Headphone Amp ?

[Sc00p007]

OK so I got my DAC MAGIC XS and wow what a difference , I can hear " everything" sounds that I never heard before ...so I shall be playing with it more this very night .

You can hear a clear step up from the STX? TBH, i have never heard a clear step up from any dac/amp running at the same volume. For my headphones, the most i hear is subtle. Fuller bass, and slightly tamed highs. Nothing like the improvement better cans make.
I have "upgraded" my amp 6 times and dac 4 times. Each amp upgrade felt better. So to me, the difference between my first amp and my last amp should be huge but it isn't. The difference is smaller than the difference between two tier of headphones (the £150 headphones difference is far more apparent than the £1650 amp difference). The sounds i could now hear, were always there in the previous amps. I guess i had a natural heightened attention when upgrading and must have been listening to the music a lot more analytically than before.

However, sound and music is a passion to me. So i am happy to pay a lot for the smallest of improvement, however i am under no illusions that to most people that difference is far from worth the price (amp/dac wise). That is if they can even hear the difference. Most cannot pass a blind test, as they haven't had enough experience with the gear. This shows just how subtle these changes are. IMO as long as the cans are playing loud enough, transducers are ~80% of the quality with the amp/dac sharing the rest. I tend to lean more on the amp being better value than the dac.

I only write this to balance things out. Some people may read some of these comments and expect a lot more difference and be disappointed. The difference may be very big to some people, but that will be the minority. I'm guessing they have above average hearing. But most people blind tested wont pass. It's an interesting hobby for me, not only because of the awesome sound but also from a psychological view point. That huge sound difference disappeared as soon as i introduced blind testing.

 

[rids57]

OK so I got my DAC MAGIC XS and wow what a difference , I can hear " everything" sounds that I never heard before ...so I shall be playing with it more this very night .

The ESS SABRE 9023 DAC chipset in the DAC Magic XS is more analytical and "colder" than the STX chipset but is not as "musical" and can be fatiguing in the long term and is more of a side grade than anything. I've compared a whole heap of DACs and amps with the STX and in almost all cases, the differences were subtle at best. Even the Asus Essence One MUSES edition was only a very subtle improvement, despite costing 5x that of the STX. The only thing that has provided a very noticeable step up was the Schiit Modi Multibit DAC, which produced noticeable improvements in all areas but especially bass reproduction and imaging.

If it does sound that much better to you then that's great but I do suspect a lot of it is expectation bias, in that this new shiny toy is bound to sound better. Go back and compare with the STX after listening exclusively through the DAC Magic for a couple of weeks and it's possible the huge difference may not be quite so apparent.

 

[foster grant]

No....I'm using it with my Laptop

 

[rids57]

Well yes, it will make a huge difference to a laptop as they usually have pretty awful audio to start with

 

[Sc00p007]

No....I'm using it with my Laptop

ahh ok great. I thought you had given your laptop away to your friend, and so thought that your "wow" difference was comparing with the STX. Makes more sense now

 

[foster grant]

Well yes I was going to , but changed my mind lol....and yeah the laptop sound was not good and for £39 it had to be done .

 

[Noxia]

I still maintain that the Creative X7 I had sounded 'better' than the schiit stack but I wouldn't be able to describe why.

 

[rids57]

The X7 is actually a very decent bit of kit that far exceeds it's plastic pyramid image when it comes to sound quality. Considering it uses pretty much the same components as the STX, I would say that any improvements are going to be subtle and are most likely due to it not being inside a computer. The resultant electromagnetic interference from the graphics card and multiple cooling fans just has to contribute to the noise floor to some degree.

Saying that, I remember reading a big review of the STX when it was first released and they went right over the top with measurements and it turned out that the STX was out performing some very expensive amps.

 

[Andrew Britain]

To anyone wondering whether to plonk down a heap of money on one of these things, I’d say the Dacmagic XS is the perfect starting point for you right now. If you can’t hear a difference or can’t appreciate it then there’s no point going any further.

If you want another relatively cheap little upgrade then something like an Audioquest Jitterbug - can of worms maybe but if you are very receptive to small changes in sound then you might enjoy the result.

 

[rids57]

DAC Magic XS, FiiO E10K, Audioquest Dragonfly, Schiit Fulla, they are all better than on board audio for simple stereo headphone playback and are seriously good value for money but if you need hardware virtual surround then look elsewhere.

 

[Marine-RX179]

The ESS SABRE 9023 DAC chipset in the DAC Magic XS is more analytical and "colder" than the STX chipset but is not as "musical" and can be fatiguing in the long term and is more of a side grade than anything. I've compared a whole heap of DACs and amps with the STX and in almost all cases, the differences were subtle at best. Even the Asus Essence One MUSES edition was only a very subtle improvement, despite costing 5x that of the STX. The only thing that has provided a very noticeable step up was the Schiit Modi Multibit DAC, which produced noticeable improvements in all areas but especially bass reproduction and imaging.

If it does sound that much better to you then that's great but I do suspect a lot of it is expectation bias, in that this new shiny toy is bound to sound better. Go back and compare with the STX after listening exclusively through the DAC Magic for a couple of weeks and it's possible the huge difference may not be quite so apparent.

Yes it's pretty much as what you said.

The key different between the the DacMagic XS and the STX is probably one has a "warmer sounding" DAC with more powerful amplification and the other has a more "analytical/" DAC with less powerful implication.

Take my Beyer DT770 250 Ohm vs Philips X1 32 Ohm for example, using my my DT770 on the XS it struggle to push the soundstage and sound like everything is cramped together and the X1 (which is a warm sounding headphone) with the STX it sound like it struggle to present the details and lacking a bit of clarity and separations; swapping the headphones around and both sound much better- the X1 is able to present more details thanks to the XS's DAC (and amp?), and the DT770 has a larger soundstage and separate for the details thanks to the extra power from the amp of the STX.

I guess like amps and speakers, sometimes the pairing/matching between the speakers and the amps do need to be taking into consideration as well.

I guess the bottomline is- the DacMagic XS for £39 is a ridiculously fantastic piece of kit that's very convenience to use, and would sound really great (not epic like some couple of hundred pounds setup) for using with majority of headphones that's not beyond 150 Ohm.

It has no problem pushing my Sennheiser HD700 (150 Ohm) neither, but it doesn't sound to great musically, as most of you probably know how the sound signature of most Sennheiser HD headphones are like...this pairing making it gets to the point of "too analytical" and despite the clarity and details is very apparent, it also at the same time making "some" songs doesn't really sound particularly "fun" or enjoyable to listen to due to everything sounding "over-separated" (not even sure if that's a term), and like things are not blending in together at all that well.