Do you need? Of course not… food, water, you need. Audio equipment you want. Is the amount of money you are talking about going to have a material impact on your kids? Let’s see, average tuition $35K + per year per kid. What will be the effect on your happiness looking back twenty years from now? You paid .001% more for your kids education or more enjoyable sound system. Will you use this while working… might you be happier while working and eventually earn more money. The question really has nothing to do with audio. Your equipment can be nearly infinitely upgraded to sound better.
Do I actually need a dedicated amp/DAC for my setup?
Hello World!
The obvious answer to the question is "Duh!*" with the asterisk being a caveat for like 0.5% of the time.
Well, I might be in that 0.5% of the time and, being right brain not left brain, I might be in a situation where my lust for the Ferrum Erco Gen2 is really unwarranted.
Current setup:
- Monitor / Destinations:
- Miniot Black turntable for vinyl (yeah, yeah, jokes aside) which has an admirable internal pre-amp
- Naim Atom HD for streaming
- Audiolab 6000 for CDs (for which obviously I’d need a dac/amp)
- Setups:
- A) home hifi station: Phonitor XE / Bifrost 2 / Lokius
- B) at-home work station: JDS Labs Element 3
- C) home personal computer: SMSL M500 Mk3
- D) Remote office work station: Atom stack
So the question: do I really need a better amp/dac in my hifi station if I’m only using it for the CD transport & the Phonitor isn't up to par for my flagship headphones? Is using the turntable pre-amp straight to headphones good enough given that it pumps out great volume?
I’m lusting after the Ferrum Erco G2 DAC/amp, thinking of selling the Phonitor/Bifrost/Lokius --- but really, do I really need it? I can take the cd transport through the SMSL MK3 just fine. If I can just sell the Phonitor-trio setup, I can use that $ to put towards the scholarship I set up for kids at my old high school, which would be nice.
Anyways, would appreciate your insight.
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Daughter’s college fund is set. Daughter’s 401k is set (yep, you can do that, up to 6k/yr for minors), & now that she’s coming of working age, she’s gonna take care of funding half the $ herself. The scholarship I founded was paid for by extra evening freelance because I’m a workaholic. This audio fun-time was founded & funded by the same extra freelance, but due to doctor’s orders that life of extra supplimentary freelance income’s gotta stop: health issues arose from 20 years of working 100+ hour weeks, multiple all-nighters in a row to meet deadlines. I’ve got to clock out at 6pm and that’s that. Which is dang tough switch when your mind & body are set in their Work All The Time Never Relax ways.
Hence, turning for advice to y'all who know worlds more than I ever will about this stuff. |
@master_of_pupppets Your opinion is what matters. Can you upgrade? Sure? Do you need to in order to enjoy music? Definitely not! Here's my alternative. Invest in a (pick one or more):
I love my system and I enjoy my friends systems too - the difference in their room, musical tastes and equipment ends up being irrelevant. I like music and listening with friends makes it often even better while potentially introducing me to new music! |
My triplets are nearly done with college- glad I can afford. Not sure if one can plug a phono stage directly into your amp like some DACs with a volume control can. Since the Ferrum has volume control, should be okay but not sure if impedance matching (1 to 10) between the phono stage and amp is an issue |