knowledge
@Towa I have just noticed that many of them run outdated Android, which is a concern, as the I use Google Play Music. None of them seem to come pre-loaded with it, which makes me think they won’t even be able to side-load it?
The hiby r5 has google play support. Stuff like the ibasso or fiio don’t have Google play framework and it can be a pita to get them to work non natively
Ibasso dx 160 doesn’t come with Google play, but it’s fairly simple to flash lurker rom which includes it.
I honestly would only recommend a DAP if you are gonna use digital media and not streaming imo. Other wise you would be pretty good with a fiio Q5s with your phone.
Ah so it isn’t locked bootloader? Damn fiio and their shitty locked bootloader lol, I have to do some real garbage to get anything working with Google play on there (I have just decided to emulate Android inside Android and it works surprisingly well)
