Doesn't matter it it's a dac/amp or Dac+Amp. Doesn't matter if it's portable or not. Looking at new and used.
Is there a huge difference in quality for a $500 portable combo VS a desktop combo?
Looking to drive MrSpeakers Aeon Closed and Shure Srh1540 and other IEMs.
Very, very, very generally, if you're just looking at THD and noise specs, not a lot. There are good amps and bad amps running off AC power and batteries.
However, once you're controlling for price, it's a LOT easier to find a desktop amp with a heck of a lot of power that some headphones might need. On the flipside, sometimes the gain is too high, or the potentiometer is really geared more for headphones, and are built for power hungrier headphones, and will have problems with power delivery into low impedance, very high sensitivity IEMs.
Past that, when you get to specific amps, there are desktop amps that will not just produce a lot more power, but also lower distortion and noise, particularly in not having crossover distortion since it's easy enough to find a high power Class A headphone amp than even a low output Class A portable.
Chances are, if you want either a desktop amp with enough finesse and precision in how it dishes out power to an IEM so it doesn't go from no sound to "OHMYGODTURNITDOWNTURNITDOWNTURNITDOWNNOWMYEARDRUMSAREBLEEDING!!!!!!!!" with 2mm of movement on the dial, or a portable unit that has enough power to fully drive some harder to drive headphones, you're not going to be able to do that on the cheap (though $500 is enough).
+1 on the Element. A Chord Mojo is also in that price range got mine for $345 a while back here and am very happy with it. I don’t have any sensitive Iem’s but does well with the ones I have (1 More Quads and Triples , Echobox Finder X-1’s, KZ ZST10 among others). Haven’t tried the Element with iem’s but will next weekend as I’m going to a meet at JDS Labs.
Chord Mojo.
Ouststanding DAC, phenomenal technology, and soundwise very natural, detailed and great 3D soundstage with accurate positioning of elements.
Said to pair perfectly with the AEONS. They are the favorite pairing for Rob Watts, the developer behind the Mojo.
Lyr 3 and Asgard. But if you want to compare them, the Schiits are basically kind of like a Corvette, ie, refined, updated older cor tech with discrete components and tubes; by contrast the Meiers are kind of like a modern Porsche - op-amps biased into Class A like how Posrches don't need a lot of displacement but do engine gimmickry (lots of VVT, and now they have 3.0L engines with turbos) and that digital volume control (kind of like how they made power steering have feedback close to non-powered steering, if at least after the 996), and doesn't run as hot.
You might as well just keep using that if you don't have any problems with using them on the IEM, and your headphone doesn't need more power than the iDSD BL's Normal Mode.
You picked three I would suggest you look at. I think it is hard to go wrong with any of them from those makers but not a huge fan of Schiit amps but have not heard the Jot Lyr3 yet heard some good things of the Lyr3 though.
Just for future reference there is the xduoo ta-10 out now, a good desktop dac/amp combo for about $300. It is a tube hybrib, but because of that outputs about 2 watts a channel through the balanced xlr output.
I'm rocking a Asgard 2 and Bifrost multibit bought used on headfi for less than $500 usd. A little big for a desk. A lyr 3 or vali with a modi multibit can do great work too If size matters.
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