[magicalmouse]

hi i am looking for a portable headphone amplifier or amp/dac that has or can be made to (firmware) sound like a valve amp (or even be a valve amp) ie lush and immersive.

I have looked at cayin and woo but too expensive and little bear (too short battery life and other issues) - any ideas, i only use 3.5mm single ended.

I have a cayin n3 pro and want to replicate the triode sound with an amp or amp/dac for use with my laptop and other daps.

thanks

d

 

[magicalmouse]

any ideas?

d

 

[nicholas1213]

Personally I still find chord mojo a very strong candidate - to me it is warmish sounding with lush mid. It can be a quite dated product but it is a very powerful package put together in such small form factor. The battery could be an issue but there are a lot of work-around to make more of a permanent desktop setup.

I have not tried ifi products but I am not sure if they will give you the sound that you've described.

 

[CarlosBryant]

cayin n3 pro

it is built on AKM AK4490EN
you can see a lot of devices on it
it is quite old, the choice is quite large
I would recommend listening to some new DACs
most likely you will like what you hear there
progress since AK4490EN has stepped forward

 

[kismetsky]

Look into Burr-Brown - very full and 'lush' to me.