Your headphones deserve an amp that’ll get the best out of them and highly doubt you’ll find that in an all-in-one unit. I’d find the right headphone amp and get a separate DAC/streamer to handle the rest. Is it really worth the sonic compromise just to have one box instead of two?
All in one unit for headphones- help me decide
This is a follow up to a previous thread. I am looking for an all in one unit to run headphones (Sennheiser HD800S) at a newly acquired vacation home. I am looking for a Dac, headphone amp, streamer, ability to play files from a SSD (internal or external) and self contained software/app. Based upon my spending time at Axpona, I have the following 4 candidates:
Auralic Altair (g1.1 or 2.1)
Naim Atom headphone edition
Hifi Rose (250 or ?)
Cambridge eVO (150 or 75)
I can easily review the features ( so limit your comments), but I am interested if anyone has experience with the relative sonic performance through headphones of these units. I am not interested in the performance through speakers and their amp output, only headphones. I have a suspicion that since the HIFI rose and Cambridge focus more on display and bells and whistles, their sonic performance is a bit below the other two.
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@soix - point well taken. I am treading a bit softly here as the last time I really lived with headphones was in college 40+ years ago (had stax electrostats back then). So perhaps I view this in two steps, with the second more expensive step going the route you suggest after I have lived with a one box set up and confirmed my headphone life is here to stay. I figure with my just purchased HD800S and the Naim or Auralic, my investment is in the 5-6k range, which is a pretty easy step to make before upgrading to something more serious and delegating the all in one to one of the kids or grandkids. |
@meiatflask If you truly want to go a budget route, I'd consider a Poly Mojo2 as your interim step - it's a portable headphone amp and you can get them $500-800 (used/new). You can connect it to your phone or external streamer (including Chord's poly). This can then become something you can use for travel or share withe kids or grandkids. I think you'll appreciate your Sennheiser's on it. |
- 11 posts total