What would be a good portable Dac/Amp to use with my HD6xx and Sony Xperia 1 V cell phone?
I am new to this hobby. I purchased a HD6XX and plan to use it with my Sony Xperia 1 V cell phone, that has a 3.5mm jack. I was wondering if I needed a portable dac/amp or just a portable amp and if so what would one recommend? Any assistance one could provide, would be greatly appreciated. Kind regards, Haz
Mar 7, 2024
The build quality and design details seem a little nicer than other similarly priced bluetooth headsets I've tried. They are more comfortable out of the box than almost anything else wireless that i've tried, including Ausdom, Bluedio, Sony, and other brands of wireless headphones from $50-150 that I've gone through. I feel like they might be comfortable enough for extended sessions even without replacing the pads although some premium pads are still well worth the investment to upgrade to.
However, I'm disappointed to hear the same overblown, muddy sounding bass frequencies that I've heard in other wireless products in the sub-$100 price range. I don't know why so many products I've tried sound like this as I can't imagine anybody actually prefers it to clear sound. I have $15 wired earbuds from a gas station and $30 wired headphones from a big box store that sound much better. I've also had $50-60 bluetooth earbuds that sounded much better. I suppose this sound problem must be a side effect of the cheap plastic enclosures, but based on my multiple experiences I suggest spending $150 for something actually good sounding instead (plus those have noise cancellation etc). I'll give them a few days to see if I can just learn to ignore it but they're just obviously bad sounding in comparison with my $80 Sony MDR-7506 wired studio reference headphones. Outside of the bass frequency spectrum they sound reasonably clear, it's just as if the lower frequencies are playing through a big plastic barrel instead of an acoustic speaker enclosure.
The Sony MDR bluetooth series products that run in the $120-200 range (try Costco) are well worth the extra money, given some aftermarket pads to make them reasonably comfortable for more than brief sessions. My only problem with those has been that I've had two pair flake out electronically after about 6 months of use, outside of warranty, so I've continued trying other cheaper products hoping to find something serviceable enough for day to day work use.
As I said, I'll give these a couple days to see if I can adjust to the muddy sound, but I'm not impressed with the audio quality so far. Comfort wise and other details seem decent enough so it's a shame that they sound so bad.