Topping NX1s Portable Headphone Amp

If you will; why would you be under the impression that the Fiio E17 is more suited for "audiophiles" when the Nx1, by specs has better "audio-quality"? Wouldn't the amplifier with the higher quality audio be of more interest to audiophiles than one with lesser performance in audio quality? the E17 is a 109 SNR device @rating (depending on the factor) the NX1s is around 110 @ the same rating I do believe, and is more aggressively priced. But they are very different devices, like comparing a jeep and a sports hatchback. i think the driving enthusiast would prefer the hatchback for cityfare. The Fiio costs more, imo, due to popularity and it's offroad capability (DAC) which has little to do with audiophiles or incity (amp) performance; I should say. It's not that it's better audio quality, right? The E17 isnt exactly "top tier" audio, like a high end computer sound-card or top flight cd player an audiophile might be plugging into in order to get the top audio quality possible, if you think audiophile are interested in listening to top-quality audio? Not sure what you think an audiophiles interest should be,.., I understand it to be that the Nx1s is a much simpler device, an simple audio amplifier that lets one connect it's higher audio-quality amplifier stage(than the E17) to a higher quality digital audio converter than the Fiio E17 eh? Or even to be used in more|fdifferent general applications. Some would prefer to simply line out of a cellphone, which has "pretty good" line outputs already, for the variable bit depth audio processing@embedded hardware than adding another device to the output. I think the Fiio's best for people who have poor digital audio stages and want to throw something in a little higher quality(audio), or to have a good baseline to use across multiple applications. Like to plug into something good to both say a laptop with poor audio, and a phone with poor audio, and maybe a home computer too., I think it's a bit silly for what I suspect most cases ppl use it for..

one way i supposed he could mean that "it removes background noise" is if as compared to directly connecting headphoens to a noisy source which has a lineamp-headphone amp output, one might hear the system noise of that device, as "background noise" lol, however when connecting this amplifier to such a device when using the volume knob to set the control to low volume, the application can cut down on that noise floor, since between the noisy source and the headphone is the resistive element of the volume controller, which may (will i should think, if it's at the input as per usual regarding headphone amps) bring down the level of the noise floor of signal from the source device when used at the signal input. But I suspect the repliants assertions are generally incorrect and|or misguided.

I've found the best cables for this : Fiio - L17 L-shaped 3.5mm Fiio - L16 Stereo Audio Cable It gives it SPACE, creates a big sound stage which makes it so much better, in fact better than the NX3s, that I have and better than AuneX1s first models default amp. Which is... impressive. So much, for just a cable switch. [image]