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Advice sought re DACs/Amps...

post #1 of 3
8/29/10 at 5:34am
Thread Starter 

Hi, I have been listening to music via headphones for years, have a Rotel amp which gives me very nice sound, an ancient pair of KEF speakers, as well as an old Luxman turntable and a Cambridge CD player.

 

I recently bought a pair of Shure SRH 840s, I like the sound of the 840s now that they have a couple of hundred hours listening on them (I really thought they sounded very thin out of the box).

 

Question is this - I find I'm listening to music from my PC more and more, stuff I have ripped from CDs (I'm using WAV format)  I either plug the headphones directly into the h/p socket on the crappy PC speakers, or I route the PC signal to my Rotel amp and plug the headphones into that.

 

I am wondering how much of an improvment in sound quality I would get by adding a DAC/headphone amp, something cheap and cheerful like the Nuforce UDac 2:

 

http://www.amazon.com/NuForce-uDAC-2-Black-Headphone-Amplifier/dp/B003Y5FRNS

 

I also listen to the WAV files on my (new) PC via the Rotel amp & speakers (headphone output from PC connected to the amp via a Y cable), again, would I hear a huge improvement using a dedicated DAC ?

 

Thanks in advance.

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post #2 of 3
8/29/10 at 6:44am

That is actually a pretty good dac/amp combo, so don't let its modest price tag fool you.  It's well-thought of around here.  I don't have one, but I've read many glowing posts here about it.

 

Most computer sound cards do introduce a lot of noise and interference, so even modest little dacs fed a usb signal from a computer are a pretty substantial upgrade from the soundcard's line out port.  I suspect you'll hear a difference immediately, especially with the noise floor.


Edited by hodgjy - 8/29/10 at 6:45am
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post #3 of 3
8/29/10 at 7:17am

See my reply to your duplicate post in the portable amp section.

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