[syn010110]

Okay so... I spend a good deal of time doing a lot of classwork on my laptop, which has crappy, crappy sound, especially on my rather sensitive earphones--loads of noise and hiss. I'm looking for a solution to this problem, and a small DAC/amp seems to be the way to go here.
 
What I'm looking for:
- Smallish size... no larger than my Galaxy Nexus in footprint, but it can be fat if it wants to. Preferably smaller than the GNex though.
- Low output impedance on the headphone jack as I will likely use it most with my 13ohm earphones (though I may find some more comfy portable headphones eventually).
- Doesn't really color the sound much (less coloration is better).
- Can power/charge off USB.
- Reasonably priced.
- Reasonably well constructed so that it might withstand portable use, being put in a backpack, etc.
 
What I wouldn't mind having (but isn't critical):
- Battery power so it can be used as a portable headphone amp.
 
Help me figure out a solution. I'm not really looking to spend very much (I know, that's a difficult task for this place, heh) since it's going to be a "knockaround" device. I intend to build an O2/ODAC combo for my desktop use eventually, but that sort of obviates portable use since the ODAC takes up the place where the 9V batteries go.
 
I've already looked into the FiiO devices... the E7, E10 and E07K all seem to be interesting, however the E10 has widely reported build quality issues and the E07K has noise with low-impedance, high-sensitivity earphones like my Ultimate Ears.

 

[KT66]

Audioengine D1 - have you looked at that?

 

[syn010110]

Actually I have, and was quite interested in it as it seems to be very small and well-constructed, but it has a 10 ohm output impedance. That would be problematic for any headphones under 80 ohms, especially my earphones as they are balanced armatures at 13 ohms, and I don't even own any headphones with 80 ohms or higher impedance.