General purchase advice: Ask your questions/for advice here!

Killer powerful headphone amp with sweet preamping? Circa $1500 used ?

Every component will change the sound characteristics of your system.

So the idea is, depending on the kind of sound you are looking for, you chose your components.

And I highly, highly, recommend that you EQ your 99 Classics (or any headphone for that matter), to bring them to your liking. Don’t settle for the EQ settings you will find here or in other sites. Use them as a base and then experiment. Make the ones that sound better to you.

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I owned Meze 99 Classics and Moondrop Starfield, not Aria. Ran both straight from phone and through either iFi hip-dac or JDS Labs Atom+ stack. I never noticed that much of a sonic difference with amplification because both the 99 Classics and Starfield are ridiculously easy to drive.

EQ will make a far bigger change in the sound of the 99 Classics than any source gear. They’re very bassy headphones, so many people use EQ to tame the bass. I’ve always thought, “Well, if there’s too much bass, buy a different headphone instead of EQing,” but to each their own! :slight_smile:

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Hello @pk500 and @rex4539,

That’s good to know, would have that in mind for future purchases.

I would get in to that when i put my hands on them.

That’s nice, just what i’m looking for, basically a plug-and-play that sound good for my needs.

Now, I would wait to get the gears and try all what you guys have recommended.

Thanks for the reply.

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$1500 or so. Whats a good headamp that has nice preamping control? DAC to be a Qutest in this scenario.

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which sound is warmer, not harsh or bright, treble bothers my ears, looking at buying a new Dac. Was Looking at SMSL DO200, SU-9, Loxjie D50 or the D1se, i have an SMSL SP200 Amp.

If you dont like bright and treble boths you then the THX line of amps isn’t correct. Swap the SP200 for something Class A like. Jotunheim or Asgard maybe.

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Yea i will look into that. I just got the amp for less then $150. and I heard dacs can help with that

I don’t own any of those DACs, nor have I heard them. However, they all seem to use ESS chipsets and therefore may all sound brightish and about the same. In my experience the iFi DACs (e.g., ZenDAC) with Burr-Brown chipsets are the least bright and least harsh in this price bracket.

You might also use an equalizer (EQ) to cut the treble and boost the bass.

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Loving the sound of the Focal Clear MG, but I need more sound stage. Recommendations for something with similar or better sound, comfort, and build quality? I think I have been landing on ZMF. Missing any?

I’m a big fan of my Atticus from ZMF. Had the Celestee and Elegia, but common concern about the build quality of the headband always dissuaded me from keeping them. The weight from ZMF could be a noticeable difference.

Tube amps often increase perceived sound stage and sense of immersion. However, many of them do best with 300 ohm or 600 ohm headphones (not Focal).

I put the Sennheiser HD 800 S above the Clear OG on sound quality, details, and comfort. It certainly has a much wider sound stage and comes alive on a tube amp. It doesn’t have a lot of bass without EQ/tubes, nor does it have Focal’s punch.

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The ZMF Auteur is what I’d check out.

This is VERY general and only for comparison purposes, but here’s the sonic signature in my experience of using all three major DAC chips with a variety of headphones:

ESS/Sabre: Bright
AKM: Neutral
Burr-Brown: Warm

Again, just a very general analysis. But it’s held up as truth with a handful of different DACs and cans.

I think it’s been mentioned before that it also depends on who the “cook” is that put the ess/sabre dac together. I’ve listened to Matrix and Wyred 4 sound, I wouldn’t call them bright. I’ve listened to the Holo May and then to the Wyred 4 sound 2v2se anniversary with the ESS Sabre 9038PRO DAC chip. The only way I could say the Wyred was a little bright would be that I listened to the May with an Aeolus and the Wyred with an Auteur. So, not a true, fair comparison (and I’m talking about more of a comparison of the headphones than the dac’s as I consider the sound of the May and the Wyred really close to each other) but I still do not consider the Wyred as bright. But I find it hard to compare an SMSL dac to a Wyred or Matrix dac. I listened to an SMSL quite a while back, had issues with usb and sent it back. So, I can’t comment on how bright they are compared to anything I’ve listened to over the last year.

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My experience with most low-end Delta Sigma DACs (including ESS, AKM, Cirrus, etc.) is that they convert air and atmosphere that should sound like innocuous “wisps” into piercing high frequency notes. This may follow from poor noise filtering, dated hardware, processing artifacts that exaggerate specific frequencies, etc.

All DACs are getting better with time and ESS products aren’t nearly as a bright/whiny as they used to be. In this price bracket I’d still go with Burr-Brown, and still cringe every time someone mentions ESS. Bad memories.

My point was just not to label all ESS/Sabre chips as bright. And at the lower/entry price point the consensus seems true that lower price point ESS/Sabre chips are bright.

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You and @generic are both right, and it’s very important to consider other aspects of the implementation aside from the chip. I might point to the Dragonfly Cobalt as a relatively cheap ESS DAC that is not overly bright. You’ll note that @Torq wrote quite a bit about all Dragonflies (Dragonflys) and I don’t recall him criticizing any of them as bright. I have the Cobalt and Black, and think the Cobalt is slightly warmer.

And yes, I generally prefer the BurrBrown signature, when comparing the two.

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Yep. To be fair, all of my experience with these various chips has been with entry-level and low mid-fi products. Nothing even close to TOTL.

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Hello everyone!

I have a pair of Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro (250Ohm) and in search of a good Dac/amp or a Dac + Amp Combo with a maximum budget of around 200€.

From what I found the Topping DX3 Pro + and Ifi Zen Dac V2 are the best choices, but now which one should i choose, and why?

If you have other advices, feel free to tell, since I’m new to the HiFi World.

I would buy from amazon.it

Thanks in advance!

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