[eDef]

I recently purchased a pair of HD555s after reading many reviews and noticed many mentioned a DAC/AMP should be purchased to get the most from these headphones. After looking into this, it seems that for my budget either the Nuforce uDAC or Headroom Total Bithead would be good purchases. I was wondering if with these headphones would the DAC/AMP make that much more of a difference or would I be better off waiting until I had a better pair? If the DAC/AMP would really make a difference, would either of these be recommended over the other for use exclusively on a computer.
 
Thanks

 

[dlei6]

Do you have a soundcard in your PC? Whats your budget?
 
I have the HD555 right now, and my Asus Xonar D1 sound card just blows the onboard out of the water.
I tested the setup with a FiiO E5 and a pa2v2 in between. The pa2v2 does sound slightly better, but if ur just entering the audio world like me, the FiiO does a pretty good job considering the price difference.
 
Im thinking of upgrading to the HD600's, so the same setup might not suffice. I've been looking into an external DAC/Amp. The uDAC wouldn't work for me since I still want the surround and EAX effects of the soundcard. If you dont do any gaming then I guess its fine. I've been looking at the Zero DAC/Amp to convert the optical out from the soundcard to drive my headphones. (since I'm looking for something sub $150)
 
Anyone else have any suggestions I would be interested in knowing also

 

[eDef]

All I have at the moment is onboard audio. The most I would want to spend is $150 since I am just starting and don't understand it all as well as I would like. I was a little skeptical about FiiO as I didn't really see many reviews that stated it was a huge improvement. Would it be better just to buy a decent sound card? I just figured that a good sound card was around $75-100 a DAC/AMP might be better if I can find one for the same price. Again, I really do not understand how it all works so I was hoping someone would be able to fill me in a little.

 

[dlei6]

like i said, do you game or do you just listen to music?
sound cards come with positioning effects you cant get from just a DAC/Amp setup, but sound quality suffers a bit.
 
I like to do both, so I was just wondering if the soundcard -> DAC/Amp will even work no idea tho..

 

[eDef]

I do both, sometimes at the same time. However I can't really see myself continuing gaming for much longer so I guess I am more interested in sound quality. That and if needed, I could just plug back into onboard while I was gaming and be back to where I was to begin with.

 

[wuwhere]

For $150 I was going to recommend Headphonia's DAC Stick, a USB DAC/Amp but it is still under development.