Pezzab
New Head-Fier
Hello, I thought I'd start my introductory thread with a question regarding DAPs, but here is some more context - tl:dr my specific query is at the very end:
I've been into hifi for many years yet somehow it has never occured to me to investigate the world of portable hifi until I recently decided to buy my son some decent quality IEMs as a gift (we settled on a pair of Final Audio E4000s after a failed trial of some RHA T20is that simply weren't comfortable to wear - he's very happy with his new IEMs).
Pretty soon I found myself disappearing down a rabbit hole of bewildering options and conflicting opinions and somewhat inevitably became very interested in the hobby and resolved myself to the idea of getting myself some IEMs and a DAP to go with them.
Because of the budget I set myself and my priorities I decided to pull the trigger on some mid fi IEMs first and after much tooing and froing decided to go for the Dunu DK 3001 pros.
These arrived yesterday and in a very short space of time I have been blown away by the quality and sound of these tiny devices simply plugged into my iPhone SE listening to music streamed via Roon, Spotify and even the odd YouTube track.
Despite the music collection on my NAS being all FLAC I'm not clear what conversion path this takes via my iPhone but it's safe to say that the sound quality is astounding already across formats - even a YouTube track sounded so incredible it was difficult to tell the difference between it and my local FLAC copy.
So back to my question, if I was to get a DAP (and I'm thinking between $800 to £$1200) aside from other features how much of a difference am I likely to hear compared to my humble iPhone?
I've been into hifi for many years yet somehow it has never occured to me to investigate the world of portable hifi until I recently decided to buy my son some decent quality IEMs as a gift (we settled on a pair of Final Audio E4000s after a failed trial of some RHA T20is that simply weren't comfortable to wear - he's very happy with his new IEMs).
Pretty soon I found myself disappearing down a rabbit hole of bewildering options and conflicting opinions and somewhat inevitably became very interested in the hobby and resolved myself to the idea of getting myself some IEMs and a DAP to go with them.
Because of the budget I set myself and my priorities I decided to pull the trigger on some mid fi IEMs first and after much tooing and froing decided to go for the Dunu DK 3001 pros.
These arrived yesterday and in a very short space of time I have been blown away by the quality and sound of these tiny devices simply plugged into my iPhone SE listening to music streamed via Roon, Spotify and even the odd YouTube track.
Despite the music collection on my NAS being all FLAC I'm not clear what conversion path this takes via my iPhone but it's safe to say that the sound quality is astounding already across formats - even a YouTube track sounded so incredible it was difficult to tell the difference between it and my local FLAC copy.
So back to my question, if I was to get a DAP (and I'm thinking between $800 to £$1200) aside from other features how much of a difference am I likely to hear compared to my humble iPhone?