[unconfortablynumb]

I recently got the Topping A50s headphone amp, and I must say I am a little confused - it seems as if the volume is slightly lower coming from it than if I plug my headphones directly to my DAC which is a little FiiO K3. I have tried it with my DT-1990, Phillips Fidelio X3's and Koss Porta Pro. Could this be or am I missing something?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I recently got the Topping A50s headphone amp, and I must say I am a little confused - it seems as if the volume is slightly lower coming from it than if I plug my headphones directly to my DAC which is a little FiiO K3. I have tried it with my DT-1990, Phillips Fidelio X3's and Koss Porta Pro. Could this be or am I missing something?

1. The K3 isn't just a DAC, it has a headphone amp circuit. Granted it's USB powered, but it's not like it's just a line stage output.

2. The gain on the K3 is probably higher. Higher gain can risk more noise and can clip sooner, or the more common problem (though not necessarily more audible on the K3 than the other two), you lose range of movement on an analogue potentiometer and maybe have imbalance across both channels.

Think of it like Forza or Gran Turismo. Get a powerful car and give it gear ratios for turning the oval test track into a cruising highway, and you can lose a drag race against a less powerful car if its gear ratios were shorter.

 

[tomb]

I recently got the Topping A50s headphone amp, and I must say I am a little confused - it seems as if the volume is slightly lower coming from it than if I plug my headphones directly to my DAC which is a little FiiO K3. I have tried it with my DT-1990, Phillips Fidelio X3's and Koss Porta Pro. Could this be or am I missing something?

A headphone amplifier starts with a potentiometer as the first item in the circuit. That's the volume control. In actual technical principle, the volume control is there to attenuate. If it wasn't, you could never turn the volume down/off. Depending on DAC, load, and impedances, connecting directly to a DAC without a volume control will often result in higher volume.

If you are talking about differences in maximum volume between DAC vs. amplifier, then see #1 in ProtegeManiac's post.

 

[unconfortablynumb]

1. The K3 isn't just a DAC, it has a headphone amp circuit. Granted it's USB powered, but it's not like it's just a line stage output.

2. The gain on the K3 is probably higher. Higher gain can risk more noise and can clip sooner, or the more common problem (though not necessarily more audible on the K3 than the other two), you lose range of movement on an analogue potentiometer and maybe have imbalance across both channels.

Think of it like Forza or Gran Turismo. Get a powerful car and give it gear ratios for turning the oval test track into a cruising highway, and you can lose a drag race against a less powerful car if its gear ratios were shorter.

Alright, that makes sense. Thought I haven't experienced clipping with this DAC. Should I get another DAC to get the most out of the A50s?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Alright, that makes sense. Thought I haven't experienced clipping with this DAC. Should I get another DAC to get the most out of the A50s?

You might get lower noise and better imaging, but don't expect too much.

More often than not, outside of one DAC being compared being outright bad, it's usually just the output voltage. If two DACs were outputting 2V single ended chances are the difference will be tough to spot.

I personally would, but I wouldn't really encourage others to upgrade as I can not in any way have a good enough guess as to whether the difference will be apparent to you as the K3 already outputs 1.9V. Even though that's not 2V the difference is too small...unless the other DAC was outputting well above 2V without any issues in noise or response (in which case that might make the other DAC sound worse).