Hi everyone I’m new! Question about headphone amp vs receiver
Jan 18, 2018 at 4:07 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 5

shawn0611

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hi all.
Thank you everyone for take time to read my post.
I just bought a Sennheiser hd598se and it sounds really well plug it in to my iPhone 8 Plus.
But I want to try if there’s a difference with an amp so I plugged the headphone to an Sony AV receiver in my living room and the sound improves a lot. The separation is a lot better and it improves the soundstage as well. Bass was a lot puchy too.
I want to have the same experience in my room so I don’t have to go out to my living room every time I want to enjoy music. So I bought a Fiio E10K and Fiio q1 Mark II to plug in to my computer to try and see which one I like better. But no matter how I tweak the device and eq I can’t have the same sound quality as when I plug in to the receiver.
And the thing is I think the Fiio sounded the same as when I just plug the headphone in to my iPhone.

Is there an amp dac combo that’s reasonably priced I can purchase to have the sound quality as my receiver.

For the receiver I used an Apple TV to my tv via hdmi and tv to my receiver via digital audio.

Thank you guys so much for your help!
 
Jan 18, 2018 at 6:11 PM Post #3 of 5
Hi Luke Thomas
Thank you. So the dac on iphone/ipad is good enough? Because the dac on iMac sucks.
How about desktop amp dac combo or just dac? I just wanna enjoy the music in my room but the receiver just sounds amazing.

Thank you
 
Jan 18, 2018 at 7:10 PM Post #4 of 5
All I know is the tech from Audioquest who sells dacs told me the iPad's come with descent dacs. Good inexpensive desktop amp is the Asgard 2 from shiit audio. Many times they have b stock I'm thinking $200. I use the Audioquest dragonfly dac plugged into my laptop ups.
 
Jan 19, 2018 at 8:45 AM Post #5 of 5
I just bought a Sennheiser hd598se and it sounds really well plug it in to my iPhone 8 Plus.
But I want to try if there’s a difference with an amp so I plugged the headphone to an Sony AV receiver in my living room and the sound improves a lot. The separation is a lot better and it improves the soundstage as well. Bass was a lot puchy too.
I want to have the same experience in my room so I don’t have to go out to my living room every time I want to enjoy music. So I bought a Fiio E10K and Fiio q1 Mark II to plug in to my computer to try and see which one I like better. But no matter how I tweak the device and eq I can’t have the same sound quality as when I plug in to the receiver.
And the thing is I think the Fiio sounded the same as when I just plug the headphone in to my iPhone.

Is there an amp dac combo that’s reasonably priced I can purchase to have the sound quality as my receiver.

The bass response could be due to high output impedance on the receiver. As much as you can probably find a headphoone amp with high output impedance, the problem there is that even if they're roughly the same the effects can vary across amp and headphone combinations, so you're basically going to gamble on whether the old Rega Ear or a Musical Fidelity V90-HPA will have the same kind of EQ effect as the Sony receiver.
 

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