pekirt
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2011
- Posts
- 5
- Likes
- 0
Hello everyone,
First time user here, so hi.
I just bought my first set of audiophile cans: a Sennheiser HD650. I'm listening to music off my computer (I will have to reencode most of my musicfrom my CDs to flac!) so I need a decent DAC and an amp. I know that there are many, many reviews and suggestions, but this request has a minor twist.
You see, I'm living in Turkey, and my choices at the low end of the budget are nonexistent. Mid-to high end stuff costs roughly twice as much in here due to some tax laws that don't fall too short of highway robbery (*). So I'll either have to order something from abroad, or make do with what's available.
I listen to a wide variety of music, but jazz and classical (with emphasis on smaller ensembles and early music) would benefit the most from my listening habits with this headphone. I don't usually sit down to listen to most of the other stuff.
Now to my questions:
1) Can you recommend a portable headphone amp at or under $120 that I can have shipped to Turkey? (See below for the reason for this price limit)
2) Can you recommend a USB DAC at or under $120?
3) Can you recommend an amp+DAC combination under $300? (I'll end up paying $500 at the least for it... See below.)
or...
4) Should I just buy an e-mu 0404 usb and an ARTHeadAmp V for a total of ~$500? Or just buy the e-mu? Would it be enough to drive my 300 ohm HD650's?
**********************
Read below if you wish to feel my tax pain...
(*) There's an 18% VAT, TIMES (not plus!) 20% special consumer tax--essentially a luxury item tax--, TIMES import taxes (IIRC, it was 13%) , PLUS shipping fees. So, a $1000 item would cost me $1600 plus shipping plus all the import paperwork.
By some miracle, I ended up paying ~$500 for my headphones (you can buy them here for ~$1000 normally). I'd rather not pay more than that amount for the amp+dac combination--I'm new to this, after all. Moreover, if each individual item I buy is under EUR100 (~$120), I only pay the VAT and not the rest, so that's an important limit to consider.
Alternatively, I could just buy an external sound card such as EMU 404 or M-Audio sound card. They are locally available. For example, an M-AUDIO MobilePre USB II would set me back ~$210, whereas I could find the E-Mu for less than ~$350. As for headphone amps, there are many studio amps (the ones to which you connect 4-5 headphones for monitoring purposes), starting at the $100 price level ( amps like ART HeadAmp IV). Most commonly available low-end amp seems to be ART HeadAmp V, for $180.
I'd appreciate any help. Thanks, for at least having read through this!
Baris
First time user here, so hi.
I just bought my first set of audiophile cans: a Sennheiser HD650. I'm listening to music off my computer (I will have to reencode most of my musicfrom my CDs to flac!) so I need a decent DAC and an amp. I know that there are many, many reviews and suggestions, but this request has a minor twist.You see, I'm living in Turkey, and my choices at the low end of the budget are nonexistent. Mid-to high end stuff costs roughly twice as much in here due to some tax laws that don't fall too short of highway robbery (*). So I'll either have to order something from abroad, or make do with what's available.
I listen to a wide variety of music, but jazz and classical (with emphasis on smaller ensembles and early music) would benefit the most from my listening habits with this headphone. I don't usually sit down to listen to most of the other stuff.
Now to my questions:
1) Can you recommend a portable headphone amp at or under $120 that I can have shipped to Turkey? (See below for the reason for this price limit)
2) Can you recommend a USB DAC at or under $120?
3) Can you recommend an amp+DAC combination under $300? (I'll end up paying $500 at the least for it... See below.)
or...
4) Should I just buy an e-mu 0404 usb and an ARTHeadAmp V for a total of ~$500? Or just buy the e-mu? Would it be enough to drive my 300 ohm HD650's?
**********************
Read below if you wish to feel my tax pain...
(*) There's an 18% VAT, TIMES (not plus!) 20% special consumer tax--essentially a luxury item tax--, TIMES import taxes (IIRC, it was 13%) , PLUS shipping fees. So, a $1000 item would cost me $1600 plus shipping plus all the import paperwork.
By some miracle, I ended up paying ~$500 for my headphones (you can buy them here for ~$1000 normally). I'd rather not pay more than that amount for the amp+dac combination--I'm new to this, after all. Moreover, if each individual item I buy is under EUR100 (~$120), I only pay the VAT and not the rest, so that's an important limit to consider.
Alternatively, I could just buy an external sound card such as EMU 404 or M-Audio sound card. They are locally available. For example, an M-AUDIO MobilePre USB II would set me back ~$210, whereas I could find the E-Mu for less than ~$350. As for headphone amps, there are many studio amps (the ones to which you connect 4-5 headphones for monitoring purposes), starting at the $100 price level ( amps like ART HeadAmp IV). Most commonly available low-end amp seems to be ART HeadAmp V, for $180.
I'd appreciate any help. Thanks, for at least having read through this!
Baris
