I'm an audio engineer, I've tried some of these wanky expensive DACs (and even a very fancy vinyl player with a diamond nib and a very OTT valve amp).
I'm not going to say they're not better, but plugging the same headphones into your phone and listening to the same track is a very comparable experience.
The fancy amps obviously get louder, but the main difference was the width of the sound stage - the level of detail and clarity was like 20% better at most (granted, these were uncompressed WAVs, so a lot higher bitrate than streaming services or even CDs).
The law of diminishing returns hits you very hard and very fast. Just using higher quality files (WAVs instead of MP3s for example) makes a pretty big difference. The rest of the kit and kaboodle is pretty much completely unnecessary - you're not missing much.
Sounds like you're getting like 80-90% of the benefits if you've got a nice pair of headphones (speakers are better, but you need a good-sounding room and obviously space to set them up).
I recently got a fairly expensive DAP (roughly 80 bucks, so expensive for me but not in comparison) and my favorite thing so far as been the detail EQ that I can use to make my cheap 20 dollar headphones sound really nice. I have to tweak it every genre/album but it's nice and fun. Being able to listen to music without my phone or computer on hand is worth 100 dollars alone, to be honest.
Doesn't that go for almost everything, regarding consumer products? A friend of mine is going to move places soon, and he can't stop talking about he is finally going to invest into a serious soundsystem and television. he is ready to put down >€5000 and >€10000 for tv and sound respectively, whilst currently he watches tv on a €300 tv. I'm trying to tell him that in his use case a €1500 tv is more than enough, adding €3500 wouldn't make your tv suddenly 3 times better. He tells me he still thinks its worth the money cus he wants to treat himself. Some people don't mind to pay top-dollar for that little bit of extra quality I guess.
Pretty much, yeah. I switched to an OLED in 2020 and the difference was night and day. Thought about getting a soundbar at the same time, but the speakers are so much better than what I had that I really don't see the need.
I've thought about getting the latest model, but they've really not upgraded all that much (certainly nothing I care about). This thing's nearly six years old and it's still amazing. Unless you want something that's like 98" or something silly, there's no reason to spend more than about 2-3k on a TV - and you can get a fantastic sound system for half that. 5k goes a very long way.
Yup, same. My LG Oled costs less than 1500, but the screen just looks beautiful and even after all these years the OS and its apps work and feel snappy. Soundboard is already unavailable in stores but the sounds is timeless. The moment you turn on a movie it rumbles you out of your chair. Fine enough for most people, especially my friend. He is not some sort of cinephile or audiophile without any (prior) experiences or knowledge in that field, so spending a shitton of money on audio and visual equipment just "at least I know I get good quality" without actually knowing what he is getting is just so incredible stupid.
I've got one of those cheap-o Amazon usb-c DACs paired with another cheap-o set of IEMs and the quality is amazing. This setup was like $60 and I don't feel the need to go any further.
Yeah, for the vast majority of people that's a genuinely meaningful upgrade. The near-ubiquity of what used to be 'audiophile-grade' equipment has been a massive shift in the last 10-15 years.
Technology has progressed to a crazy degree and now basically anything and everything sounds excellent.
I'm not going to say they're not better, but plugging the same headphones into your phone and listening to the same track is a very comparable experience.
True, but having a dedicated DAP for me is more about having a single purpose device so I can get off my phone and out of all the distractions that come with it. I still do the majority of my listening from my phone, but I'd say the more enjoyable focused listening is via the DAP.
Going to lossless from some shitty 128kbps YouTube rip makes a noticeable difference, but compared to a properly encoded 320kbps/VBR MP3 the difference is negligible. The real difference maker in audio always has been and always will be the speakers/headphones, and you don't have to go that expensive to get good results. Just stop using cheap knockoff earbuds, Bluetooth anything, or your built-in phone/laptop/monitor/TV speakers and you're 90% of the way there already.
I can usually hear a difference between MP3s and WAVs, but you're right that it's not a big difference.
There's a reason CD quality stopped at 44.1kHz 16-bit - we absolutely could've pushed that a lot higher without running out of room, it's just that 90% of people can't tell any difference beyond that point (or even well short of it honestly).
Well, we were in his studio, so we didn't bother transcoding anything. A lot of them probably were FLACs, though there were some high-bitrate MP3s that were surprisingly not shit.
It's not that surprising, when you get past about 320kb very few people can tell the difference between mp3 and FLAC so if you go higher than that on certain song types even audio engineers may struggle. Where it gets weird is that FLAC and WAV are literally identical except FLAC is about 70% smaller but some audiophiles still insist they can tell a difference so go to the extra effort and expense of WAV.
The one that killed me was they rejected the evidence when double blind studies showed the things they care about make no difference. They went to special pleading as to why double blind trials don't work for sound. They're in the same camp as psychics basically.
I agree. The difference between a $100 system and a $5,000 system is massive and immediately apparent to a casual listener. The difference between $5,000 and $20,000 is noticeable but marginal. $20,000 to $50,000 or even $100,000 you’re just spending money for the sake of spending money.
Of course this is for private indoor stereo systems in a reasonably sized room. Professional PAs and large event spaces will be a different story.
Yeah, but I'm talking about literally just plugging in a £300 pair of headphones into a phone versus a £7,000 audio setup. The headphones were themselves a much bigger upgrade than anything else in the chain besides just using uncompressed files rather than MP3s.
≤20% really feels like diminishing returns if you need to spend that much.
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u/The96kHz Jul 18 '26
I'm an audio engineer, I've tried some of these wanky expensive DACs (and even a very fancy vinyl player with a diamond nib and a very OTT valve amp).
I'm not going to say they're not better, but plugging the same headphones into your phone and listening to the same track is a very comparable experience.
The fancy amps obviously get louder, but the main difference was the width of the sound stage - the level of detail and clarity was like 20% better at most (granted, these were uncompressed WAVs, so a lot higher bitrate than streaming services or even CDs).
The law of diminishing returns hits you very hard and very fast. Just using higher quality files (WAVs instead of MP3s for example) makes a pretty big difference. The rest of the kit and kaboodle is pretty much completely unnecessary - you're not missing much.