[vergesslich22]

Hi guys, I had the Apogee Groove (I forgot what the problem was) and also a silver Audioengine d3 (it never got rid of a nasty firmware bug).

The purpose is to get better sound at my notebook. It's a Lenovo X1 and the internal sound has a peak in the highs. I assumed that I was listening to the signal after it has been improved for the speakers, because none of the hardware I ever have used has any V-shaped sound like this. But it could be their taste, X1 consumers taste.

Anyway, with a dongle or a small brick shaped I could do a lot. But nothing looked promising. I was unable to find a seller for one of the japanese usb dac dongles.

And the rest came with MQA and I couldn't make myself buy it, maybe because I'm unable to ignore whether MQA has financed, complicated or done whatever to the device. The IfI device had MQA, too.

The headphone to drive is the Sennheiser HD 600.

I'm not seeing the big picture, having no overview and no clue.

My latest idea is a Roland Rubix22. The Roland headphones outputs I have heard sounded powerful. But with USB it might be a bit different. A rubix22 is as big as the laptop itself in some way. It probably has good drivers and low latency, which means one could also make some music and enjoy low latency.

It's quite complicated. Thanks for reading!

Markus

 

[msing539]

Hi guys, I had the Apogee Groove (I forgot what the problem was) and also a silver Audioengine d3 (it never got rid of a nasty firmware bug).

The purpose is to get better sound at my notebook. It's a Lenovo X1 and the internal sound has a peak in the highs. I assumed that I was listening to the signal after it has been improved for the speakers, because none of the hardware I ever have used has any V-shaped sound like this. But it could be their taste, X1 consumers taste.

Anyway, with a dongle or a small brick shaped I could do a lot. But nothing looked promising. I was unable to find a seller for one of the japanese usb dac dongles.

And the rest came with MQA and I couldn't make myself buy it, maybe because I'm unable to ignore whether MQA has financed, complicated or done whatever to the device. The IfI device had MQA, too.

The headphone to drive is the Sennheiser HD 600.

I'm not seeing the big picture, having no overview and no clue.

My latest idea is a Roland Rubix22. The Roland headphones outputs I have heard sounded powerful. But with USB it might be a bit different. A rubix22 is as big as the laptop itself in some way. It probably has good drivers and low latency, which means one could also make some music and enjoy low latency.

It's quite complicated. Thanks for reading!

Markus

Hey, so I'm confused. Are you looking for a portable dac, desktop setup, or audio interface? You posted in portable but mentioned that Roland.

 

[vergesslich22]

I'm sorry, I think I'm looking for something in between, which complicates it.

Feature-wise I just need a simple 2 channels of output, unbalanced, for one Sennheiser HD 600, and I need nothing more than that. I have a lot of cheap dongles for 10$ that provide enough features, but the sound is indeed boring. But, appending an amplifier to the chain would make it too cumbersome.

Samplerate, bith depth and latency: If it can do 48 kHz 24 bit that is enough, with a buffer size as low as 256 samples without dropouts and crackles. But 128 samples would be a bit better, 64 samples even more. I think the newer Steinberg devices can do 32 samples. I don't need latency that low. Around 128 is good enough.

Connector: If the connector was USB B, that would be nice. USB C is cool for portable, but I'm just sitting somewhere with the laptop, and I find the USB-B connector and port much more stable. That's so nice about the Roland device.

Size: Size should be less or equal to the Roland Rubix22, but rather less. I just want to carry it around in my hands, then putting it on a table next to the notebook.

Why I haven't yet bought the Roland Rubix22: Because there's nothing that says it's made for good sound on the headphones out. There's good numbers that indicate it being loud enough or impedance matching or something.

iFi: The point about the iFi device is, they say it's made for the Sennheiser 650. But it said MQA, which makes it unfavourable. But I could buy it and ignore that part.

Update: Found some match. "DuKabel USB to 3.5 mm Female Aux Adapter External Sound Card" for €8.99. Resulting tonality is upper bass focused, technicalities are mediocre, highs are uneven, but it still sounds great. I had considered the Truthear Shio Dual as I need smooth highs, but I'm not eager to update a firmware to fix volume bugs, I tried to find a firmware for the Audioengine D3 and couldn't and whatnot. So.. I'll stick with the DuKabel dongle.