Nah, but I sometimes need to check the prices of some of the best recommended stuff and put them out there for all to see. Nothing personal, just business… 
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Yes I think I will be getting used TT2 in the near future.
Using HQPlayer +TT2 be better than TT2+MScaler?
Tried HQ Player last night thanks to @Audio_Prom for the first time and the difference was huge listening to my EDM with SU-9 >Cayin iha-6>LCD-5.
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That’s awesome! A cheap but effective potential upgrade, eh? 
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I’m not sure $221.90 is cheap for most people, but better than $1,000’s for new gear.
Yeah, that’s what I meant - in comparison to the MScaler mentioned previously.
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A computer capable of running HQ player without artifacts is not an insignificant cost either, assuming you don’t already have one.
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Long post incoming:
I acquired an IE600 as my first IEM. Ran it off the apple dongle for the first week I owned it and the only gripe I had was that it didn’t image whatsoever. All sounds overlapped and every piece of the drum kit in Reflection by Tool was rendered in the same location.
I knew this imaging with the Apple dongle and IE600 was off because my desktop chain of Bifrost 2/64 → Ferrum Oor → LCD-5 places each piece of the intro drum sequence into 6 distinct areas (there’s center, center left, center lefter, far left, slightly right of center and far right). Then the cymbals start at 1:03 in the far left. I then hooked up the IE600 to my desktop chain and the lack of imaging disappeared. No longer was everything in one overlapping blob in front of me. I hooked up the apple dongle to the Oor and it was a blob again. So this means the Bifrost 2/64 is doing something to the signal to create the imaging.
Since it’s a bit impractical to carry my desktop chain with me to work, I decided to do a shootout between the Qudelix 5K and Chord Mojo 2. Both are hooked up to my iPhone via USB.
I’m going to keep this comparison brief. With Reflection by Tool as the test track, the Mojo 2 creates the image I expect from my desktop setup. The Qudelix 5K is one blob again, albeit a slightly wider blob than the dongle. On the 5K, the far left and far right sounds from the drum kit are both rendered in the front and overlap the center drums. There’s no sense of space between the sounds.
I focus on imaging because it’s a binary criteria i.e. it’s either present or it’s not. Not some subjective term like clarity or timbre or dynamics. And I want to emphasize that these are my subjective, sighted impressions. I personally would love to do some volume-matched A/B testing because I feel pretty confident that if I can only listen to the Lateralus album by Tool, I can distinguish between DACs. However; I’m not a dogmatic person and not going to die on that hill without testing.
I’ve been into audiophile headphones for 4 years (though I grew up having headphones on most of the time). I want to believe DACs don’t make a difference but just this one track by Tool has changed my entire opinion.
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Sweet, glad you found a portable combo for your ie600 that you can be satisfied with!
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Nice post. For me the test track is often “Mercy Mercy Mercy” by Joe Zawinul from Cannonball Adderly: Live at the Club. Actually a studio cut, it requires good imaging, and the BiFrost 2/64 makes it sound as good as vinyl and nice speakers.
As a side note, I’d like to hear or see a shoot-out between some of the portable options including the Questyle M15, Dragonfly Cobalt, Qudelix5K and the iFi Go Bar.
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And I’d love to see all the dongles compared to the Mojo 2.
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I now believe that I have enough mobile material to be able to paint my own picture of this topic.
Maybe I will share my assessments in the near future, but I can already say one thing with certainty, it is and will be complicated and, if necessary, question common assessments and reviews.
Because direct comparisons produce a variety of results that you/I actually didn’t expect.
But I can already anticipate one answer, DAC/amps make a huge difference, especially with in-ears.
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Will try that as an imaging track. Thanks!
A few days ago I inquired WaveTheory (Youtuber) for some tracks that would show busy very passages. He shared a bunch but the easiest one for me was the following track:
The apple dongle fell apart at 8’01" where as the KA2 dongle didn’t. That was the very first time I was able to notice a difference between DACs w.r.t. resolution after almost 3 years in this hobby. 
Should you’re interested in more tracks he has the following playlist:
Cheers.
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Oh thanks for sharing. I love some Nightwish and can always use an excuse to listen to them 
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I’d vote for adding the Emotiva Big Ego+ as a double-digit price point for comparison.
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A question for those of you more versed in higher quality recording than me (I have worked in studios but none were really high end) that was sparked by a comment from @GoldenSound in the Holo May thread…
At what point do the current DACs surpass the ADC’s used in the majority of recordings?
ADCs do advance but it seems to be at a much more relaxed pace than DACs. Also, a very large proportion of music was either recorded before the digital domain or was passed to digital quite some time ago. I remember working in a studio in the 90’s where they were very reluctantly introducing digital recording capabilities (rather than recording everything on SVHS and then converting).
So at what point do DACs cease to matter in this case?
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They did…probably 20 years ago. An awful lot of pro audio equipment was mediocre by today’s standards. Think HD 600s running off small 4 jack headphone amps. Think making mastering decisions off of small monitor speakers in a room with questionable acoustics. Think running the signal through some blasted effects pedal / algorithm that cut away all the nuances.
As constantly exposed to music and as live performers, many of the people don’t have great hearing either. Even violinists have hearing asymmetry issues.
These may not replicate the source so much as perform as impressionistic painters of what’s left in the source. Sure, they take a grainy photograph and turn it into a Monet or a Van Gogh. It’s what they have to work with. If you like the interpretation it’s great.
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I think it in part depends on which particular area you’re looking at.
Ignoring audibility and speaking purely from a mechanical standpoint, whilst an ADC with a noise floor of say -90dB means that resolving down to -120dB is arguably pointless, things like THD, phase alteration etc, are cumulative and so it’s not really a case of at which point it ‘stops’ mattering (from an absolute standpoint anyway), because it always will matter.
Two components chained together, each having a SINAD of -100dB (0.001% THD+N), would not result in a system performance of -100dB SINAD. It’d result in about -94dB (0.002% THD+N), because you have to sum the THD+N together, rather than taking the value of the weakest link in the chain.
Additionally, whilst the noise floor of a device may be at a certain level, this does not mean that content below this level is nonexistant or impossible to be resolved and/or heard.
You can have a noise floor of -50dB but still resolve and hear a signal at -60dB either when measuring through things like FFT gain, or naturally when listening.
You can still hear someone talking even in a loud concert venue as a real world example.
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After experiencing a humbling event with the Apple dongle i.e. I think my dongle was defective from my previous comment in this thread. I tried my friend’s and it was able to image Reflection by Tool appropriately. I’ve set forth to do some blind A/B testing with the Schiit Bifrost 2/64 and the Holo Spring 3 KTE over the coming month+. I’ll also mix in some long term sighted impressions over this time as well. I’m going to take my time with this and try to do it as much justice as I can. Measure twice, cut once as they say.
I plan to use both my stereo (DAC(s) → Benchmark HPA4 → AHB2) and LCD-5 headphones (DAC(s) → HPA4). I have two Roon endpoints that I’m going to group together and play songs simultaneously so it’ll be as simple as changing the input on the HPA4. HPA4 fortunately remembers the volume you have an input set to so this should allow seamless switching (side note: I wish all preamps had this feature). Volume matching for the stereo will be done using REW, UMIK-1, and pink noise. Volume matching headphones will be difficult because I can’t seal the headphone around the UMIK-1 so I think this’ll need to be done by ear and/or sealing the headphone’s cup as much around the microphone as possible.
Posting this here because I genuinely believe this is the most level headed and diverse of thinking audio forum i.e. one that isn’t a complete echo chamber. Which is a testament to the mods and kindness of the community. Any advice to methodology or in general is appreciated.
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