I am new to this hobby. I purchased a HD6XX and plan to use it with my Sony Xperia 1 V cell phone, that has a 3.5mm jack. I was wondering if I needed a portable dac/amp or just a portable amp and if so what would one recommend? Any assistance one could provide, would be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Haz
Hey Haz,
The Sony will have a DAC/amp built into it, so you have that, but I don’t know the amplifier specs on that phone. It should at least be enough to get you started!
Sony has a great audiophile team, and I have one of their older New Walkman DAPs (digital audio player) which sounded very good and a bit boosted in bass volume, but the output power was a little anemic for some of my harder to drive headphones. Amping power is always a balancing act with battery runtime on compact portable devices. If the Xperia 1V allows OTG usb data output, you ought to be able to connect other USB DACs and an amp or DAC/amp combos in the future, if you are curious to see how much potential performance you can unlock.
There are so many great options out there… over the years I’ve accumulated a couple nice desktop amps that are large and sound amazing, but once upon a time Sennheiser bundled the HD 650 with a small Apogee Groove DAC/amp, which I am able to power straight off my iPad Air’s USB-C port with the right cable, I also just bought a Cavalli Liquid Spark small desktop amp that will be enough, but even a tiny Bluetooth DAC/amp like a Qudelix 5K would be powerful enough (and give you versatility between usb wired at home and Bluetooth when you want wireless).
A very aggressive hug 😂
I haven’t heard the FiiO BTR15 or read enough reviews on it to have an idea how it stacks up against the Qudelix 5k. For what it’s worth, I’d pick a 5k over the BTR5, but the new FiiO is supposed to be an improvement over the old, and I have had about 15 years (oh geez!) of good experiences with a couple FiiO products (amps, DAPS, DAC/amps). I don’t think either would be bad anyway, perhaps you could choose based on which features (or simplicity) you prefer?
I just got a Monoprice Cavalli Liquid Spark. The Liquid Spark is just a compact amp, but even just using random cheap cables I have lying around I’m having a lot of fun listening to cellos (so far) with my HD 800, a headphone described as brutally honest and sometimes fatiguing if using amps with bad synergy, but it’s not stressing me with the Spark ⚡️😃
Evshrugawesome, thanks! I'll think on it a bit. I have a fiio K7 for hifiman x/s edition in my desktop and like it very much. I'm partial to fiio, but the Qudelix k5 is well liked also, decision are hard when it comes to audio. thanks again! 😃
Though it's tiny, it manages to power even high ohm headsets with amazing accuracy. It works great with the drop usb-c to usb-c and my Phillips shp-9600. Soon enough I'll be using the Akoustyx...
I have an external amplifier with no integrated DAC and I only have an xduo xa10 as a dac/amp can I use the xduo xa10 as a dac only with an external amplifier?
So I bought the HD6xx a few weeks back and when I finally got the packages i got some Noir 99. ever happened to any of u guys and how did it get resolved