After spending hours reading and researching about how to get the best sound quality from a pair of headphones & a computer based system, I made up my mind and got myself the following items:
Headphones :Sen HD650 Price: 180 GBP
Amplifier :Graham Slee Solo SRG Green Intro Price: 326.39 GBP
DAC :Cambridge Audio: DACMAGIC Price: 199 GBP
Cables :Atlas Equator MKII 2 RCA to 2 RCA; 1m Price: 43.20 GBP
Main : Tacima CS929 6 Way Mains Conditionner Price: 34.99 GBP
Total : 783.58 GBP
My music is saved on my ThinkPad T42 HDD, as WAV files using EAC software for ripping and Foobar 2000 to play the files.
I’ve been running the above mentioned items for 07 days now.
Headphones are great, warm sound, huge base and accurate treble.
Amplifier: I had to use it for 72 hours (required burn-in time) before noticing a huge difference in sound quality.
DAC: No doubt the DACMAGIC improves drastically the sound quality of compressed music, personally I’ve noticed only a slightly better improvement with WAV files.
The above combination works fine, now that the amplifier has “finally” burned in,
However I have discovered that when listening to my carefully ripped WAV files through the laptop phone jack (using my HD 650 directly without DAC & amplifier) the sound quality was not bad at all, Volume reached high levels, base was still tight and treble was very decent.
No doubt that when the DAC and Amplifier were involved the sound was more accurate, separation was more obvious etc….
Definitely I can’t accurately quantify how better the sound was when played through DAC and Amp, but roughly I would say 20%.
The question is: was it worth to invest /603.58/ GBP for the extra 20%?
Does the sound quality will get better with time?
I don’t know the standards in this industry but personally I was expecting more for the extra 603.58 GBP investment (DAC+ AMP+ Cables+ Mains conditioner).
Headphones :Sen HD650 Price: 180 GBP
Amplifier :Graham Slee Solo SRG Green Intro Price: 326.39 GBP
DAC :Cambridge Audio: DACMAGIC Price: 199 GBP
Cables :Atlas Equator MKII 2 RCA to 2 RCA; 1m Price: 43.20 GBP
Main : Tacima CS929 6 Way Mains Conditionner Price: 34.99 GBP
Total : 783.58 GBP
My music is saved on my ThinkPad T42 HDD, as WAV files using EAC software for ripping and Foobar 2000 to play the files.
I’ve been running the above mentioned items for 07 days now.
Headphones are great, warm sound, huge base and accurate treble.
Amplifier: I had to use it for 72 hours (required burn-in time) before noticing a huge difference in sound quality.
DAC: No doubt the DACMAGIC improves drastically the sound quality of compressed music, personally I’ve noticed only a slightly better improvement with WAV files.
The above combination works fine, now that the amplifier has “finally” burned in,
However I have discovered that when listening to my carefully ripped WAV files through the laptop phone jack (using my HD 650 directly without DAC & amplifier) the sound quality was not bad at all, Volume reached high levels, base was still tight and treble was very decent.
No doubt that when the DAC and Amplifier were involved the sound was more accurate, separation was more obvious etc….
Definitely I can’t accurately quantify how better the sound was when played through DAC and Amp, but roughly I would say 20%.
The question is: was it worth to invest /603.58/ GBP for the extra 20%?
Does the sound quality will get better with time?
I don’t know the standards in this industry but personally I was expecting more for the extra 603.58 GBP investment (DAC+ AMP+ Cables+ Mains conditioner).