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

The Senn 600 family is not known for staging. Some of this follows from the amp and DAC, but it’ll always be just average.

If you read some discussions on this site, many “scientific” pronouncements are anything but scientific. The ASR/measurements crowd seems happy to judge sound quality based on charts and measurements alone. While there is some truth that many products sound the same or very similar, be cautious. Many brands do use the same AKM, ESS, Cirrus Logic, or other chips. These range from inexpensive Chinese products (e.g., Sabaj, SMSL, FiiO, Topping, etc.) on up to pricey stuff like the $1,300 RME ADI2 fs. Most products using this AKM 4493 DAC chipset will sound roughly similar. However, some do a better job filtering or use better components, etc. and may sound a wee bit better. Some vendors have also screwed up a product due to design mistakes.

A bigger point of consideration is that DACs fall roughly into the “technical purity” camp or the “refined, smoothed, improved” camp. They use different types of technology, and sometimes people like one type of technology over another. The vast majority of cheaper DACs are “Delta Sigma” – to my ears the cheaper ones tend to be flattened and often have bright, whiny treble artifacts. iFi is the exception for both technology and sound quality on the low end. High-end DACs sometimes use exactly the same chips, or are sometimes quite different (see Chord, Holo, Schiit, etc.) Some of us prefer other technologies, as perceived to sound more complete, 3D, and layered, etc. This may follow from having a better way for converting digital files to audio, but they can absolutely be LESS FATIGUING and MORE PLEASANT to use than many Delta Sigma products (experience here: my ears do not lie about pain).

Measurements can’t tell you if a DAC or amp will cause hearing fatigue, ringing, or pain. Many, many expensive speaker and headphone setups cause fatigue, and this generally follows from excessive or poorly-controlled treble. So, I strongly urge you to ignore the a priori “scientifically proven” crowd and listen for yourself. Many of these folks are completely ignorant of human factors and perception research so they fixate on electrical measurements. Hobbyist notions of ‘science’ can be incomplete at best.

Some commentators also see themselves as giant killers: “My cheap XYZ sounds as good as that setup costing 10x more. That stupid rich guy failed a blind test with his super expensive setup. Ha ha ha.” They can either be fully correct (there are many awful but expensive audio setups owned by people with seemingly poor hearing), or fully incorrect. You won’t know for yourself until you hear for yourself, and you can certainly fool yourself through biases and poor test methods.

In the end, audio is a hobby meant for personal enjoyment. Listen to the opinions of others but confirm with your own ears. You won’t know until you try, so ignore all the authoritarians no matter what they believe. To see examples of the debates people have, consider that Schiit Audio sells 3 versions of its $2,000+ Yggdrasil DAC because people have reliably different tastes.

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