At what stage does a dedicated DAC/ Amp help?

[Timbot]

I have recently received a pair of Sennheiser IE8i which I am running through my iPhone 5s playing Apple lossless. The sound is pretty good but I wondered whether using a DAC / Amp with my desktop computer (e.g. an Audioquest Dragonfly) would make much of a difference?

The headphones are obviously designed to be used with a phone as they have the inline mic. The impedance is 16 ohms which I assume means they are pretty easy to drive so not sure if there is much mileage in spending money on a dedicated solution.

 

[dalethorn]

I have recently received a pair of Sennheiser IE8i which I am running through my iPhone 5s playing Apple lossless. The sound is pretty good but I wondered whether using a DAC / Amp with my desktop computer (e.g. an Audioquest Dragonfly) would make much of a difference? The headphones are obviously designed to be used with a phone as they have the inline mic. The impedance is 16 ohms which I assume means they are pretty easy to drive so not sure if there is much mileage in spending money on a dedicated solution.

It will make a difference, and sound different, but even if you put a good DAC/amp like the Oppo HA-2 onto your phone, it will still sound different from a laptop using a Dragonfly or similar DAC. Why, many complications - different electronic environment, different music players, etc. If you played the laptop with the iTunes player using the HA-2 as the DAC/amp, playing lossless tracks, and then switched the HA-2 to the iPhone playing the exact same tracks, it would still sound different. Maybe not an extreme difference, but once you got familiar with each system, you'd hear the differences easily. I use the HA-2 with my iPhone6, and the Dragonfly with my Macbook, and they sound different, but it's the best sound for each application at a reasonable price.

 

[Timbot]

Thanks for the reply. The HA2 looks pretty mean- not sure how I've missed that one!