so very true regarding colouring the sound.
When a person purchases a dac they are basically seeking a colourized interpretation of what the "designer" provides in a finished product. I wont even get into cabling as an addition to change sound signature
Dacs can sound close to one another but I often find that one will "sound" different to our human ear.
Regardless of 2 channel or headphones we are all seeking pleasing sound to our ears. That is in fact looking for media translated to analog music to your ears. This is all colourized to a certain extent and also how the music is mastered.
With my 2 channel and my tube dac setup I cant transform my system to sound perfect for classic rock, piano, strings, accapella, electronica fast beat to female jazz vocals. With a solid state dac you cannot roll of the highs and provide meaty vocals then suddenly change the "house sound" to meet upbeat fast precise beats for electronica. This where I'm quite surprised my Totem Earth speakers can do well in a wide variety of music. It can be fast and with tubes I can lay back the music with finesse. My totem forests could not match the speed of some electronica. But this is why I've been looking for a solid state dac to match more of the electronica side of my music even though swapping to kt66 or 6550 tubes can keep up with electronica.
I find the HD800's an extremely versatile headphone in that I can lay it back or make it perform dynamically. This is where the source can be an "equalizer" in how you want to translate the music. The soundstage is quite large with the Hd800 but with tubes i can almost create an HD650 sound signature just by swapping tubes. The Hd650 does have an intimate smaller sound stage with heavy tones. Oddly I cannot get the meaty vocals from an hd650 using a Concero sabre HD dac even though the HD650 is a rich lush sounding headphone.
My 02 amp does a good job in amplifying the source. This is where I manipulate the source to match the timbre of the music. Seems human ears love overtones and compression. I'm always looking for something pleasing to my ears........