[uglijimus]

Not to steal Anoobis' "weak link in set-up" thread, but it got me to thinking. For people who have the 3 devices in their set-up, DAP, amp, and cans, how much of each of them attribute to the SQ that reaches our ears?

If I had to take a guess, I'd say

DAP-15%
Amp-25%
Headphones-60%

Of course I don't have much experience, but I have tried out at least three different DAPs with my cans and there wasn't a great difference.

What do you guys think?

 

[shigzeo]

daps at least of good quality are only different by a very small margin. amps are an even smaller difference. or they should be. if your music suddenly sounds night and day differnent - something is being done strange in the dap, the amp. headphones, where the music comes from is the final word on sound. they can sound very different but in blind tests, it is funny to find that often your favourite dap may not be your favourite. they differences unless you use very sensitive headphones and low imp are very very small indeed.

 

[majkel]

All good DAPs are in their own low league, so choosing any of them won't change much. Best sources are standalone DACs or desktop CDP's of a decent class. DAPs are no compare to good desktop sources, and lossless support doesn't change much actually. So, while they are the bottleneck in the system, when the amp and the headphones are pretty good, you don't actually need to care about which DAP to choose. Take any good sounding DAP and don't be mislead by the line-out. Headphone outs of Cowons or iRivers still provide better SQ than iPod's line-out IMHO.
I agree that the most influence have the headphones.

 

[shigzeo]

well if this is any indication of their headphone out... i will be very sad to hear that ipod has worse quality. take a look at cowon and iriver trying to drive low imp headphones and giving a very unbalanced sort of wave. headphone and line out driving amp are two different things.

whether you like the sound of the line out or the headphone does nto make a different to sq. it only means you prefer one or the other. a machien can tell which is actually higher quality - we judge what we like.

i just finished a 10 months romance with cowon d2 - quite a rough ride. no matter which is better for head-out, i do prefer the sound from my ipod nano - probably as it can do gapless which is direly important for trance.

 

[BrookR1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by majkel /img/forum/go_quote.gif All good DAPs are in their own low league, so choosing any of them won't change much. Best sources are standalone DACs or desktop CDP's of a decent class. DAPs are no compare to good desktop sources, and lossless support doesn't change much actually. So, while they are the bottleneck in the system, when the amp and the headphones are pretty good, you don't actually need to care about which DAP to choose. Take any good sounding DAP and don't be mislead by the line-out. Headphone outs of Cowons or iRivers still provide better SQ than iPod's line-out IMHO. I agree that the most influence have the headphones.

X2...my 15 year old Sony Discman has a built in DAC and it blows away my iPods. I have a portable amp that I used with my iPods, and I tried it with my Discman, but realized I didn't need it. All it does is place a thin veil over the sound. The only time I use my iPod now is for when I exercise.

 

[oicdn]

Switching from DAP to DAP, portable atleast, makes a huge difference. Switching from a Shuffle 1st gen to a Mobiblu cube to a Nano have huge differences between them and are all about the same price.....

Albeit not as big a difference as headphones make, but there's a huge difference for sure.

I'de say it's somewhere along the lines of:

Headphones: 70%
Amp: 15%
DAP: 15%

As the differences are HUGELY noticeable in respect to the others. i.e. somebody who has no care in SQ (your typical non-head-fi ipod owner), can easily distinguish between the differences in HPs, but maybe not in source or amp....

 

[Assorted]

The first step in getting great sound, is getting great sounding music files first.

 

[uglijimus]

I think I'm going to have to take my original post back. I just got a M3 Meizu music card and it sounds MUCH better than any other DAP I've ever heard. Maybe it has something to do with the 10 band eq (^_^), but it's incredible. Maybe i'll raise it to 20 or 25 percent.

 

[majkel]

No, it has something to do with a really good codec - Philips UDA1380. It was installed in ihp series iRivers and integrated with the SoC in ifp 700/800/900 series. 10-band equalizer is a good thing, too. You can adjust your player exactly for certain headphones.

shigzeo, I was talking about feeding the amp from the headphone out, not headphones from the line-out.

 

[AudioCats]

To me, it actually depends on the desired SQ level. for a lower end system, source 20%, amp 30%, headphone 40%, cabling 10%.

Once reaching a certain level, it is more like source 25%, amp 30%, headphones 30%, and cabling 15%, the cables become more and more important...

 

[TopPop]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AudioCats /img/forum/go_quote.gif Once reaching a certain level, it is more like source 25%, amp 30%, headphones 30%, and cabling 15%, the cables become more and more important...

I've found this same thing to be true in my speaker rig... with power cables being almost as important as signal cables, and maybe on par with speaker cables!

Given my noobie status and lack of equipment, I still don't stand in a position to give comment re: the headphone chain, but as far as speakers systems are concerned (I image it should be the same, no?), importance is as follows (IMHO):

speakers > source = preamp > power amp > signal cables > speaker cables = AC cables

 

[TopPop]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TopPop /img/forum/go_quote.gif speakers > source = preamp > power amp > signal cables > speaker cables = AC cables

Or maybe:

speakers > preamp > source = power amp > signal cables > speaker cables = AC cables

Not quite sure...

Plus, physical isolation: work on it seriously.

And upgrade your AC outlet. Now.

 

[dspargo]

Headphones then Amp then DAC

 

[Rednamalas1]

Headphone>source>Amp>Cables>interconnects

 

[ken36]

[size=x-large]SYNERGY IS THE WINNER![/size]