Meridian EXPLORER² vs Dragonfly v1.2 vs Xonar STX II (Sound Quality)

[TechPro]

Are there anyone here who compared all these ? Which should I go for (looking for best sound quality) ? To Drive IEM (EU 700) and Headphone (SRH1540).

 

[Anderson]

I would go for the one that I looked the look of most vs cost. Haven't compared either of them but the dragonfly gets lots of praise and it isn't ridiculously expensive.

 

[Al ears]

You say 'best sound quality' but do not state what sort of source file you will be attempting to play back.

The Dragonfly is good up to 96K (even though it has an ESS Sabre DAC which is a bit strange) and the Meridian will handle up to 192k resolution. I believe the Meridian is more likely to be able to handle more 'difficult' headphones should you ever upgrade yours. Whether or not this is sufficient to pay out the extra £70 is up to you. I have not heard the Xonar so cannot comment on this device.

 

[hybridauth_Google_114731824393706793109]

Are there anyone here who compared all these ? Which should I go for (looking for best sound quality) ? To Drive IEM (EU 700) and Headphone (SRH1540).

I was having fun with the Asus Xonar STX II for over a year now. In terms of sound quality it's the best internal sound card I've listen to so far. I was reading more about DACs lately and wanted to try out the award winning Dragonfly DAC. I can hear much cleaner and fuller sound with the dac. Now to my ears Xonar sounds more distorted and harsh. There are more controls on Xonar software to change the eq settings to fine tune the audio out put but still it sounds like distored by electro magnatic interfierance of the PC internals. On the other hand Dragonfly sounds more natural and rich. Although the sound amplification is much lower than xonar stx, dragonfly wins my blind test in terms of sound quality. I've added a headphone amp to overcome this issue. So if your main consern is sound quality, you should consider getting an external DAC such as dragonfly or similar device.