LF dac

[hidorah]

Want some better audio quality, rocking some truthear zero reds rn . Whats a good dac for like 100 euro or so thanks

[Cocococo]

Qudelix 5k and Abigail CX1993 are the two i'd go for, maybe a Fosi DS1 if you can get one for a decent price, nothing else is really worth considering tbh. 

[saintlouisbagels]

Seconding Cocococo's recommendations.

Upgrading audio components will only yield you marginal improvements that may or may not be audible to the human ear.

No reason to buy a DAC or headphone amplifier because those IEMs don't require any extra power, and an external DAC is really only necessary if your source (e.g. laptop, desktop) is really noisy.

 

Spend your money on better/different headphones if you're unhappy/underwhelmed with your current ones.

[Cocococo]

On 4/17/2024 at 3:20 PM, saintlouisbagels said:

Seconding Cocococo's recommendations.

Upgrading audio components will only yield you marginal improvements that may or may not be audible to the human ear.

No reason to buy a DAC or headphone amplifier because those IEMs don't require any extra power, and an external DAC is really only necessary if your source (e.g. laptop, desktop) is really noisy.

 

Spend your money on better/different headphones if you're unhappy/underwhelmed with your current ones.

Honestly for 100usd-ish you can't really get much better than Zero RED, i haven't really found a pair of headphones around this price that actually sound "better" i tried the EMU Walnut recently and they're the best closed headphones i've tried for sub 100usd (but honestly for pretty much all purposes i'd rather use the ZeroRED) Qudelix 5k is just the best deal in audio atm, portable DAC's are already the future of desktop DAC/AMP's and Qudelix are leagues ahead of the competition.

There's no stupid modified audio encoding like FiiO, not overpriced and underpowered like iFi, better companion app than literally any wireless headphones i've tried, EQ adjustability on par with desktop software (and leagues ahead of every other portable dac), direct power passthrough so the battery doesn't get abused when used in a desktop configuration (FiiO are the worst for this) all while having equal battery life and higher output power than their more expensive competition (depends what you compare with, from my experience the Qudelix can get hard to power Audeze headphones up to a comfortable volume easier than quite a few desktop amps in a similar price can. 

 

Abigail dongle just works on everything (and apple being apple nerf their USB-C dongle's power globally, along with having awful volume control on android) there's just way too much placebo and misinformation in the audio hobby and most people just like to think their external DAC/AMP's make a huge difference, once people start asking about what to buy they're usually too far in the rabbit hole and will actively dismiss just about everything they see that tries to dissuade them, better to at least guide people to something good, rather than the hellhole of $100 DAC/AMP's from Amazon. 

Best example of placebo and misinformation is "Burn-In" where manufacturers say to "play music for X number of hours" for the best sound out of the product, usually 200, which just so happens to be 8.3 days, no questions asked return period is usually around 7 days for most stores. Yet despite all the research and evidence that points to the phenomenon being false people still blindly believe and swear by the burn-in process. 

[Heats with Nvidia]

12 hours ago, Cocococo said:

Best example of placebo and misinformation is "Burn-In" where manufacturers say to "play music for X number of hours" for the best sound out of the product, usually 200, which just so happens to be 8.3 days, no questions asked return period is usually around 7 days for most stores. Yet despite all the research and evidence that points to the phenomenon being false people still blindly believe and swear by the burn-in process. 

The problem with this is that, like in most cases of misinformation, there is the tiniest kernel of truth in there. For example tubes absolutely have a burn in time, although they don`t really need music for that. They just need a current flowing through them. Also there might be some loudspeakers that change a tiny bit in the first couple of hours of use. But almost everything else stays pretty much the same and all you "burn in" are your ears.