Houbi
Member of the Trade: Audiophile Optimizer
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2012
- Posts
- 95
- Likes
- 12
hi guys
i'm in the building process of my first high-end headphone rig. My target is to beat my Speaker Setup in every way. It's a 40k+ US$ system, so listening to music is already on a certain level (this is the speakers rig: http://houbi.heimkino.info )
What i have so far is a ton of excellent sources (mainly high-res FLAC's, well recordedd CD's as FLAC's, etc...), an ASUS Essence STX which i am very pleased of, and foobar2000 with WASAPI and all other tricks.
Last night i ordered a brand new Beyerdynamic T1 for an absolutely insane price, i couldn't say no. For the next day's i'm going to drive it with the Essence's STX built-in headphone amp...
now there are two setups that i can imagine, a single ended and a fully balanced one. let's assume money doesn't play a role, what should i choose?
Setup 1: Essence STX -> analog RCA -> WA2 -> T1 (stock cable)
or the more expensive and complex
Setup 2: PC -> Async USB DAC with balanced XLR Out (CambridgeAudio DACMagic Plus maybe?) -> analog XLR -> WA22 -> T1 (reterminated with balanced XLR Plugs)
WA2 or WA22?
thanks for your opinions,
Houbi
i'm in the building process of my first high-end headphone rig. My target is to beat my Speaker Setup in every way. It's a 40k+ US$ system, so listening to music is already on a certain level (this is the speakers rig: http://houbi.heimkino.info )
What i have so far is a ton of excellent sources (mainly high-res FLAC's, well recordedd CD's as FLAC's, etc...), an ASUS Essence STX which i am very pleased of, and foobar2000 with WASAPI and all other tricks.
Last night i ordered a brand new Beyerdynamic T1 for an absolutely insane price, i couldn't say no. For the next day's i'm going to drive it with the Essence's STX built-in headphone amp...
now there are two setups that i can imagine, a single ended and a fully balanced one. let's assume money doesn't play a role, what should i choose?
Setup 1: Essence STX -> analog RCA -> WA2 -> T1 (stock cable)
or the more expensive and complex
Setup 2: PC -> Async USB DAC with balanced XLR Out (CambridgeAudio DACMagic Plus maybe?) -> analog XLR -> WA22 -> T1 (reterminated with balanced XLR Plugs)
WA2 or WA22?
thanks for your opinions,
Houbi