Headphone Amp?

Well, an amplifier amplifies the signal to a level that you, as a human, can hear. Your friend is right to a degree. You shouldn't but a $1500 headphone to pair with an onboard sound card because it will sound bad however as long as you have a decent source (good files, decent DAC) and a good amp (not necessarily matching the price of the headphone but cheaper), you can still good headphones. In fact, given a good source and amp, the biggest upgrades in sound quality you will see is when you upgrade your headphones. If you're just beginning to get into good headphones, just get one that doesn't require an amp and see how that goes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by StevenHoong 

Thanks, I would also like to know what a DAC is. I've been roaming around the forums and people give dreadfully long explanations or they just say it's digital to analog converter. But what does that actually do? Please put it in words a simpleton like myself could understand

In a perfect world, we'd stick our tongues into a USB socket and be able to perceive the digital signal (1s and 0s) as music. We can't and you shouldn't try to do that. So most, if not all music listeners opt for a device that can convert the digital signal into an analogue signal that again, human ears can perceive, yet again, that signal is soft for us to hear, so we use an amp to amplify the signal to a level we can hear.
 

Oh, this should be obvious but if you didn't know, all CDs and music files ripped from such contain nothing but 1s and 0s. Vinyl is a different deal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by StevenHoong 

Thanks, I would also like to know what a DAC is. I've been roaming around the forums and people give dreadfully long explanations or they just say it's digital to analog converter. But what does that actually do? Please put it in words a simpleton like myself could understand

A digital-analog-converter (DAC) converts binary code (i.e. 1’s and 0’s) from digital media to an analog electronic signal.

 You have most of the answer regarding what DAC ( digital to analog converter) is and why we need DAC ( since human ears cannot hear the 0s and 1s encoding, so we need a medium to translate these binary encoding to analog signal in order we can understand).

You will find DAC in any CDplayer, DVD, TVs....and these internal DACs tend to be doing their jobs but not good enough as a dedicated and more expensive external DAC. Therefore, audiophile tends to bypass the internal DAC of their CD player, DVD....and using external DACs. The CD player or such of devices are now considered just a transport. The D/A conversion is no longer inside the CD player...but within the external DAC .

Hope this helps.

Very true.  Although, some CD players do have very good on-board DACs, so they can hold their own.  Sometimes, users still connect them to external DACs if they have multiple sources as to make sure they are all voiced similar when switching between sources.  My CD isn't anything earth shattering, but I do like its DAC.  It's a WM DAC, and it has a nice smooth signature to it.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ACDOAN 

 You have most of the answer regarding what DAC ( digital to analog converter) is and why we need DAC ( since human ears cannot hear the 0s and 1s encoding, so we need a medium to translate these binary encoding to analog signal in order we can understand).

 

You will find DAC in any CDplayer, DVD, TVs....and these internal DACs tend to be doing their jobs but not good enough as a dedicated and more expensive external DAC. Therefore, audiophile tends to bypass the internal DAC of their CD player, DVD....and using external DACs. The CD player or such of devices are now considered just a transport. The D/A conversion is no longer inside the CD player...but within the external DAC .

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

 

Regardless of price all DAC’s convert the exact code back to analog.

The only drawback is jitter, jitter is timing errors in the sequence of ones and zeros.

Better DAC’s should minimise jitter, they also implement better quality parts for power supplies and analog stages.