Pure Fidelity & VeggiePopper,
You're both very welcome! I'm glad I could be of help here! Veggie yeah that black one is sweet. Just remember it's open-back you guys, so when around other people, you gotta keep it low, cuz they will hear EVERYTHING. lol That's why I prefer closed-back, but that's me. It just depends on your preferences & situation. Sennheiser actually INVENTED the open-back headphone back in 1968, so they really know how to make it sound great too.
Pure........ yes the Oppo HA-2 is incredible! I absolutely love it! I'd compared it to my former
Celsus Sound Companion One (CO) amp/DAC, which costs twice as much (although now it's only $549 or $449 on Amazon). Despite a few reviews saying the CO was better, when I compared them side-by-side on several tracks, the HA-2 sounded the SAME to me. So I returned the CO, and kept the HA-2. You may or may not experience what I did, but that's how it went down for me. So yes, definitely consider buying it sooner than later. Reviews are great as guides, but in the end, it's how things sound to YOUR EARS that really makes all the difference. Remember that. Doing so saved me $300. lol
The Tidal HiFi option is great, but again, the Hi-Res (and especially DSD) releases will almost always sound better. It has little or nothing to do with the higher resolution, unless you have the hearing of a dog. lol People can't really hear above 20kHz anyway (i.e. CD-quality). CDs are recorded at 16-bit/44.1kHz, so more than double of 20kHz (doing so ensures nothing is missed per
this one formula/theorem). Sellers etc will tell you their sound quality is better because of the higher resolution, but the reality is, they only really sound better b/c producers and engineers use better masters (or remasters) on Hi-Res and DSD releases than they do for mp3 or even CD releases. They also pay greater attention to detail with them as well while working on them in the studio. So it's BS,
but it's not because they DO sound better.
I take my Hi-Res albums and downsample them down to CD-Quality (using
dBpoweramp, which is free, even after trial ends), and they sound EXACTLY the same. Since the source was a HI-RES VERSION, that is why it sounds better and still the same even when its resolution is downsampled. Doing so makes the song take up MUCH less space, and less power to play it too. I've read studies on all this and double-blind studies and even did my own (ABX Test), and I can say for sure you can't hear a difference unless you lower it all the way down to mp3 (so don't do that! lol). So just keep that in mind, and consider investing in Hi-Res music. I've amassed quite a collection myself over the last 15 months, and it's what I mainly listen to these days. I just take my time b/c it can get expensive, but they have deals and coupon codes all the time. I back them all up on my Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage, and other CD-Quality stuff on Google Drive as well (the rest I have on Google Music, but those are my old mp3s only). Just DO NOT back them up on Google Music or the main Apple iCloud for Music (name?) because they will automatically DOWNSAMPLE your tracks to mp3s (it's like being poured a $300 glass of great scotch, and then someone spits in it lol)! OneDrive and Drive will leave them as is.
Veggie all those amps or DACs appear to be desktop ones. You must buy for what setup you want most. For me, I really prefer portable setups as I sometimes like to listen to my headphones while riding on the train. You want to make sure you have an amp/DAC COMBO for best results, not just one or the other (though I've never seen a DAC w/o an amp as of yet). If you're just listening at home, then I would ask/look around on here to see what people think about those desktop amp/DACs and then go from there. But if you want portability, I recommend looking at the 3 I mentioned in my last post. I have never tried the FiiO E18K, though again I did own the E6 and E11k (now A3) amps and they were great. So I can only really attest to the Astrapi and the HA-2. But it looks like the E18K would be a perfect "in-between" of those two (though it's really much closer to the HA-2). The HA-2 is said to sound a little better from reviews I've read, so up to you if you wanna pay extra for that. If you wanted to go higher than that, I could suggest 1 or 2, but I cannot attest to them being better since I never tried them (the CO I did of course, but again, I personally didn't think it sounded any different at all).
Update: You can actually get the E18K (if interested)
here on Massdrop for about $5 cheaper, but you must buy it by the end of the day on 1/27 or 1/28. Not sure though on Massdrop's return policy (or if they even have one), so if you are interested, I'd
e-mail them ASAP and ask before buying.
Thank you again for the kind compliments. It took a lot of time, question-asking, patience, and persistence to learn what I know now, but knowing it as not only saved me money, but made music-listening more fun for me than it EVER really was before. As much as I love listening to music off speakers, it just doesn't sound as great as it does on headphones. And when you have NO weak links....... great quality song files/sources, a solid amp/DAC, and awesome headphones........ the results can be spectacular!