I’ve been missing the power required to make my HD600’s shine when I leave the house, So after a little experimenting with my portables, I came up with a solution.
I’ve paired my LG G7 ThinQ with my FIIO A3 and Topping NX3s. For a investment in these two amps of less than $100, I found what I was looking for, the ability to push my HD600’s to the limits that my ears could stand without distortion. Just don’t flip the bass boost switches on both amps at the same time, or the combo sounds like shit. Only thing is, this stack won’t fit in your shirt pocket. The things we do for the love of music.
By the way, I was a near miss by last Mondays tornados that tore the he’ll out of Dayton. By near miss, I mean 1/2 a block. But me and mine are fine, and no damage to my property. My son gets to brag that both of his home towns Celina, Ohio and Dayton were both hit by EF3 & EF4 tornados on the same night. Hope everyone else fared as well as we did.
I once tried the Fiio BTR3 as BT reviecer to the 3.5 single ended in from the Fiio Q1II(used for 50bucks on ebay) and connected my 660s with balanced cable - double amped is not recommended
was not the best sounding solution, but worked somehow
after a week or two with this setup, I got the Chord mojo used from ebay and the ifi xDSD
A long time ago … (in a galaxy far, far away …) … back far enough in fact that Astell&Kern only had two products for sale (the original AK100 and AK120) my EDC music setup got a bit out of hand.
I’d gone for the Shure SE846, since I didn’t want to mess about with custom IEM’s (which pretty much meant JH Audio or Ultimate Ears). And I’d bought the AK120 as a DAP, as an upgrade over my then-iPod. But the AK120 made the SE846 sound wonky, so I added the RSA Intruder, and got balanced cables for the SE846.
That was a somewhat annoying stack to carry/use, and at the time more than I ever thought one could spend, let alone would spend, on a portable setup. It was a far cry from my old Sony Discman, Headroom Supreme and original ER4-S … in their custom bag, along with big-arsed 4-D cell battery supply.
Later I swapped out the Intruder for a Chord Mojo, fed via a special optical cable from the AK120. That was just as much of a pain to carry, but it did sound markedly better.
Things are much simpler today …
Though you never would have convinced me that an individual IEM, or a single DAP, would soon be selling for what that entire stack w/ IEMs cost back then …