[chesebert]

This is contrary to almost everything I’ve heard in the hobby (and think myself) - headphones > amps > dacs (ignoring source, pad rolling, etc.) I think most are much better off spending more on better headphones driven by adequate amp / dac. Take this with a grain of salt, as I’m not someone with the talent to know what a headphone “should” exactly sound like.

Who ever said that was either trying to sell you cans or was not being completely truthful or has limited knowledge of higher priced electronics or has yet to developed critical listening skills to appreciate the quality. The headphones first mantra applies only to low end cans. Once your cans reach 580/600 performance level your electronics will dictate how much performance you are able to extract from the cans. The better the cans the more those cans will be affected by the electronics. Just look at 800, you get folks who say they lack bass and sound thin and others say they are full sounding with great bass slam and prat. The difference is in the electronics.

 

[deyna]

Who ever said that was either trying to sell you cans or was not being completely truthful or has limited knowledge of higher priced electronics or has yet to developed critical listening skills to appreciate the quality. The headphones first mantra applies only to low end cans. Once your cans reach 580/600 performance level your electronics will dictate how much performance you are able to extract from the cans. The better the cans the more those cans will be affected by the electronics. Just look at 800, you get folks who say they lack bass and sound thin and others say they are full sounding with great bass slam and prat. The difference is in the electronics.

Have you seen any measurements of something like the HD800 that shows the "electronics" having such a drastic effect on bass? Outside of applying an EQ of course.

The HD800 has measurably bad bass extension and, in my experience, most people are talking about a lack of sub-bass when they say it sounds "thin". Changes to that would be measurable.

 

[Sorys]

Got a chance to try these with a Hiby R6 Gen III and a Topping NX7 stack (so by no means a high end source) and have to say I was a bit disappointed. They are a lot of money and they do not really offer much more than other (and cheaper) headphones even within DCA’s own line up. They are built fantastically and are really comfortable with a great included accessory kit but the sound for me is nothing really special compared to alternatives. I would not recommend you blind buy these headphones try at a show or at a local dealer if you can.

 

[Grimlock248]

Once your cans reach 580/600 performance level your electronics will dictate how much performance you are able to extract from the cans.

From my experience and what I’ve heard this is more the exception than the rule, with the HD6YY series being the mythically “infinitely scalable” cans.

 

[chesebert]

Have you seen any measurements of something like the HD800 that shows the "electronics" having such a drastic effect on bass? Outside of applying an EQ of course.

The HD800 has measurably bad bass extension and, in my experience, most people are talking about a lack of sub-bass when they say it sounds "thin". Changes to that would be measurable.

first, sub bass performance does not contribute materially to the thinness you hear in cans.

Second, there is no money and effort being made to measure the effects of electronics on hearing perception of a single model of headphones.

Finally you have to take all measurements not as gospel but more of a guideline as measurement rigs are all different and there are multiple factors that can affect measurements and there is no standard way to measure headphones. this is made worse by compensation curves used which are also not standardized across the industry.

 

[Grimlock248]

Who ever said that was either trying to sell you cans or was not being completely truthful or has limited knowledge of higher priced electronics or has yet to developed critical listening skills to appreciate the quality.

Going to add a fifth “or” - I could be right and you could be wrong.

Anyways, happy listening. Hope your super high end expensive chain treats you well. For some the diminishing returns are worth maxing out all components. That hasn’t been the case for me yet, but it hasn’t been 18 years….

 

[kumar402]

Well for me the whole chain matters. A generic rule like headphone > Amp> Dac is so YouTube

You can make cheap headphone sing with right components.

 

[chesebert]

Going to add a fifth “or” - I could be right and you could be wrong.

Anyways, happy listening. Hope your super high end expensive chain treats you well. For some the diminishing returns are worth maxing out all components. That hasn’t been the case for me yet, but it hasn’t been 18 years….

l wish my gear were actually “super high end expensive“ You have not been here long.

 

[Grimlock248]

Well for me the whole chain matters. A generic rule like headphone > Amp> Dac is so YouTube

You can make cheap headphone sing with right components.

There are good cheap headphones and bad cheap headphones. Are you saying you can make a bad cheap headphone sing with the “right components”? And are you including EQ features in “components”?

Can you share a couple of examples?

Thanks!

 

[Erick Muller]

Who ever said that was either trying to sell you cans or was not being completely truthful or has limited knowledge of higher priced electronics or has yet to developed critical listening skills to appreciate the quality. The headphones first mantra applies only to low end cans. Once your cans reach 580/600 performance level your electronics will dictate how much performance you are able to extract from the cans. The better the cans the more those cans will be affected by the electronics. Just look at 800, you get folks who say they lack bass and sound thin and others say they are full sounding with great bass slam and prat. The difference is in the electronics.

I tend to agree to an extend and I think the SENN HD600s series is the perfect example of that, people that say they sound lean an boring are probably listening to them directly from a 3.5mm jack from their Macbook or PC, maybe an apple dongle if we're lucky, of course, you're not going to get any bass and extension in the treble and they're going to sound dull af.

There's also the other side of the equation where a Koss khp40 is going to sound great from any source, but they do scale with amplification.

What this proposition is missing is a little bit of nuance, without any good headphones that are to your own taste and preferences and that match your music listening habits, there's not enough electronics or money you can throw at it that it's going to fix that for you, you need to first find a pair of headphones you like, that match your budget levels and then try to match it with source equipment that is going to synergize with it.

The only exception to this may be a fully kited holo audio may DAC with a mass kobo 465 amp and using HQPlayer, of course this is going to cost you north of $20k usd and 99.99% of audiophiles are not going to be able to afford something like that, unless they go into debt, and if you do that, STOP, only buy what you can afford with your disposable income, never get into debt for any hobby.

 

[chesebert]

I tend to agree to an extend and I think the SENN HD600s series is the perfect example of that, people that say they sound lean an boring are probably listening to them directly from a 3.5mm jack from their Macbook or PC, maybe an apple dongle if we're lucky, of course, you're not going to get any bass and extension in the treble and they're going to sound dull af.

There's also the other side of the equation where a Koss khp40 is going to sound great from any source, but they do scale with amplification.

What this proposition is missing is a little bit of nuance, without any good headphones that are to your own taste and preferences and that match your music listening habits, there's not enough electronics or money you can throw at it that it's going to fix that for you, you need to first find a pair of headphones you like, that match your budget levels and then try to match it with source equipment that is going to synergize with it.

The only exception to this may be a fully kited holo audio may DAC with a mass kobo 465 amp and using HQPlayer, of course this is going to cost you north of $20k usd and 99.99% of audiophiles are not going to be able to afford something like that, unless they go into debt, and if you do that, STOP, only buy what you can afford with your disposable income, never get into debt for any hobby.

If what you are saying is that you can't polish a turd, I would agree with that. Some turds should just stay turds and not be polished at all. Case in point, Ultrasone 10 - this one was such a turd that I can't make it sound good on anything. It has been and will probably always be the worst sounding cans in my experience.

To all the folks who think E3 sounds no better than their $300 midfi cans from a technical perspective, you should know that 1. that's not what E3 actually sounds like and 2. you have insufficient electronics for E3. You may not like the sound profile of E3 but from a pure technical perspective E3 is objectively the best closed cans on the market right now. If your Dali, Focal, Senn, Denon, Audeze, ZMF closed cans sound better than E3 from a technical perspective, you need better electronics.

 

[Rhamnetin]

Who ever said that was either trying to sell you cans or was not being completely truthful or has limited knowledge of higher priced electronics or has yet to developed critical listening skills to appreciate the quality. The headphones first mantra applies only to low end cans. Once your cans reach 580/600 performance level your electronics will dictate how much performance you are able to extract from the cans. The better the cans the more those cans will be affected by the electronics. Just look at 800, you get folks who say they lack bass and sound thin and others say they are full sounding with great bass slam and prat. The difference is in the electronics.

And these days you can get good enough electronics for $150 and below for DACs and headphone amps, except for super power hungry headphones (Tungsten) for which you might have to spend $350-400 to get the power you need along with completely transparent performance beyond the thresholds of our music or hearing limitations (i.e. inaudible noise, THD, IMD, no crosstalk issues, dynamic range beyond that of 16-bit music).

The speakers/headphones should always be the most expensive component as they're obviously the most important, except for the room when dealing with speakers. The HD 800 does lack bass as it rolls off pretty strongly below 100 Hz as seen in any FR graph. This is why people have historically preferred pairing it with tube amps that add lots of bass distortion, or equalizing it to get the same general result. No amp is giving the HD 800 a flat or elevated bass response unless it's also applying EQ, it's added distortion that people have liked for the HD 800 (including myself).

I think you need an ultra resolving headphone to start hearing differences. And that means over $3000 and $5000

What it really comes down to is the individual DAC and the settings used on the DAC. It has nothing to do with price. You can have two similarly priced DACs sound very different due to totally different filter settings or jitter issues or something else, or two DACs on opposite ends of the cost spectrum sounding identical in level-matched blind tests (emphasis on this sort of testing), even in the most high fidelity system, because they have the same general performance characteristics within audibly indistinguishable range from one another.

For example, I always buy utmost neutral DACs with emphasis on technical performance, so I pretty much always end up with ESS Sabre DACs and I use the same digital filter setting every time. Because of this, in level matched blind testing with my DCA E3 (and my AKG K371, and my monitors) I can't distinguish my Schiit Modius E, SMSL SU-X, or Bricasti M1 SE (this isn't an ESS but performs similarly enough). But with different filters than my usual, I can pick out the Bricasti. Or that awful first gen Denafrips Venus I had made itself obnoxiously obvious with any headphone, same for any other NOS R2R.

 

[chesebert]

And these days you can get good enough electronics for $150 and below for DACs and headphone amps, except for super power hungry headphones (Tungsten) for which you might have to spend $350-400 to get the power you need along with completely transparent performance beyond the thresholds of our music or hearing limitations (i.e. inaudible noise, THD, IMD, no crosstalk issues, dynamic range beyond that of 16-bit music).

The speakers/headphones should always be the most expensive component as they're obviously the most important, except for the room when dealing with speakers. The HD 800 does lack bass as it rolls off pretty strongly below 100 Hz as seen in any FR graph. This is why people have historically preferred pairing it with tube amps that add lots of bass distortion, or equalizing it to get the same general result. No amp is giving the HD 800 a flat or elevated bass response unless it's also applying EQ, it's added distortion that people have liked for the HD 800 (including myself).



What it really comes down to is the individual DAC and the settings used on the DAC. It has nothing to do with price. You can have two similarly priced DACs sound very different due to totally different filter settings or jitter issues or something else, or two DACs on opposite ends of the cost spectrum sounding identical in level-matched blind tests (emphasis on this sort of testing), even in the most high fidelity system, because they have the same general performance characteristics within audibly indistinguishable range from one another.

For example, I always buy utmost neutral DACs with emphasis on technical performance, so I pretty much always end up with ESS Sabre DACs and I use the same digital filter setting every time. Because of this, in level matched blind testing with my DCA E3 (and my AKG K371, and my monitors) I can't distinguish my Schiit Modius E, SMSL SU-X, or Bricasti M1 SE (this isn't an ESS but performs similarly enough). But with different filters than my usual, I can pick out the Bricasti. Or that awful first gen Denafrips Venus I had made itself obnoxiously obvious with any headphone, same for any other NOS R2R.

I tried Topping A90 and D90 in my system and while they are not bad, they are not close to my rig. D90 in particular is a cost effective option but only if you can feed it high quality digital signal from high end streamer; USB performance is pretty bad. A90 sounds bad and lacking dynamics next to CFA3. So if you don't have money to spend, Topping gear is fine if you want to buy new. I would go with older used stuff but you kind have to know what you are looking for.

However, if you can't hear a difference in gear once you go past Topping level stuff, then all the power to you. You have achieved end game.

 

[Rhamnetin]

I tried Topping A90 and D90 in my system and while they are not bad, they are not close to my rig. D90 in particular is a cost effective option but only if you can feed it high quality digital signal from high end streamer; USB performance is pretty bad. A90 sounds bad and lacking dynamics next to CFA3. So if you don't have money to spend, Topping gear is fine if you want to buy new. I would go with older used stuff but you kind have to know what you are looking for.

Topping USB performance is always great since they use XMOS. The other inputs are always great too from what I've seen. Honestly I haven't owned a DAC made within the last decade or more that had audible USB issues.

 

[Erick Muller]

If what you are saying is that you can't polish a turd, I would agree with that. Some turds should just stay turds and not be polished at all. Case in point, Ultrasone 10 - this one was such a turd that I can't make it sound good on anything. It has been and will probably always be the worst sounding cans in my experience.

To all the folks who think E3 sounds no better than their $300 midfi cans from a technical perspective, you should know that 1. that's not what E3 actually sounds like and 2. you have insufficient electronics for E3. You may not like the sound profile of E3 but from a pure technical perspective E3 is objectively the best closed cans on the market right now. If your Dali, Focal, Senn, Denon, Audeze, ZMF closed cans sound better than E3 from a technical perspective, you need better electronics.

I supposed there could be a couple of people in the world that like the ultrasone 10, but unless the can in question is literally broken, I think that specially in today's market, almost everything at every price bracket sounds at least good enough, it's going to be more a question of preference at the end of the day.

Regarding the question of electronics and source chain, there's the classic example of the Susvara that needs really good quality amplification and lots of power to drive it to it's full potential, ditto for Tungsten that it is even harder to drive than susvara, going by the numbers at least, so I don't doubt that the E3 needs special amplification and probably a higher tier DAC in order to bring out it's full potential sound wise, but there's also other cases like the Meze Elite that sound really good regardless of amplification and are not so demanding of absolute TOLT source chain equipment to bring out it's full potential.