Throw in a HiFimediy Sabre DAC for $50 and you've got both at under your $300 price. Some think the ODAC sounds a hair better than the $40 HiFimediy version, but I've found nothing objectionable with mine here on a variety of sources.

The Tralucent T1 is gaining quite a following for those looking for accuracy at a not-too-outrageous price.

Quote:   Direct drive off various iDinguses, Macs, SGS4G, various DACs through Fiio e17, NAD 310

OK, I've had my T1 for a couple of weeks now and have listened to enough different things that I think I can comment somewhat intelligently about it. The "Oh boy! New toys!" phase is over, so I hope this is a little more objective than it would have been when first received.   First off...

Etymotic HF5, $99.99 at Amazon (Cobalt color, black and red are generally more expensive)

My Tralucent T1 tightens up the boominess in the HD 25 a bit and improves the definition a tiny bit. It's not a day-and-night kind of thing. I can't say one way or the other if one of the fine Fiio products would have the same benefit.

You may find a better presentation with the Grados and an external amp over the SGSIII internal amp. You're not going to improve over the internal DAC's inherent limitations, but you may find that the external amp handles the load a little better and gives you, for example, tighter bass and/or...

Did you actually read the thread? Your last comment suggests that the thread's conclusions, at least as I read them, would be even clearer.

Maybe http://www.head-fi.org/t/599463/leckerton-uha-4-or-minibox-es-for-er4s is helpful?

If you regularly run with your volume set at more than about half of full, you might consider a more powerful amp if clean sound is important to you.    The power rating of speakers is typically the largest amp that they can handle, not the recommended size. The efficiency of the speaker is...

I looked at the Target ones and they are the cheapest Comply versions -- the "S" series, I believe.

At the speeds you are playing audio off the media, there isn't going to be any significant difference between FAT and HFS (or ext4, or...). You may see a significant improvement with a more modern filesystem than FAT when copying large amounts of data to or from the drive.   Edit -- The...

Quote: Your quality will be limited by the weakest component in the chain. You're talking about $450 IEMs and a $60 amp.   Assuming your source material is good, either lossless or some believe 320 kbps sufficient, then, in my opinion, the e7 will be the weak link. It's a great little...

The e17 is a nice little unit and can generally be had for under $140 -- right now on Amazon at $110. While perhaps not as clear and transparent as units costing twice as much, I don't find any major faults in its sound, even through Ety ER-4. I may end up with one on my desk at work so I'm not...

You know, about 60 years ago they came up with this thing called a "transistor" that, along with a 9V battery, made a portable, pocket-sized radio a tenable product. Before that you had A, B, and C batteries to power transportable radios. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_(vacuum_tube) if you...

e11 typically runs $50 on Amazon, with one seller adding in another battery and a charger for a little bit more. e17 has dipped to under $115 in the last few days on Amazon as well

Quote:   With a higher-impedance headphone, the issue is typically not the power that can be driven into 8 Ohms, but the voltage swing of the amplifier.    My T1 drives Sennheiser HD-25 II to levels that I find more than high enough with less than half rotation of the volume pot. From...

You don't -- there will be people that love the sound of a specific cartridge, amp, or speaker/headphone/IEM because of the way that it modifies the sound to meet their taste. You can't argue with that.   On the other hand, I'm struggling with the words for how I much I am enjoying my T1...

I've been listening extensively to the HF5 and ER-4PT and can definitely say that they are "different." The biggest difference, to me, is that the HF5 has less annoying cable "microphonics" than the ER-4. However, the ER-4 has noticeably better detail. It isn't that the HF5 is notably lacking...

You can't swap DACs the way you can swap op-amps in some designs. You certainly can use an external DAC of your choosing.   There are several modestly priced options for Sabre-based boards out there, including the UD100, Hifimediy USB Saber DAC, and cased or uncased ODAC. There are options...

To echo PurpleAngel's point, unless you're running near the top of the volume range of your phone regularly (potentially clipping on peaks), an "cheap" amp may actually degrade the sound quality.    (This is intended to be a general comment about inexpensive amps in general. While I haven't...

If you liked the Etys, you may have a hard time moving to a significantly different sound.   Now that you don't need to have the on-cord controls, you might want to consider the Brainwavz B2 (or Fisher DBA-02, depending on availability). They have a similarly clear presentation, a bit more...

While there is AOSP code down to the JNI layer, the USB driver is phone/kernel specific. Unless the USB driver supports host mode to be able to manage the DAC client and stream audio samples to it, it doesn't matter how well it is supported in the libraries. There is also typically a switch in...

Quote: More than likely there is already so much detail lost in that process that any that a DAC might matter is swamped by it. So long as you don't preach to others that "DACs are all the same" to those with higher-quality source material, you have probably made an excellent choice.  

Just to be clear, certain features require kernel or driver features, which may be supplied by the manufacturer as "blobs" and not in source format. Unless the manufacturer already provides the USB host drivers in source form then it is somewhere between very difficult and nearly impossible to...