[brooklyn]

I emailed Jason Stoddard from Schiit Audio a few years ago about one of his products and
what my plans were regarding buying one of his amps with a cheaper set of headphones..
His response was to spend the bulk of the money on the headphones and less on the amp
which is what he is in the business of selling. What a class act.

[Armaegis]

I did not intend to end up with MSRP $500 iems out of a phone.  But a great deal came along, and here I am.  As a result I am now reviewing an iFi dac/headamp.

The cycle continues!

For a long time I was perfectly happy meddling around with $200 headphones and a $100 dac/amp, trading various bits and pieces here for the sake of experimenting. Then along came a good deal on a Hifiman HE-6, and that kicked off the frightening upgrade path and constantly trying to "eliminate the bottleneck" as it were. My wallet was much happier in the early days. My ears are debatably happier, but most definitely snobbier and harder to please 

[Letitroll98]

G Georgopoulos there will be no calling anyone a troll here, period.  And this especially applies to dB Cooper, a noted authority on Frank Zappa and his music.    I strongly suggest you amend your post, please.

[dB Cooper]

Oh, don't worry about it, nobody here takes him seriously.  My original point, which was clearly missed completely by this person, was that there is a limit to how much one should invest in a DAC primarily to play a lossy-compressed  source like Spotify, which was the scenario given by the OP. In other words, the source is important.

Thanks for the kudos on FZ. Don't know if I qualify as an 'expert', but I'm definitely a lifelong fan.

[spencer]

Ok, whoa, didn't mean to start a fight here.

I am new to all of this but I understand that it's going to be a race between source, processing and end drivers, which is why I'm looking for guidance. It also seems as most of this stuff boils down to a good-enough situation and then preference after that, which is why opinions will differ.

As others stated, and what I've discovered at this point, it makes more sense in spending money on IEMs first, then source/processing second as it's the biggest room for improvement in my situation. Since it's for work, I'm not going to spend time sourcing, managing and dealing with lossless source materials at this point. Also, I am only actively listening to the music about 50% of the time it's playing. I figured I might get away with a small dac on my desk, which I can tuck away and if it didn't make a big difference I could use it at home (I'm going to be spending on new speakers this year), but the original goal was to improve sound at work.

The link I included rated the sound of my current buds around a 6.7, and I can go way up that scale for what I was looking to spend on a dac (100-150$ CAD). I suspect that Spotify + DAC with my current buds won't make a big difference.

Thanks for your input, it is appreciated and I've made up my mind.
Spencer

[Letitroll98]

That's it George, you're off of this circle until I decide otherwise and the thread is going to Quarantine to have your posts cleaned up.

[Letitroll98]

Hopefully admin can clean up the thread and restore it to Cheap and Cheerful Hifi.

[dflee]

That's too bad cause I got a lot out of this (thanks to everyone except one).
Am going to get a dac/amp soon to go with the headphones.

[Letitroll98]

I wouldn't worry about it, admin has a good record of cleaning up and restoring threads like these that have 99% great posts with one bad apple.

[adminRH]

Sorry for the cleanup delay. 

I left in your warnings, as those seem a positive influence for the future. But if you want it totally wiped of all troll related posts, PM me. -Rich


EDIT: The cleanup seems to have messed up the formatting of this page. I reported it as a bug.
Scroll to the far right to find the Reply buttons.

[spencer]

Sorry for the cleanup delay. 

I left in your warnings, as those seem a positive influence for the future. But if you want it totally wiped of all troll related posts, PM me. -Rich


EDIT: The cleanup seems to have messed up the formatting of this page. I reported it as a bug.
Scroll to the far right to find the Reply buttons.

The long link broke the formatting, it's not wrapping correctly.

[adminRH]

Thanks spencer, I will add that to the bug report. It should wrap itself.

I shortened your original link so it will fit.

Great replies! 

Found this: https://tinyurl.com/jzaxj9c

[dflee]

Which way would ya'll go with using a decent laptop?
Just amp or DAC/Amp? Can there be a matchup issue if using a dac?

Thanks
Don

[Armaegis]

Just get a used Dragonfly or FiiO $40-50 and call it a day. Spend the rest on the headphones.

[spencer]

Ended up buying the 1more e1001 ear buds. Improvement for sure!

[zoom25]

I don't think that certain component prices should be proportional to each other. But in this case it's not out of proportion anyway... $6000 speakers are not out of place among $10,000 electronics. I think the Klipsch buds will be able to hear difference between laptop jack and Dragonfly. Maybe not all the charms the Dragonfly has to offer, but then the kind of headphones that can hear all the pros and cons of Dragonfly probably deserves something higher up the food chain.

I've finally learned (the hard way) what more experienced people were telling me a decade ago... that a skewed source can cause you to steer off course and waste time and money in frustration. So I value the source higher than speakers (or earbuds) now. My 2 cents...

Very true. Painfully true. You absolutely need a top transport/source and a DAC before you can evaluate what the rest of the chain can do. The results can vary quite a bit if the front end is not up to par. Even in demos, you can often be thrown off from getting a true sense of potential.

[TF1216]

With the iEMatch you could use any Amp/DAC combination your heart could desire.

http://ifi-audio.com/portfolio-view/accessory-iematch/