[JMT391]

I am looking to upgrade my headphone setup. Look to my sig for details. I power my headphones directly from the Xonar Essence STX. Long story short the speakers are not really in use for real stereo listening as they are way off center.

I've had the same headphone setup since 2009 because in my situation at the time, I liked the idea of DAC/Amp in the PC. Now I am looking to upgrade the headphones to something in the ~$500 used range. I'm open to suggestions but that's not really what this thread is about. For cans of that price range (and likely future cans will be around that or maybe more) I'd probably want to get a better DAC/Amp sooner rather than later. No more inside PC stuff.

My eventual desk setup will have small monitors (maybe +small sub) as well as headphones (PSBs will be sold at that time or elsewhere) so my main question is would the Xonar Essence STX be enough to power something around $500 used or should I be looking to get a DAC/Amp? I need the RCA outs on the Xonar to go to the receiver currently so I couldn't use it as a DAC and buy only an amp for now. Since the monitors will likely be passive, would it make sense to get a good stereo integrated DAC/amp with to use for my desk system? Are the headphone stages good enough? It seems most headphone amps have a built in DAC so another option would be to use that as a preamp to a small stereo power amp down the road. Just looking for what direction to go to, DAC/amp would maybe be around 3-500 used (more for stereo integrated); not sure if that's even allocating the 1000 bucks properly but I want headroom on those for future headphones.

 

[GREQ]

Having owned a few soundcards in the past, I decided I would stop buying internal cards, and bought an external Amp/DAC combo.
The main reason being the eventual obsolescence of a PCI card being designed for motherboards and operating systems of that generation.
About 10+ years ago I had a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Music (I think it was called) which worked great with WinXP.
Then a couple years later, I wanted to make the jump to Win7 and a newer system. The motherboard was still just about compatible, but Creative dropped support for later operating systems, so the card was relatively short lived in my opinion.

Meanwhile an external USB device should theoretically maintain it's technical support and compatibility, and USB has become a universally accepted standard port that likely won't disappear in the next decade or so.

I use the stereo-out from my headphone DAC/amp combo as the pre-amp for my speaker set up.
I'm using the NFB 11.28, so I can also control the speaker volume directly on the headphone amp (same volume control as for headphone out) when selecting the variable line-out.
And I just have my vintage AV-receiver under the desk to the side for less clutter.

I hope this gives you some ideas to what route you'd like to take.

 

[JMT391]

Yes thank you that is very helpful, being able to use a DAC/Amp as a preamp for speakers sounds nice. I think my main priority would be to upgrade the headphones at this point though unless I find a super good deal on a DAC/Amp. I know I will buy one eventually so it wouldn't be the end of the world if I bought it first but it would not give any immediate upgrade.

I see very few standalone DACs these days so I guess my ideal situation would be to have a DAC/Amp combo with a variable out to a small power amp. Any advice on where to look at info about DAC chips?

 

[GREQ]

Don't worry too much about the DAC chip.
The biggest sound differences are heard in this order:
(Left = most difference - Right = less (no) difference)
Headphone > Amp > Source material/Media resolution > DAC > Cables

There are a few places that still sell the ODAC as a separate (just a low budget idea, not necessarily a recommendation although I do own one).
But if you just want a clean signal from a USB device, the PCM2704 USB DAC (on ebay) is incredible value for money.
Then you'd have a bigger budget to get a 'dream headphone' and a good amp for it.
As long as you're feeding the system at least 192kbps mp3s (depending on the music - more complex music will require higher bit rates), you'll be a happy chappy.