[spaark]

I remember reading that the AKG K702s are quite power hungry, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Mac is struggling driving these. Volume is 100%, right? Like lorriman said, when you put the volume way up on an amp (you don't have a separate amp, but I think the effect is the same), you start to get distortion and it can be audible. Also, the output impedance of the Mac's soundcard could be quite high, which again could introduce distortion. Anything less than 10 ohms with the K702 is fine.
 
Expect a cleaner, more detailed and more neutral sound with the cmoy.

 

[zz2k9]

Quote:

I remember reading that the AKG K702s are quite power hungry, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Mac is struggling driving these. Volume is 100%, right? Like lorriman said, when you put the volume way up on an amp (you don't have a separate amp, but I think the effect is the same), you start to get distortion and it can be audible. Also, the output impedance of the Mac's soundcard could be quite high, which again could introduce distortion. Anything less than 10 ohms with the K702 is fine.
 
Expect a cleaner, more detailed and more neutral sound with the cmoy.

cheers fella

 

[zz2k9]

can someone quickly educate me how the macbook pro has an Input impedance: > 20 kΩ and what it means for using a 200 ohm headphone

 

[MrScratch]

If I remember correctly, all the recent iMacs and Macbooks (2008-today) on the headphones/line-out have an output impedance of ~24 ohms @ 1kHz. The Mac Mini seems to have an even lower output impedance.

The "Input impedance: > 20 kΩ" spec refers to the microphone/line-in input impedance so it has nothing to do with headphones.

 

[zz2k9]

ok makes sense. So im still comparing the headphone jack on mac to that of the dvd player. Can it be that the dvd players headphone out is not powerful enough, because there is a warmth with the mac audio compared to the dvd player with optical. Should optical be better or is that not the case. Will attaching a cmoy to the dvd player make it better or should i just stick to using mac sound card? 
audio quality is fiddly  

 

[zz2k9]

suddenly I'm enjoying my music much more using the direct headphone port. thanks for the suggestion. 

 

[DarkWolf]

The Cmoy is an amp, obviously. An amp should be connected a line level output. (This is a fixed volume, low power signal meant to be amplified without introducing distortion.) Either of your Sony devices that except digital input are likely to have a line out on the rear. You can also plug the Cmoy right into the output on the computer. As someone said, when using the digital out on a computer, you want to set the volume to max. When using a computer's analogue out, you will usually want to use around 50% volume and then dial up or down on the amp.
 
It seems you will have options, so try out each piece to see which gives you the best sound. My guess is that there won't be a big difference. The phones or speakers are the most important, followed by amplification. In my experience, DACs will have the least gap in performance from one to the next. All the DACs in your inventory should be in roughly the same league. Don't get me wrong though, a really nice DAC is noticeably better than an average DAC when the rest of the system is up to spec.