Help a Noob pick his first DAC

[Lord Szechenyi]

Hi

 

Just bought an HD600 and need to get myself a DAC

 

I was thinking of either getting the Fiio K3 or the Creative Sound Blaster X4 (which is an external sound card, I know).

 

Unless I should pick something completely different, idk.

 

I don't want to buy something expensive, but I also won't cheap out, I'll pay at least 50€, but 200€ would be the hard limit for me.

[LIGISTX]

38 minutes ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Hi

 

Just bought an HD600 and need to get myself a DAC

 

I was thinking of either getting the Fiio K3 or the Creative Sound Blaster X4 (which is an external sound card, I know).

 

Unless I should pick something completely different, idk.

 

I don't want to buy something expensive, but I also won't cheap out, I'll pay at least 50€, but 200€ would be the hard limit for me.

A fantastic starting out DAC and AMP setup is the schiit stack. A schiit Magni and Modi are a fsnstastic 200 dollar setup (100 each last I looked).
 

You need an amp after your DAC, thus the reason for this recommendation of both. 

[Stan2292]

would recommend any entry level schiit and ifi dac/amp. fiio has some very good dac+amp 2in1 dongles like the jadeaudio ka3 but not sure about their full sized counterparts. at this price range i'd put more thought behind amp as it can change the sound drastically. hd600 has fantastic timbre in the mids and low treble. but it's sub bass roll-off is also severe. people tend to go with amps that can bring out hd600's sub base while retaining the quality mid range. watch some youtube videos about schiit and ifi products, note down what you think you might like, then go to your local audio store to test them out.

[Lord Szechenyi]

10 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

You need an amp after your DAC

I want something which does both

 

edit : I checked, the modi 3 + is 200€ on it's own, so way over my budget

[spartaman64]

it depends on how bad your onboard audio is but in my experience i got a 200 dollar dac and it didnt sound much better than my amp connected to my computer. so i usually recommend people to just get an amp for now or an amp with a dongle for the dac

[Psittac]

9 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

it depends on how bad your onboard audio is but in my experience i got a 200 dollar dac and it didnt sound much better than my amp connected to my computer. so i usually recommend people to just get an amp for now or an amp with a dongle for the dac

I'll have to test out my onboard with some of my amp's, in the past I never used line-out so it was double amping and sounded like hot garbage.  But I should test it just to know.  I have a $500 dac/amp and recently went to a $400-500 stand alone dac and the dac does sound better but not enough to justify the price tag.  Rather I needed another dac for my future tech cave and I wanted balanced and Bluetooth so I went for a nicer one.  I wouldn't suggest a dongle dac because they're dac/amp's which is going to double amp making it sound like garbage.  I tried this with an apple dongle dac and budget amp and it was no bueno.  Also I always thought Fiio were good to recommend but later looked at their spec sheets and they don't put out much power?  Maybe the specs aren't everything but I was shocked at how low the numbers were for mw at different ohms.

 

16 hours ago, Stan2292 said:

would recommend any entry level schiit and ifi dac/amp. fiio has some very good dac+amp 2in1 dongles like the jadeaudio ka3 but not sure about their full sized counterparts. at this price range i'd put more thought behind amp as it can change the sound drastically. hd600 has fantastic timbre in the mids and low treble. but it's sub bass roll-off is also severe. people tend to go with amps that can bring out hd600's sub base while retaining the quality mid range. watch some youtube videos about schiit and ifi products, note down what you think you might like, then go to your local audio store to test them out.

Considering that the currency isn't in USD I'm going to imagine Schiit isn't a viable option, they're very expensive outside of north america.

[mishatoast]

Are you JUST looking to power your headphones, or are you looking for something that can take audio input as well?

[Lord Szechenyi]

5 hours ago, sosiamisha said:

Are you JUST looking to power your headphones, or are you looking for something that can take audio input as well?

Well I obviously want the audio input for my pc (otherwise what am I going to listen to), but otherwise no, just for my headphones

[mishatoast]

5 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Well I obviously want the audio input for my pc (otherwise what am I going to listen to), but otherwise no, just for my headphones

Sorry, I suppose I could have phrased that a bit better. Are you just needing to listen to music, or do you want the ability to power a mic down the road as well?

[Lord Szechenyi]

2 hours ago, sosiamisha said:

Sorry, I suppose I could have phrased that a bit better. Are you just needing to listen to music, or do you want the ability to power a mic down the road as well?

Nope, just for listening

[Lord Szechenyi]

Oh forgot to update, I already picked the Fiio K3