I ordered these with the TEAC UD-501 DAC, which offers balanced XLR speaker jacks. I initially made the mistake of ordering the SMSL Q5 amp/DAC, which does not offer XLR outputs. I had believed that I could just buy an adapter to hook the speakers to the SMSL, but that was incorrect. So make sure your DAC is compatible with these POWERED speakers. Anyway, since I received the TEAC DAC, these speakers have been awesome. They sound so good, angled at me from either side of my Mac monitor, it sounds like surround sound with speakers pointed at me from all angles. I have the TEAC DAC connected to my Mac with an optical cable, so that the DAC converts the internet signal at 44.1kHz. I understand that there are higher quality audio feeds out there, but I haven't been able to figure that out yet. I highly recommend these speakers, and I'm very pleased with this purchase.