It depends, I think generally source gear changes tend to be more apparent on speakers overall given equal tier comparison of headphones, but that being said depending on the headphone setup it can make an equal difference or possibly easier to hear on headphones. This entire comparison was done with headphone setups being the only thing used to evaluate for example. Depends on the tier of the headphones and the tier of the speakers as well. Imo a dac is going to make a larger sonic impact on a pair of midrange speakers rather than midrange headphones for example, but I think getting into the higher end side of things it can equal out at some point. But overall speakers just have a higher performance ceiling so eventually it will lean much more toward speakers as you continue to go up.
I can easily see that being the case depending on the specific setup at hand. Also really depends on what sonic aspects you are looking for. Anything spatial recreation wise is going to be more apparent on speakers than headphones imo, while perhaps let’s say resolving power might be more equally apparent on headphones and speakers. But it’s hard to make generalized statements that end up being mostly true, so I’ll just boil it down to it depends on the setups you are trying to compare imo
I remember Elac when they launched their Uni-fi UB5 that people were raving about at shows, they had a lot of high end hardware upstream for that very reason. Some midrange speakers can scale VERY well.
I think a midrange speaker that can scale insanely well is the magnepan LRS, you can absolutely pump that thing up to crazy amounts source gear wise and still get rewarded for it (but that can be a problem since it sounds pretty bad with lower end source gear, double edged sword)
One I’d love to have in a collection. If I downsize to an condo, I’d seriously consider them simply because you can pick them up, move them to where you want when you listen, then move them back when you’re done.
M0N got a shout out from Z’s vid today on the Soloist 3XP. Nice for him to give a bit of credit to your hard work! Even if he can’t hear differences between Dacs
So this is totally selfish and silly, but I ended up buying an Exogal Comet Plus, so now I kinda want to see it included in the comparison whenever that happens, lol.
Also, I’m definitely excited to hear from you all who bought the Holo Spring 3 when they arrive! I hope you love it!
EDIT: Linking to the Holo Spring 3 thread since posts got moved over there:
Soon Schiit should come out with new analog boards for YGGY2…hard to beat this at the price considering its always used in comparisons with the higher cost dacs…
Be interesting to see if the price point remains the same for new units, also what the upgrade will cost.
I saw a yggy earlier today and thought about it. I have not heard one but I would like to very much.
Going to be able to get a spring 3 kte in to borrow, will end up including that and seeing how it holds up to the may kte as well (at least from memory), should be interesting
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