Or… Just be very happy that you don’t need to spend anything because you already have a set up you like 
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Yes, copy that SenyorC. But you know how us audiophiles are - always
wanting that last tiny measure !!
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Just looking for a bit of advice on a possible trade I may be doing very soon.
Another enthusiast has offered me their pretty much brand new Cayin N3 Pro for my set of Fidue Sirius A91 iems. Honestly I’ve been hoping to acquire a new dap here lately, but really just haven’t been able to afford to do so. I love the A91; it’s tuned pretty much perfectly for my tastes and is almost double the N3 Pro’s price retail-wise (which isn’t that big of a deal to me, really; just a detail). And I have my Shanling M3s that I still love. What would you guys do in this situation? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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FYI - Zampotech is gearing up for another SW51+ run.
I might order one. Lord knows I don’t need another amp, but this one sounds too good to pass up.
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I want to send him money for this line alone:
I didn’t spend the income I received from selling the third batch of amplifiers on women and alcohol (which I sincerely regret), but used it to buy professional machine tools for the production of cases.
Alas, I don’t need another tube amp…
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IMO it’s among the best tube amplifiers under $1K.
The amp it’s most similar to is the Haggerman Tuba, and I by preference use my SW51+ with NOS Mullard tubes (a $10 cost) over my Tuba with NOS Tungsram tubes.
If he’s making more I’ll sing it’s praises.
Having said that if you’re set with <$1000 tube amps it’s not necessarily worth having it in addition.
Lead times are,also very long.
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I figure if I order one now, I’ll have it sometime before the pandemic lets us go back to work from the corporate office.
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Thanks for the heads up @ProfFalkin! I’ve officially got one on order now. This will be my first tube amp. I couldn’t resist at that price and with all the praise it’s getting. Not sure what will arrive first, my Verite Closed or SW51+. It sure would be a good day if they arrived at the same time!
This also saved me about $1400. I was dangerously close to adding a Pendant to my VC order at the discounted price of $1799. Not that I would have been disappointed with the Pendant, but I really didn’t need to spend that much so soon after emptying my wallet on the VC.
The last link in the chain is a quality DAC. I got convinced over on ASR to go by measurements on DAC’s, but I am second guessing this recently. I have a Topping E30 and don’t have any complaints, but I have been itching for a Bifrost 2 after all the stellar impressions from everyone. Anybody made the jump from a cheap DAC with excellent measurements to a high-end multibit or R2R DAC and care to share their thoughts on the matter?
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A post was merged into an existing topic: General purchase advice: Ask your questions/for advice here!
Good morning everyone. Can someone explain how music fed to a separate dac/amp from an iPhone doesn’t suffer from already passing through the iPhone’s dac. It seems like the data would already be compromised after finding it’s way through the lower quality dac first.
Thank you so much.
If you use an external DAC, connected via either the Lightning port, or wirelessly via Bluetooth, the iPhone’s DAC is never involved. The raw, digital (or in the case of Bluetooth, a differently encoded, but still purely digital) data is sent to the DAC, and the DAC does all the work to convert that back to an analog signal.
DACs output analog signals (Digital to Analog Converter), so they don’t output a digital signal in the first place, and you don’t have a DAC feeding a DAC as it makes no sense to do so.
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Thank you Torq, but I am still confused. You said that a dac outputs an analog signal, so doesn’t that mean that the digital information stored on the iPhone has passed through the iPhones’s dac to become analog information? If so couldn’t that information be less than complete or authentic?
Thanks
If you’re using a DAC that is separate from the iPhone, then the iPhone’s internal DAC is NOT used at all. The iPhone just passes the original digital data to the separate/external DAC in question.
On any iPhone since the iPhone 7, the internal DAC is only used for the speakers/ear-piece built into the phone.
You can’t feed analog data to a DAC, so the situation you’re describing cannot occur.
Torq, Thank you I think I understand now.
I believe your question has been asked and answered. It’s a reasonable question. There is no risk of the degradation of the digital data as it proceeds from its storage origin until it reaches the DAC and is converted to analog form.
Separate but related, you might find audio upsampling and the Chord Hugo M-Scaler interesting.
Hello all, I was directed here as I wait for access to the Purchase Advice section.
I currently have an AK120m2 paired with J. Harvey Audio Angie CIEM that I’ve used for travel. However, at home I wanted to investigate going to a more traditional headphone so I can listen to music at my desk using the AK120m2 as my DAC/AMP.
Currently there is a DC Aeon 2 Closed for sale on this site. I know it is marketed as a portable headset and I think the folding mechanism is pretty cool. However, some full size headsets don’t breath well from smaller powered devices and wanted to ask the community for their input on the DC Aeon 2. I have seen a video where the reviewer said it did pair well with the Dragonfly Red so I have hopes that it can pair with a USB / Battery powered device well, but I would like some feedback.
Also comparison would the Focal Radiance or perhaps ZMF Eikon be a better fit? They aren’t as portable, but still suitable for me. Thoughts on moving up to the Stellia or Verite, worth moving up?
Music I listen too is mostly acoustic female tracks some male. While you may think this means I prefer a tube sound my main rig is Naim Unity 2 with Nola Contender Speakers. They matched really well and provide a full soundstage with good dynamics. For me, I enjoy the emotions of music, not its technical reproduction. Like my wine, I don’t necessarily know what is good, but I know what I like. Fun, warm, easy to listen too over long working sessions at my desk. Now, my wife is a different story. This system also had to please her which was a much more difficult task. For her, the difference between the Red Dawn and the Blue Heaven were so drastic and immediate that in just a few seconds she knew we had to have the Red Dawn. The store owner looked at me and said “She has a much better ear than you or me.”
Luckily, my ear is not that great and I don’t need perfection. I do find the sound of the traditional ANC travel headset a bit lacking. I prefer passive isolation to active noise cancellation and ANC hollows out the music to me.
Thank you for your thoughts!
Roger
If one is looking for good amps, this recent video by ABYSS may help your treasure hunt. There are options for the different wallets out there as well.
Needless to say that this list is biased to their products and it’s a somewhat short list. But that doesn’t mean they’re not fit for other applications (cans).
Cheers. 
@Roger-Houston , were you unable to create a new thread or to post to an existing thread? If you had created a new thread, the mods would have closed it immediately and moved your post to either this one, or the General Purchase Advice thread or perhaps to the Aeon 2 thread because they’re trying to limit the number of very specific threads. That was a long-winded way of saying you posted at the right place.
If you look at that Aeon 2 thread I linked to, there are a lot of informative posts about how current-hungry the Aeon 2 is (see here for an example), so driving it from a DAP probably isn’t very practical.
It wasn’t clear if you want a portable or home solution, or both. If you’re looking at portable DAC/amps to pair with your DAP, you’d need to check the amp specs to see if they provide enough current. The new ifi Diablo looks interesting, but I don’t see anything about current in the specs. Maybe @SebastienChiu can advise on the Diablo or other ifi amps that might work.
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@PaisleyUnderground - Thank you. What I’m looking for is a headphone to replace my IEM using my DAP. The reason I went with an AK in the first place was not to have say my phone be the source and have to tether it to a separate AMP.
My question is what headphones can I look at to use with my DAP. At home I use it as a DAC/AMP as I can hook it to my computer. So I’m looking for what headphones are less current hungry as you put it that can work in a mobile application if not the Aeon 2s?
Thank you,