here's a question, which item is more important or has a bigger impact on sound qaulity

I say both things are very important. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrconfuse 

but if you could only purchase 1 item which would you place more emphasis on, the Dac or the headphone?

The headphones, without any doubt.

It depends on the headphone, if its relatively easy to drive, I'd go for that.

If you're eying a difficult to drive headphone, then I'd hold onto your money until you can get both, or just get the headphone anyway and upgrade as funds accumulate.

Heya,

Regardless of it being desktop or portable, here's my take:

1a. Headphone first. It's the end all of what you're hearing.

1b. Lossless audio.

2. AMP. Amps truly change sound depending on what you're doing (under powering, tubes vs solid state, coloration, etc)

3. DAC. There's a point where the DAC matters (going from noisy onboard to something decent for example, after that the plateau is endless regardless of what you spend, I don't care what $1000 DAC owners think of that lol).

Get a nice headphone.

Drive it well enough.

Make sure your DAC isn't out of a cereal box.

You're good to go.

Very best,

Headphones, T70p. T5p if I could ever afford that. If the headphones aren't super revealing they can actually work with DACs on portable players.

Headphones.  They're only second to the recording quality.

Amps are only important insofar as the headphones are adequately driven or you're going for a particular sound signature.  Particular sound signatures are mostly found with tubes.  You need a high voltage power supply with big transformers and line voltage to drive tubes.  

For portable listening, you're best off with a pair of efficient IEMs and a smartphone or DAP to drive them.  You don't wNt to take a bunch of bulky stuff with you unless you'll be in a hotel room or cruise cabin for several days.

I agree with this post entirely. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by RexAeterna 

headphone obviously. amp second if needed. and DAC last. everything uses a DAC/ADC in everything. not just for sound but video as well. dacs are usually the most over-rated and most over-hyped piece of gear so you don't need to worry too much on them at all really unless your recording yourself. for playback about anything work more then fine unless your running an ancient computer that uses separate south and north bridge motherboard parts. with modern stuff things for simple playback is more then adequate. most of more expensive stuff like coloring the signal,unnecessary upscaling, or veriest different DSP uses so it's more for people with personal preferences really.

Fostex HP-P1 - over rated for the money, big time, amp section is rather lame for the money.

Well I don't really know anything about portable amps, but it's the best one I've heard so far that's for sure.

I take it Gwarmi has experience with a cheaper portable amp that sounds better, my guess is that Furutech something...

Just chiming in to say headphones first, too. If you end up with headphones you're "meh" about and start looking into amps and DACs, you're (probably) doing it wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrconfuse 

A lot of us carry portable daps (ipods, iphones, fuze, etc) and we all want desktop audio or as close to it asp possible on the go. So my question is if you were using an ipod/iphone and was given 600 dollars for to spend on either X brand headphone (not IEM) or a Fostex HP-1 Dac/Clas which would you go for? Which one would give you the increase in sound qauliy? The better headphones or the better dac?

Oh wow... I didn't notice the question.

Come on, spending the $600 on a headphone will give you 1 million times better sound quality than spending it on an amp, portable amps aren't even necessary just buy the $140 Teclast T51 it sounds better or equal to any DAP or smartphone that exists and is powerful enough to drive a Tesla T1 to medium volumes and decent resolution!