SharpEars
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2014
- Posts
- 62
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- 17
I currently have a Xonar Essence STX that I am using to drive several sets of headphones (DT990, ATH-M50, Sennheiser 580 Jubilees and a few others). I have read quite a bit about the quality of the Yulong DA8 DAC/Headphone Amp and am wondering if this would be a noticeable upgrade from the Essence STX sound card.
The sound card offer quite a bit of quality and has great SNR ratio as well as other characteristics. Its headphone amp also seems to be stellar - able to effortlessly drive any of my headphones.
The question comes down to: How good would the improvement be in doing an STX -> DA8 upgrade? I know that this is subjective, but it seems hard to believe that an external DAC such as the DA8 can do any better than the STX, given its measured real world performance.
Thanks for any tips and advice
The sound card offer quite a bit of quality and has great SNR ratio as well as other characteristics. Its headphone amp also seems to be stellar - able to effortlessly drive any of my headphones.
The question comes down to: How good would the improvement be in doing an STX -> DA8 upgrade? I know that this is subjective, but it seems hard to believe that an external DAC such as the DA8 can do any better than the STX, given its measured real world performance.
Thanks for any tips and advice