[Painterspal]

Hi
 
Until recently I did all my headphone listening on the move or in hotels when I'm away from home. I have an iphone 3Gs, Corda Stepdance and Shure 530s/Senn HD650. With an 12v ac adapter the Stepdance does a suprisingly good job driving the Senns.
 
I've been planning my next upgrade, and was thinking of either buying a CLAS to liberate my iphone's hidden potential, or else buying the iBasso Dx100. But then, as an experiment I tried the Stepdance with my home source Meridian 588. Needless to say it sounded amazing and the CD player completely blew away the plucky phone. I was completely hooked by it in fact... why hadn't I tried this before?! So now I have a real dilemma.
 
My question is, will either of my upgrade options get me close to that kind of source performance the 588 is delivering or, if that road is always going to leave me a bit disappointed, would I be better off sticking with my existing portable rig and investing in a home amp to really exploit the potential of the classy Meridian and HD650s? And if so, which one? ($1K budget) I mainly listen to classical and a mixed bag of rock.
 
Welcome your thoughts...

 

[lilkoolaidman]

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but are you using lossless files on your iPhone? Or at least 320kbps MP3? iTunes rips to 128 by default. I mean, obviously your dedicated CD player will sound better, but 128 files wouldn't even be close lol.
 
Also, I would recommend the Fostex HP-P1 as I was impressed with it, and you get an amp that was capable of driving some LCD-2s pretty well and a DAC to bypass the iPhone's internal DAC and it's a smaller form factor than the CLAS + Amp. Still quite hefty though. If you have the money for an iBasso Dx100, though, that would be the most portable IMO. Apparently, FWIR, it's quite buggy but with it using Android, it has the potential for fixes and add-ons.

 

[Painterspal]

Thanks for your thoughts and I should have said, yes I'm using Apple lossless files.