AudioBully
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2005
- Posts
- 91
- Likes
- 10
Hi!
My mission is to improve my source as much as I can for around 200$.
I live in Israel, so I don't have a lot of options, and after a lot of reading here, I have narrowed down my possibilities to the two dac/amps in the title. The dac/amp will be used to power my current headphones - Alessandro MS-1s with bowls.
I mainly listen at home, where my music is stored in high-quality files on my computer, which have a very bad on-board sound. When I commute, I have a Zen Touch player and CX-300 to keep me company, but currently I don't intend to use any more equipment with them.
The thing that bothers me the most with my current sound card is the muddiness and total lack of clarity. The highs can get harsh easily, and the bass is very muddy and unrealistic. I can feel that the MS-1s can give me a lot more, If I just feed them with a better signal. Even with my Zen player the MS-1s sounds a lot better.
I'm not looking for an analytical sound, I want my music to be fun, with a tight bass, forward midrange and clean, sharp highs, so pretty much I want to enhance the standard MS-1s characteristics...
The two options I have listed are pretty different, with one being an amp with a dac, and the other more of a dac with an amp, but since I've never had a good amp nor dac, I can't decide which is more important, and that's were you can help me.
I want to know which of these two options will better suit my needs, seeing as I am a student, and don't have a lot of cash to experiment with my setup.
The Move is newer and a little pricier (and comes without psu and baterry, iirc), and the 0404 has a lot of other cool features, which I may or may not end up using (can be used with speakers, guitars, etc.), which makes the choice even harder.
The bottom line is that I want to choose the one that will make my phones "sing" the most, and won't make me want to upgrade for some time.
Sorry about the longish post, and hope you could help me, lately I spend too much time reading these forums, and not enough listening to music!
My mission is to improve my source as much as I can for around 200$.
I live in Israel, so I don't have a lot of options, and after a lot of reading here, I have narrowed down my possibilities to the two dac/amps in the title. The dac/amp will be used to power my current headphones - Alessandro MS-1s with bowls.
I mainly listen at home, where my music is stored in high-quality files on my computer, which have a very bad on-board sound. When I commute, I have a Zen Touch player and CX-300 to keep me company, but currently I don't intend to use any more equipment with them.
The thing that bothers me the most with my current sound card is the muddiness and total lack of clarity. The highs can get harsh easily, and the bass is very muddy and unrealistic. I can feel that the MS-1s can give me a lot more, If I just feed them with a better signal. Even with my Zen player the MS-1s sounds a lot better.
I'm not looking for an analytical sound, I want my music to be fun, with a tight bass, forward midrange and clean, sharp highs, so pretty much I want to enhance the standard MS-1s characteristics...
The two options I have listed are pretty different, with one being an amp with a dac, and the other more of a dac with an amp, but since I've never had a good amp nor dac, I can't decide which is more important, and that's were you can help me.
I want to know which of these two options will better suit my needs, seeing as I am a student, and don't have a lot of cash to experiment with my setup.
The Move is newer and a little pricier (and comes without psu and baterry, iirc), and the 0404 has a lot of other cool features, which I may or may not end up using (can be used with speakers, guitars, etc.), which makes the choice even harder.
The bottom line is that I want to choose the one that will make my phones "sing" the most, and won't make me want to upgrade for some time.
Sorry about the longish post, and hope you could help me, lately I spend too much time reading these forums, and not enough listening to music!
