What Is The Most Highly Rated DAC/AMP for under $350?

[mr moose]

The pico dac is the best amp for 350 or less. www.headamp.com. Bar none the best build quality and sound.

 

http://www.headamp.com/order/index.htm

The e10 has better specs and is $300 cheaper.

[NeoZeon]

The e10 has better specs and is $300 cheaper.

 

 

I haven't really paid much attention to FiiO, since i bought one of their amps a while ago and concluded that they were just taking advantage of the "audiophile" tag so that they could prey on people who couldn't quite afford real equipment. Headamp, on the other hand, is a small compnay ( I'm fairly sure its just one person) who offers some of the best amps in every class: Electrostatic, balanced, and portable. 

 

From when I have heard FiiO products, they to me sound a little worse than iBasso's lower end products. And by the way, iBasso's build quality is pretty good but their sound is great, so that could also be another suggestion. They have quite a few Amps/Dacs on sale for that price range.

 

 

I do own one of their cables for my CIEMs because they were slightly cheaper than Ultimate Ears and there is nothing that causes 

 

 

When you say the it has better "specs", im not really sure what you mean? Do you mean that it has a better DAC ? Is the circuitry better? What about the quality  of the components and soldering ? To be fair, I only looked around for ~20 minutes to find the differences, and from what I see there is a great deal in favor of the the little Pico. Most notably it has a 24/96 ​ASYNCHRONOUS UPSAMPLING chipset and circuitry (I think the DAC is the 8740, which does not do it natively). There are two things this dones: 1 it eliminates audio jitter, which admittedly is hard to pick out unless you have heard a DAC without it. The problem with connecting audio to USB is that this jitter is prevalent. The second, more revealing feature is that while the fiio e10 has a 24/96 dac, it does not upsample. IE, if you put in music that is 12/48, it will be outputted at 12/48 resolution. Which is fine, but the Pico's hardware automatically upsamples data to 24/96 making it sound significantly more spacious. If you haven't listend to an upsamping dac, perhaps you have to take my word for it; Most people haven't because most people buy cheap products or not boutique products.  

 

Really, the only thing that the fiiO has that the headamp doesn't is coax line. Which is fine, but pico was built to eliminate the coaxial cable's advantage over USB. Here is the thread on Head-fi, the original preorder:http://www.head-fi.org/t/258967/headamp-pico-portable-amp-w-optional-upsampling-24-96-usb-dac-pre-order-thread. As you can see, it has had incredible staying power since audio products really haven't changed in ~ 10 years. 

 

There is a lot of Flavor of the month issues in audio, meaning people like to buy newer products. But that doesn't mean that the older products are worse. A lot of people like Cambridge Audio's Dac magic, in the same price range http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Audio-DacMagic-Digital-Converter/dp/B0078Q35PG.

 

I just happen to like HeadAmp's workmanship, which I think puts it over the edge considering most DACs in this price range sound very good.

[ShearMe]

Really? It's 2013 and you're talking about jitter and upsampling?

I think we need @h264 in here....

[MayflowerElectronics]

Really? It's 2013 and you're talking about jitter and upsampling?

I think we need @h264 in here....

 

Oh boy here we go 

[mr moose]

I haven't really paid much attention to FiiO, since i bought one of their amps a while ago and concluded that they were just taking advantage of the "audiophile" tag so that they could prey on people who couldn't quite afford real equipment. Headamp, on the other hand, is a small compnay ( I'm fairly sure its just one person) who offers some of the best amps in every class: Electrostatic, balanced, and portable. 

 

Everybody tags their gear with the term audiophile, that doesn't mean they are no good.

 

From when I have heard FiiO products, they to me sound a little worse than iBasso's lower end products. And by the way, iBasso's build quality is pretty good but their sound is great, so that could also be another suggestion. They have quite a few Amps/Dacs on sale for that price range.

 

Some of their products are crap, no arguments there, I am talking specifically about the e10.

 

I do own one of their cables for my CIEMs because they were slightly cheaper than Ultimate Ears and there is nothing that causes 

 

 

When you say the it has better "specs", im not really sure what you mean? Do you mean that it has a better DAC ? Is the circuitry better? What about the quality  of the components and soldering ?

 

Specs = specifications,  the fiio e10 is slightly better if not the same in all the important specs, that is, output impedances, power output.

 

To be fair, I only looked around for ~20 minutes to find the differences, and from what I see there is a great deal in favor of the the little Pico. Most notably it has a 24/96 ​ASYNCHRONOUS UPSAMPLING chipset and circuitry (I think the DAC is the 8740, which does not do it natively).

 

I'm sorry this makes no sense, up-sampling in a DAC whose only real job is to drive a line level or headphone amp? Up-sampling is when bits of information are added to increase the sample size, Even if  the difference between 16bit and 24bit was detectable by the human ear up-sampling would only add distortion. Reminds me of the old quote: "you can't make a purse out of a pigs ear."

 

 

There are two things this dones: 1 it eliminates audio jitter, which admittedly is hard to pick out unless you have heard a DAC without it. The problem with connecting audio to USB is that this jitter is prevalent.

 

not hard to pick out, but nigh on impossible.

 

The second, more revealing feature is that while the fiio e10 has a 24/96 dac, it does not upsample. IE, if you put in music that is 12/48, it will be outputted at 12/48 resolution. Which is fine, but the Pico's hardware automatically upsamples data to 24/96 making it sound significantly more spacious. If you haven't listend to an upsamping dac, perhaps you have to take my word for it; Most people haven't because most people buy cheap products or not boutique products.  

 

As I said before, however it should be noted that at 12bits you'd need a pair of VERY sensitive headphones in a completely quiet room before you could hear the noise floor introduced at that bit depth.

 

 

Really, the only thing that the fiiO has that the headamp doesn't is coax line. Which is fine, but pico was built to eliminate the coaxial cable's advantage over USB. Here is the thread on Head-fi, the original preorder:http://www.head-fi.org/t/258967/headamp-pico-portable-amp-w-optional-upsampling-24-96-usb-dac-pre-order-thread. As you can see, it has had incredible staying power since audio products really haven't changed in ~ 10 years. 

 

Nothing has really changed in the last 10 years, back then technology improved to beyond what the human ear can hear. no matter what improvements they make now chances are slim we will hear the difference.

 

There is a lot of Flavor of the month issues in audio, meaning people like to buy newer products. But that doesn't mean that the older products are worse. A lot of people like Cambridge Audio's Dac magic, in the same price range http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Audio-DacMagic-Digital-Converter/dp/B0078Q35PG.

 

I just happen to like HeadAmp's workmanship, which I think puts it over the edge considering most DACs in this price range sound very good.

 

 

Add to my responses above.  There are only two things that make an amp cheap rubbish these days, and that is cheap parts or cheap construction. Every now and then you will get a product like the e10 that is not made with cheap parts, But because the company that produces it doesn't have their head up their bums and is will to sell it for a standard profit rather than a ludicrous "audiophile" markup does not mean that it is rubbish.

 

Don't tell Fiio, but if you scale the quality against the price of other "audiophile" units the E10 should be about $300 and the o2/odac should be $500+.

Either that or,  as most of us have already worked out, the others should be a lot cheaper, paying $350 for an amp that someone else can match for $50 is living proof.

[pierrelucsav]

Bummer. If you ever talk to him again, fwiw tell him the deal was appreciated.

 

As someone who is very familiar with the Odac, any thoughts on how it compares to the dac in the essence stx? All comparisons between the essence stx and another product always ends up being about the amp.

 

The DAC in the essence is good enough ; STX's line out to O2 amp sounds fantastic. It's well shielded so interference isn't a problem at all. The amp is not very good though and the fact that it is not known to be reliable warrants the sale of the card to get ODAC, even though SQ is unlikely to improve significantly. Sadly, I'm still looking for a buyer  

[NeoZeon]

@mr moose 

 

Perhaps i need to try out the FiiO E10 then. Its cheap enough to buy on a flyer.

 

I never thought that the gains of a DAC above 50 dollars was "worth" the price, even though I could tell the differences. That was my Head-Fi experience. These days I just listen to my IEMs out of my iphone and like the experience and use a USB headset for when i game.

[h264]

Really? It's 2013 and you're talking about jitter and upsampling?

I think we need @h264 in here....

 

well, up-sampling is pure snakeoil, but jitter is a real issue mostly with recording:

 

http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/jitter-does-it-matter.html

 

I wouldn't give it a lot of overall weight, though, since most people can't pick it out even when it's audible and it's often euphoric.

 

If you have popping from your audio output that's plainly audible, or the audio "skips" like old CD players used to, then it's most likely your antivirus.  That would be a OPERATING SYSTEM issue properly buffering an asynchronous USB/PCI connection, however.

 

When you say the it has better "specs", im not really sure what you mean? Do you mean that it has a better DAC ? Is the circuitry better? What about the quality  of the components and soldering ? To be fair, I only looked around for ~20 minutes to find the differences, and from what I see there is a great deal in favor of the the little Pico. Most notably it has a 24/96 ​ASYNCHRONOUS UPSAMPLING chipset and circuitry (I think the DAC is the 8740, which does not do it natively). There are two things this dones: 1 it eliminates audio jitter, which admittedly is hard to pick out unless you have heard a DAC without it. The problem with connecting audio to USB is that this jitter is prevalent. The second, more revealing feature is that while the fiio e10 has a 24/96 dac, it does not upsample. IE, if you put in music that is 12/48, it will be outputted at 12/48 resolution. Which is fine, but the Pico's hardware automatically upsamples data to 24/96 making it sound significantly more spacious. If you haven't listend to an upsamping dac, perhaps you have to take my word for it; Most people haven't because most people buy cheap products or not boutique products.  

 

"specs" are a result of the TOTALITY of the circuit design, not individual components.  Some of the bottom-of-the-barrel cheapest products can measure better than some more expensive products if used with the right combination of other components.  All those talented Lakers didn't always add up to national championships, for instance, when they didn't work as a team.  Eli Manning can't make the NY Giants magically become a good team.  Neither can gold caps make an amp automatically better than a cheaper one.  Also, we're worried about the amp's specs, not the DAC.

 

Music at 12/48 (Is this example supposed to be some sort of magic vinyl?) will be output at a total resolution of 12/48, period.  If you ADD samples in between the existing samples you can actually ADD jitter and distortion to the stream in certain cases.  Quantization and operating system level sampling conversions already fix these problems on Windows Vista and ALSA 2+ (Linux was 5 years ahead in some ways again, go figure) before it even hits your DAC.  You can't magically create pixels in images out of thin air anymore than you can samples in an audio stream:

 

 

except on silly TV shows ofc.

 

Just run your music at it's original sampling rate for the BEST results.  For most modern DACs, you don't have to do anything since the windows default is already 16/44.1 which is pretty much transparent already.  Kick it up to 24/96 for more "headroom" if you've got it.

 

 

@mr moose 

 

Perhaps i need to try out the FiiO E10 then. Its cheap enough to buy on a flyer.

 

I never thought that the gains of a DAC above 50 dollars was "worth" the price, even though I could tell the differences. That was my Head-Fi experience. These days I just listen to my IEMs out of my iphone and like the experience and use a USB headset for when i game.

 

Yeah, that's the spirit.  Isn't this supposed to be about, I don't know, LISTENING to music.  I, for one, am tired of being told to listen to my amp.  It doesn't make any noise at all, which is boring.

[mr moose]

@mr moose 

 

Perhaps i need to try out the FiiO E10 then. Its cheap enough to buy on a flyer.

 

I never thought that the gains of a DAC above 50 dollars was "worth" the price, even though I could tell the differences. That was my Head-Fi experience. These days I just listen to my IEMs out of my iphone and like the experience and use a USB headset for when i game.

The  problem with headfi and similar sites is that reputation is everything. This issue occurs in the science community as well.  No-one wants their reputation ruined so they don't publicly question or offer evidence that "everyone" else is wrong.  The most obvious example is when early scientists suggested the earth was round, they were laughed at and ridiculed for having such a silly idea, even by their scientific peers.  Not much has changed, we have preconceptions about audio, most of which are born of marketing hype and snake oil, and if we challenge them you can be assured someone will laugh at you (usually the bloke who has just spent the most and publicly announced he could "hear a difference"). So long as we are rational and don't make assumptions (follow the scientific method), we will have the last laugh.

 

EDIT: do get the e10, but get someone else to plug it in and hide it, then you can listen and try to work out whether its the e10 or the $350 unit. A good way to remove placebo effect.

[Meeklo062704]

The DAC in the essence is good enough ; STX's line out to O2 amp sounds fantastic. It's well shielded so interference isn't a problem at all. The amp is not very good though and the fact that it is not known to be reliable warrants the sale of the card to get ODAC, even though SQ is unlikely to improve significantly. Sadly, I'm still looking for a buyer

For the most part, I'm extremely happy with the Bottlehead Crack, which is an obvious improvement in sound over the amp in the essence. I'm sure I'll be looking to get my hands on a solid state sometime in the near future, but for now I'm just looking to get audio from my pc through usb. I'll probably keep the essence when I do, it serves it's purpose for music and games. I'll probably end up trying to get a good deal on laptop to hackintosh it out to run music. I read an interview somewhere with Gordon Rankin, and he said that macs handle audio better and less noisily than a pc.

 

How's the warmth on the O2? The 2 things that I liked most on the jump from essence amp to the crack was the warmth, and instrument separation.

[mr moose]

For the most part, I'm extremely happy with the Bottlehead Crack, which is an obvious improvement in sound over the amp in the essence. I'm sure I'll be looking to get my hands on a solid state sometime in the near future, but for now I'm just looking to get audio from my pc through usb. I'll probably keep the essence when I do, it serves it's purpose for music and games. I'll probably end up trying to get a good deal on laptop to hackintosh it out to run music. I read an interview somewhere with Gordon Rankin, and he said that macs handle audio better and less noisily than a pc.

 

How's the warmth on the O2? The 2 things that I liked most on the jump from essence amp to the crack was the warmth, and instrument separation.

I don't think you'll will hear a difference between running mac os or windows. With the exception of the source file, nowadays all the sound quality is purely hardware related.

 

The o2 will not sound warm as you describe it because it is a neutral amp, it will not color the sound the same way a valve does.  The one thing the O2 will do is show up any flaws in your source hardware/files.

[ShearMe]

 I read an interview somewhere with Gordon Rankin, and he said that macs handle audio better and less noisily than a pc.

 

Pretty sure that has something to do with better components, not the OS (Although Windows does have some flaws).

[pierrelucsav]

For the most part, I'm extremely happy with the Bottlehead Crack, which is an obvious improvement in sound over the amp in the essence. I'm sure I'll be looking to get my hands on a solid state sometime in the near future, but for now I'm just looking to get audio from my pc through usb. I'll probably keep the essence when I do, it serves it's purpose for music and games. I'll probably end up trying to get a good deal on laptop to hackintosh it out to run music. I read an interview somewhere with Gordon Rankin, and he said that macs handle audio better and less noisily than a pc.

 

How's the warmth on the O2? The 2 things that I liked most on the jump from essence amp to the crack was the warmth, and instrument separation.

I wouldn't describe the O2 as 'warm'; it has a very, very precise and neutral sound. Separation is flawless of course.

 

If you're looking for a warm sound, you'd better go with a warm headphone and neutral DAC and amp imo. People should look for a particular sound with headphones, not amps.

[Meeklo062704]

Pretty sure that has something to do with better components, not the OS (Although Windows does have some flaws).

I found one of the interviews with Rankin.

 

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue41/ca_rankin.htm

 

Macs seem to multi-task better without degrading sound quality. A laptop hackintosh, mac mini, or even just a separate windows laptop. I've just been wanting to get the music out of the big noisy case. The hackintosh was something I've been wanting to because of my apple fanboy brother who keeps paying double for the same hardware because of apple.

 

I wouldn't describe the O2 as 'warm'; it has a very, very precise and neutral sound. Separation is flawless of course.

 

If you're looking for a warm sound, you'd better go with a warm headphone and neutral DAC and amp imo. People should look for a particular sound with headphones, not amps.

 

I went in search of a warm sound originally. I tried a set of grados, and while the sound was good, it was extremely bright. I looked around for a while and settled on the HD650s. Now it's about looking for reviews from people who have the same or similar setup, and are reviewing a dac. Whether they're a professional, or someone who is stoked and posting their review because they're dac arrived in the mail today. That's why this thread has been important, I've heard people recommend an O2/Odac before, but never with this level of favor. It definitely has my interest.

[mr moose]

I found one of the interviews with Rankin.

 

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue41/ca_rankin.htm

 

Macs seem to multi-task better without degrading sound quality. A laptop hackintosh, mac mini, or even just a separate windows laptop. I've just been wanting to get the music out of the big noisy case. The hackintosh was something I've been wanting to because of my apple fanboy brother who keeps paying double for the same hardware because of apple.

 

That article isn't dated, but seeing as he says windows can't support 24bit/192Khz I'm guessing it is rather old.  Nowadays audio takes up so little resources that the O.S plays no real part in audio quality. Simply you either have good hardware or you don't. Nearly all apple products ship with better dacs/amps as standard, however if you go with PC then you have to make sure your hardware is good enough.  I can run multiple VST plugins simultaneously without any degradation in audio, In fact I could do that on my old phenom x3 with only 2 gig of ram.  

 

If you want to show him why he is paying to much and you want a decent system I would build an ITX hackintosh and run with an M-audio or similar interface.