[kellzey]

 
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I'm a noob to the Head-Fi scene.
 
I picked up some Grado 325is to listen to some great jazz in FLAC format.
 
Up until this evening, I've been feeding the Little Dot MkIVse tube amp with a FiiO L6 lineout from a Sansa Fuze player.  The sound was great, but I needed to push the amp to about 3/4 volume to get the sound levels I wanted.

Today my PS Audio DLIII DAC came in and I connected it to my laptop to play the FLAC files...
 
HOLY COW... what an amazing difference.  The clarity, the range improvement, the increase depth of the soundstage... and I'm running the amp at only about 1/3 volume level for brilliant sound.

I'm not running any equalizer settings... just normal feed levels on everything and it's beautiful.
 
My favorites...

Art Blakey - A Night in Tunisia
Duke Ellington - Malletona Spank
Count Bassie & Joe Turner - Role 'em Pete
 

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[Mad Max]

That must be pretty awesome.  =]

 

[Graphicism]

The DLIII is superb, I fell head over heals when I first heard it and to this day it's the most expensive piece in my setup. They all say that it's the headphone that makes the sound, this is true, but it always starts at the source. So many people, typically beginners in hi-end audio ignore the source, to me this is like ibud owners ignoring other headphones. I wish I had started my 'audio journey' with a good source because it makes a huge difference in the music I listen too. A common problem, and now I'm getting into rant mode, is that it's easy for listeners to pick out sound signature and spot significant changes between headphones, whereas a source won't dramatically change the signature it will affect the quality of music.
 
Personally I like 192 with lower quality and live performances and 96 for everything else.

 

[drandall]

i'm a bit surprised you paired a low-impedance headphone like the grado with a high-impedance favoring OTL amp like the little dot. i would imagine a solid state amp to be a much better fit....at any rate, congrats!

 

[kellzey]

Quote:

i'm a bit surprised you paired a low-impedance headphone like the grado with a high-impedance favoring OTL amp like the little dot. i would imagine a solid state amp to be a much better fit....at any rate, congrats!

The actually pair quite nicely.  I have some Sennheiser 598s coming.  They are only 50 ohms, so still not that high... but curious to compare.
 
This setup is really quite sonically beautiful.  Paired with some quality source files the whole experience is really nice... and I'm still burning everything in... it can only get better!