[csch92]

i am a noob when it comes to this.

the only source i ever had was an fiio K5 pro ess and i upgraded to the K7 and i noticed a jump in both volume level and clarity
both my meze 109 pro and 660s 2 sounded significant better and cleaner overall

what are you thoughts? is there an limit how noticeable good an amp can go?

 

[Strayngs]

I dont have experience with your headphones but I am of the opinion a good quality amp (especially a desktop amp) should be a big upgrade over a dongle.

 

[dbull12]

I've mostly stopped going on the headphones subreddit because it seems like it's been trending more and more towards the ASR style of "objectivism" where people will just claim that almost all expensive gear is snake oil without having tried it themselves. Some IEMs and headphones don't require much power and will scale less with better amps, but I strongly disagree that you can't get a better sound once you have an amp that measures well with low distortion and can push your headphones to a suitable volume, which seems to be a somewhat widely held belief in that subreddit these days. This is why Topping amps are so popular on Reddit since they're affordable and measure well and have a good amount of power, but many here find them to sound clinical and soulless. Quality of power is as important as quantity of power, and I don't believe that measures of distortion can fully account for the quality of the power.

 

[Strayngs]

I have had a ifi hip dac and a fiio btr5 and both did the job for portable use but comparing them to my desktop proper amps was no contest. Even my A&K CA1000T is noticeably inferior to my home rig.

 

[dunring]

Tech has gotten really good for stuff like USB dongles and Apple made that adapter really well and priced it cheap so they wouldn't get a backlash for removing the 3.5mm plug on their phones. Headphones are getting more efficient at the same time.
Doing a blind, volume matched test is the only thing I can be sure of.