TOPPING E30 II DAC + L30 II Amplifier Desktop Stack

[Sombreuil]

I actually did not think there could be EQ software that supports any device.

I just googled something called Equalizer APO (with Peace Equalizer GUI). Looks promising, I will definitely try it out!

As someone already said it, APO with Peace (GUI) is an amazing tool. It's even better than any other EQ you'll find because of its community.
Oratory's EQ presets + APO is a life changer.

 

[Operandi]

I agree. It's not like DSP chips cost a lot and designing some basic software UI isn't rocket science either.
But the audiophile market is predicated on ignorant consumers. People are led to believe that spending hundreds of dollars on a featureless "DAC" will magically improve their experience. And so manufacturers don't feel the need to bother with this, except for companies like RME and some other "pro" brands, which are geared towards more tech savvy users.

Yeah, man you figured it out. All DACs are the same as long as the response is flat, the noise floor is low enough, and jitter falls under a particular threshold (pick one you feel good about). DSP, (fancy EQ), is all any ~$100 DAC needs. Too bad all the engineers are too busy over designing DACs with clean power supplies, accurate clocks, careful circuit layout in regard to noise isolation, galvanic isolation, custom receiver chips, or FPGA based filters. Its all there just to justify "ignorant" audiophile prices.

Seriously, if all DACs sound the same to you thats fine but at least look into the development and try to understand the the design goals that go into higher-end audio before calling people "ignorant" so you can feel "savvy".

 

[Jokii]

All DACs are the same as long as the response is flat, the noise floor is low enough, and jitter falls under a particular threshold (pick one you feel good about).

Yep, you got it. All well enough designed DACs sound exactly the same, until you can demonstrate otherwise. It's common for people to imagine hearing a difference, but when presented with a blind test they suddenly can't hear it anymore. For example, look at this test. Tl;dr: "Using world-class headphones, a $2 Realtek integrated audio codec could not be reliably distinguished from the $2000 Benchmark DAC2 HGC in a four-device round-up."
And I know very well that not all motherboard audio is good, it's just to prove a point. But in many cases the difference even with a very cheap DAC is either inaudible or so tiny that spending hundreds or thousands of dollars is silly, when that money could be spent on better headphones or speakers or room treatment or DSP, for example.

DSP, (fancy EQ), is all any ~$100 DAC needs.

No, it needs to be competently designed too. But if you're paying a premium, I would expect some DSP as well. Applying EQ won't fix everything, but it's one of the easiest and cheapest things you can use to improve the sound of a system.

look into the development and try to understand the the design goals that go into higher-end audio before calling people "ignorant"

Oh, I know that some engineers put a lot of work/time/money into their products. They might do that because they're personally obsessed, or because they want to top the SINAD chart on ASR to increase the sales.
But in terms of sound, all that matters is that a system sounds good to human ears. Spending a lot of money to get the SNR of the DAC from 120dB to 125dB is, simply put, ignorant, because it makes no audible difference and because that money could be spent on things that actually matter.

I don't mean to offend anyone, but yes, the hi-fi industry thrives on ignorant consumers and gear fetishism. It's always been this way. This market has plenty of scams and snake oil, some more and some less extreme.

 

[Sombreuil]

I don't mean to offend anyone, but yes, the hi-fi industry thrives on ignorant consumers and gear fetishism. It's always been this way. This market has plenty of scams and snake oil, some more and some less extreme.

You're not. It's not a surprise if Audio Science Review has so many new members. I'm even scared to buy a piece of audio gear without reading or asking them anymore, the situation is that bad.

 

[THU31]

Has anyone had any experience with the FiiO E10K-TC? https://fiio.com/e10ktc

Pretty cheap, but it should still be a pretty substantial upgrade from my X-Fi HD soundcard. I like the size and look, and the convenience of just a USB connection for signal and power.
It has analog volume control which is also good, because I like to keep a constant volume in Windows for recording purposes.

There is also the FiiO K3s. It is supposedly noticeably better, but it costs over 50% more. Not sure if I would hear the difference with my Philips Fidelio X2 headphones.

Reviews for both products:

FiiO E10K TC Review

The FiiO E10K TC is an update of the classic E10K portable amp/DAC featuring a PCM5102 DAC and up to 200mW of power. It is priced at $75.99 Disclaimer: The FiiO E10K TC sent to

headfonics.com

FiiO New K3 Review

FiiO New K3 is a compact desktop headphone amp using an ES9038Q2M DAC and capable of up to 200mW of output power. It is priced at $119.99 Disclaimer: The FiiO New K3 sent to us

headfonics.com

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

There's a difference between something that's over engineered to the point of absurdity and loaded with high quality parts and something thats snake oil though. Lots of high end gear has eye watering prices because it's all the top of the top components, top end materials, and designed and engineered by fanatics and the companies aren't all that big. It's a luxury item and everyone knows it. There's no harm in it. There's also odd stuff like jitter/noise/power filters that do what they claim to do but in virtually all cases it's not going to actually matter. There are plenty of over built and costly cables that are simply selling themselves as over built cables.

Then there's horseshit like claiming a three thousand dollar HDMI cable is going to make one lick of difference.

The point is all the stuff I first mentioned isn't trying to fool anyone. It's simply being sold to enthusiasts or people who enjoy the hobby. It doesn't make outrageous claims and does exactly what it says it does, wether or not it's worth the money is up in the air. But people chalk that stuff up to the same sort of nonsense as multi thousand dollar HDMI cables which make claims that are not only false they are so patently outrageous and idiotic only moron would fall for it.

As for the realtek dac vs real dac and all dacs sound the same that's not the case at all. At my desk at home I have a schitt fulla, schiit stack, steeseries with gamedac, various integrated audio options, and various dongles. They don't all the same. There's also a difference between an apple dongle, hili dac, questyle dac, and the moondrop dac I have for my phone. All of these things are well designed and none of them are in the expensive price range. I'd recommend any of them but would always tell people to make sure you have good headphones first!

 

[Operandi]

Yep, you got it. All well enough designed DACs sound exactly the same, until you can demonstrate otherwise. It's common for people to imagine hearing a difference, but when presented with a blind test they suddenly can't hear it anymore. For example, look at this test. Tl;dr: "Using world-class headphones, a $2 Realtek integrated audio codec could not be reliably distinguished from the $2000 Benchmark DAC2 HGC in a four-device round-up."
And I know very well that not all motherboard audio is good, it's just to prove a point. But in many cases the difference even with a very cheap DAC is either inaudible or so tiny that spending hundreds or thousands of dollars is silly, when that money could be spent on better headphones or speakers or room treatment or DSP, for example.

I'm not opposed to blind tests but you have to be careful when interrupting the results. I didn't read the whole article but a sample size of two is pretty much meaningless, so while they tried and it might be interesting it is statistically meaningless. This test is the best one I've seen based on methodology and scale and while even it isn't conclusive when you dive deeper into the data and look at the results specifically of more experienced listeners and users accustomed to listening on higher-end gear trends emerge that get lost in larger aggregate of the sample size, I'll just leave it at that.

I have a handful of sources, onboard audio, cheap Behringer UAC202, Burr-brown DAC in my Pioneer A9 amp (not sure which one), ESS based Schiit Modi, and an older AKM based JDS Labs Atom so pretty entry level good stuff. The Burr-Brown, Schiit, and JDS all sound noticeably better than onboard audio or the Behringer now that I have good enough speakers, whereas before I wasn't really hearing much difference aside from noise floor. Next I plan to play around with and compare just the JDS and Schiit DAC.

I don't claim to have super refined hearing and I haven't done it blind because I have no easy means to do it but I say I went into all my testing without exceptions. I don't have a lot invested in sources because I am skeptical of the differences, skeptical of what I'm able to hear, and having a lot of finiancel resources invested in something makes you want to justify it irregardless of how objective you think you are (I also don't make a habit of throwing money around just cause). I will probably try a higher-end source than my $100'ish DACs I have now, not sure what though.

No, it needs to be competently designed too. But if you're paying a premium, I would expect some DSP as well. Applying EQ won't fix everything, but it's one of the easiest and cheapest things you can use to improve the sound of a system.

Yeah, EQ has its uses. Headphones seem more problematic than speakers and I listening 99% the time with speakers which are pretty flat to begin with so unless you are correcting for room issues ideally you'd just but what has the tonal quality you are looking for the start. At least with speakers since some issues can not be address no matter how fancy you DSP based EQ is.

Also idk why you'd want the DSP in the DAC. It should be in the source device in my opinion.

Oh, I know that some engineers put a lot of work/time/money into their products. They might do that because they're personally obsessed, or because they want to top the SINAD chart on ASR to increase the sales.
But in terms of sound, all that matters is that a system sounds good to human ears. Spending a lot of money to get the SNR of the DAC from 120dB to 125dB is, simply put, ignorant, because it makes no audible difference and because that money could be spent on things that actually matter.

I don't mean to offend anyone, but yes, the hi-fi industry thrives on ignorant consumers and gear fetishism. It's always been this way. This market has plenty of scams and snake oil, some more and some less extreme.

You should just stop making assumptions about peoples motivations, methodology, and design objectives and keep you opinions to yourself because expressing them via blanked pejorative generalizations isn't productive.

I agree that driving towards insanely low levels of SINAD or any of that stuff is completely pointless. At some point you are obsessing over a handful of measurements well beyond their point of significance, but specs sell in audio just like tons of other industries, kinda just the nature of the beast.

Audio is for sure pretty bad when it comes to the highest end of the market, and a lot of if would fall into the category of scams or snake oil but again making blanked judgments and assumptions isn't useful.

You're not. It's not a surprise if Audio Science Review has so many new members. I'm even scared to buy a piece of audio gear without reading or asking them anymore, the situation is that bad.

ASR is popular because they conveniently provide a platform to measure and rank gear on a chart via handful of metrics which audio nerds obsess over. I like to see read the reviews and see what comes across the test bench cause there is useful information there if you know what you are looking at and there certainly are very smart people that post there the comments section of that place is borderline cultish.

 

[Jokii]

The point is all the stuff I first mentioned isn't trying to fool anyone. It's simply being sold to enthusiasts or people who enjoy the hobby. It doesn't make outrageous claims and does exactly what it says it does, wether or not it's worth the money is up in the air. But people chalk that stuff up to the same sort of nonsense as multi thousand dollar HDMI cables which make claims that are not only false they are so patently outrageous and idiotic only moron would fall for it.

Sure, there are various degrees of "snake oil" or whatever and not everything is an outright scam. I fully agree on that.
But there are still plenty of false/unproven claims and beliefs being perpetuated with legit products. Sometimes straight from the manufacturers and very often by the larger "hi-fi community", whether it be hi-fi magazines, merchants, reviewers or just random users. Some of these people (most notably hi-fi magazines and merchants) have a vested interest in perpetuating false/unproven claims.
The end result is that a lot of clueless people end up buying stuff they don't need, without having even the basic understanding of how this stuff works.
I've seen so many posts on various forums... like here's an example just from a few days ago. And that's on ASR, imagine how silly such threads get elsewhere.

And while I don't lose sleep over people spending money, the consequence is that it pushes the market towards products of dubious value that don't offer anything new. Like more boring featureless DACs, for example.

As for the realtek dac vs real dac and all dacs sound the same that's not the case at all.

Of course all DACs don't sound the same, but I believe that those that measure beyond a certain threshold do. And no offense really, but I'm not interested in personal anecdotes of sighted listening tests. Only in properly conducted blind tests. If something comes out of those, I'll eat my proverbial hat and apologize.

I'm not opposed to blind tests but you have to be careful when interrupting the results. I didn't read the whole article but a sample size of two is pretty much meaningless, so while they tried and it might be interesting it is statistically meaningless. This test

The test I posted isn't that great, frankly. But I think it's still probably honest and it's more to illustrate a point.
The test you posted isn't really blind. If you have access to files you can easily open them in an audio editor and see the trouble makers. But even if nobody cheated, the results wouldn't surprise me. Some of the noisiest DACs I heard have been from motherboards.

Also idk why you'd want the DSP in the DAC. It should be in the source device in my opinion.

Partly because of low latency applications and partly because of general stability (no OS shenanigans) and portability (using the same setup with various sources).

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Sure, there are various degrees of "snake oil" or whatever and not everything is an outright scam. I fully agree on that.
But there are still plenty of false/unproven claims and beliefs being perpetuated with legit products. Sometimes straight from the manufacturers and very often by the larger "hi-fi community", whether it be hi-fi magazines, merchants, reviewers or just random users. Some of these people (most notably hi-fi magazines and merchants) have a vested interest in perpetuating false/unproven claims.
The end result is that a lot of clueless people end up buying stuff they don't need, without having even the basic understanding of how this stuff works.
I've seen so many posts on various forums... like here's an example just from a few days ago. And that's on ASR, imagine how silly such threads get elsewhere.

And while I don't lose sleep over people spending money, the consequence is that it pushes the market towards products of dubious value that don't offer anything new. Like more boring featureless DACs, for example.


Of course all DACs don't sound the same, but I believe that those that measure beyond a certain threshold do. And no offense really, but I'm not interested in personal anecdotes of sighted listening tests. Only in properly conducted blind tests. If something comes out of those, I'll eat my proverbial hat and apologize.



The test I posted isn't that great, frankly. But I think it's still probably honest and it's more to illustrate a point.
The test you posted isn't really blind. If you have access to files you can easily open them in an audio editor and see the trouble makers. But even if nobody cheated, the results wouldn't surprise me. Some of the noisiest DACs I heard have been from motherboards.


Partly because of low latency applications and partly because of general stability (no OS shenanigans) and portability (using the same setup with various sources).

I'd compare the testing to wine tasting tests. Most people can't tell the difference. But there is and some can. The issue is that when people can't everyone chalks it up to morons, and when people can everyone says they are making it up or the test was rigged.

As for the realtek not all realtek based systems sound the same either. There's multiple implementations. I tend to agree though that all quality DACs are essentially about getting as neutral as possible and then killing off the noise floor and beyond a certain point it's just not worth it. I usually advocate that the AMP part of the equality is more important and where things go wrong. Really the main bonus of a DAC right now is getting it the hell out of your computer and getting a quality AMP with it and onboard audio is still crappy even at the high end. The other issue is that since the end of the 3.5mm jack you're forced to use a dongle now. While the default ones are fine for most things they don't compete with better ones for various reasons and while I'd never advise spending tons of money at it you can get a good one for sub 200 and forget it.

And I am 100000% with you on people being pushed into thinking they need some multi thousand dollar balanced unit to run music off iTunes is fucking lunatic!

If you are in the US you can get a schiit DAC for 99 and a schiit AMP for 99 and that's all you really need unless you want a hardware EQ in which case that's another 149 or you can just use EQ software. They have good cables and a slightmore expensive one they actually call Snake Oil which is 25 a pair rather than 20 and just looks cooler. Other companies that cost more ifi, and topping as per this thread, are also utterly reasonable in what they ask for with regards to most of their stuff and aren't selling bullshit.

Then you have audioquest which sells thousand dollar HDMI and Ethernet cables....

 

[Operandi]

The test I posted isn't that great, frankly. But I think it's still probably honest and it's more to illustrate a point.
The test you posted isn't really blind. If you have access to files you can easily open them in an audio editor and see the trouble makers. But even if nobody cheated, the results wouldn't surprise me. Some of the noisiest DACs I heard have been from motherboards.

The Tom's test is completely pointless. I don't see anything wrong with their methodology, (didn't read it all) but when I saw a sample size of two pretty much stopped caring because with a size that small it makes zero difference how good their methodology is, its all wasted time aside from the people taking part in the test.

As far as the Archimago test not being blind that really doesn't matter as while yeah you can look for noise artifacts in Audacity if you want to cheat a blind listening test (people generally have better things to do) you can also just listen for that as any system with a lower noise floor will be able to reveal that allowing you to pick out the motherboard source as being the worst solely on that criteria. Archimago's test is orders of magnitude better (the best I've seen); the methodology is solid and thats the scale you have to go to get meaningful results and even then you have to be careful with blind tests. Without tight control of your participants and methodology (the equipment as well as the material) results are pretty useless and you can only have so much control in test like this, basically just the material test samples and knowing your sample size is large and varied enough. A large portion of participants wont be able to hear a difference between a decent DAC and really good one because lets face the differences are small in the grand scheme of things. The equipment used is also a factor as low-end and mid-level stuff is just going to struggle to be to able to reveal any differences, thats just the way it is. You could limit the participants to only high-end gear but you'd just be taking their word for it. And before you suggest removing the equipment from the equation it pretty much has to be gear (amp, headphones, speakers) the participant is familiar with other wise most people are going to be completely lost as to what to listen for. Thats why subjective reviews live with equipment for a number weeks before publishing a review, thats the psychology of psychoacoustics. Unless you ASR then you just put it on the AP and call it a day and it really dosen't matter what it sounds like.

Still as good as the Archimago test is and there is some good data there that shows some interesting trends its not perfect and not really conclusive. It does howerver if anything it really illustrates how hard these tests are and how if you don't run them properly (any blind test or study) how its easy to just generate bunch of garbage data and come up with incorrect conclusions. Blind tests / studies go wrong all the time in fields with way higher stakes than consumer audio even when there is no ill intent or flaws in how they were run. Thats a another topic itself and is beyond the scope of this but knowing the limitations of the test and how they can go wrong even when the methodology is good has to kept in mind when drawing conclusions form any blind test or study.

Partly because of low latency applications and partly because of general stability (no OS shenanigans) and portability (using the same setup with various sources).

Latency shouldn't be an issue on the streaming device. The type of DSP based processing I'm thinking of is just EQ filter that gets applied once based on your room acoustics, and maybe a bit to your preference. Something like Dirac Live which I don't think adds any kind of latency that would be an issue for playback.

Ideally you want the DAC to be as simple as possible. DSP is just more processing which means more power and a more complicated circuit design which is going to against that. Having it in the steaming device is less of an issue but if you don't think those things matter I can see why you'd want the DSP processing in the DAC. I would say thats why you don't see it in DACs, not because these companies are up selling you on things that don't matter (featureless DACs) but because including it in the DAC would go against their design goals, or at minimum make achieving them more complicated.

 

[Footman]

@VSG. Send me the stack to play with and I'll send you my Topping DX3pro + to review. Once finished send it back to me...

@VSG. Send me the stack to play with and I'll send you my Topping DX3pro + to review. Once finished send it back to me

 

[Sombreuil]

I'd compare the testing to wine tasting tests. Most people can't tell the difference. But there is and some can. The issue is that when people can't everyone chalks it up to morons, and when people can everyone says they are making it up or the test was rigged.

As for the realtek not all realtek based systems sound the same either. There's multiple implementations. I tend to agree though that all quality DACs are essentially about getting as neutral as possible and then killing off the noise floor and beyond a certain point it's just not worth it. I usually advocate that the AMP part of the equality is more important and where things go wrong. Really the main bonus of a DAC right now is getting it the hell out of your computer and getting a quality AMP with it and onboard audio is still crappy even at the high end. The other issue is that since the end of the 3.5mm jack you're forced to use a dongle now. While the default ones are fine for most things they don't compete with better ones for various reasons and while I'd never advise spending tons of money at it you can get a good one for sub 200 and forget it.

Motherboards have come a long way and I doubt someone could hear the difference between a DAC that is correctly isolated, a $20 Apple/Google dongle, a Schiit DAC or a $20k one.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Motherboards have come a long way and I doubt someone could hear the difference between a DAC that is correctly isolated, a $20 Apple/Google dongle, a Schiit DAC or a $20k one.

Willing to bet they will if only because of the extra oomph in volume and power from the amp side of things. That's one of the fun parts of all this. Hooking it all up turning it on that "oooh, wow that's nice" moment when you try it all out. There's a large difference between my hili dac and the apple dongle but that also comes at the cost of the hili dac draining the phone battery like a starving vampire.

My fiancee is hardly an audio person at all, hell she has airpods pro and max because of how they work with her phone and macbook and also cause it looks cool and it's fashionable (which drives me nuts but oh well, and they are well built and do integrate well). She finds my gear silly. She like my senny 800s which she could plug into the macbook or the dock but asked me to plug in the schiit stack to it because "it sounds better" and she's an audio idiot. She could clearly hear enough of a difference to nag me about something she thought was a giant waste of space.

There is a difference and it starts off pretty clear. The thing is the returns diminish the higher you go till at a point you're not going to notice it and you're just paying for the engineering, craftmanship, materials, and asthetics of it all.

For all the snake oil and lunacy people feed themselves to justify having bought some of it there's a flip side where people claim there is no difference and jump into all sorts of equal lunacy to claim there is no difference at all in any of it.

Also the video you posted to say "can't hear the difference" the guy says there is a difference and advises to buy an external solution so he directly contradicts the point you made. Did you watch it?

 

[Operandi]

Motherboards have come a long way and I doubt someone could hear the difference between a DAC that is correctly isolated, a $20 Apple/Google dongle, a Schiit DAC or a $20k one.

Thats the problem having easy access to measurement equipment. If you don't know what your measurements mean you probably shouldn't be making them and talking about them. That guy has the knowldege equivalent of week one of an EE degree in regards to audio and thinks he has distilled "audio quality" down to a handful of measurements (some of them useful some of them not) and put it in 20 minute video?

Also what does that video have to do with DACs? He's measuring the final output of the onboard audio so amplifier performance far more so than the DAC.

 

[Footman]

Clearly there is the law of diminishing returns when talking about most tech. While it's great reviewing gear with oscilloscope and spectrum analyzers to differentiate one dac from another we must not forget the 2 big elephants in the room, poorly engineered human ear. Old ears, hairy ears, waxy ears, diseased ears.... Limit of human hearing will always trump the perfect dac. And music source, Flac, MP3, Tidel, etc... Personally I agree that at a certain point dacs all sound alike. I have many dacs that I listen to with headphones. The one that comes on my Pixel Phone, then onboard motherboard dacs, creative soundcard, Fiio K5 Pro, new Topping DX3 pro+ and Topping DX7 pro (sold).
To my ears the best sound I get is from my desktop PC via DX3pro + and HiFiMan 400se headphones.

I sold my Topping DX7pro as I could hear zero difference between it and the very much cheaper DX3pro + and the same with my headphones. The Hifiman 400SEs are amazing with a touch of EQ to boost the bass, they currently cost $109 from Amazon. I sold my Focal Clear because I heard no difference.
I spent $199 on my dac amp, $109 on my headphones and I am a happy camper.
So why then did I sell my even cheaper Fiio K5pro with AKM dac not ESS as in my DX3pro+? Amplification.

While dacs are all much of a muchness, I do believe that a decent amp will make or break a dac...

 

[Operandi]

While it's great reviewing gear with oscilloscope and spectrum analyzers to differentiate one dac from another we must not forget the 2 big elephants in the room, poorly engineered human ear. Old ears, hairy ears, waxy ears, diseased ears.... Limit of human hearing will always trump the perfect dac.

An interesting thing to keep in mind when talking about this stuff is when it comes to what we would consider musical content the top 1/3 (or 1/4 at least) of the human hearing range has nothing to do with any of it. From 15,000Hz and beyond its pretty much all about spacial awareness information so in terms of music or movies depth perception, soundstage and imaging, and thats a big part of the difference between a decent DAC and a really good one. Cheap headphones or speakers or speakers in setup poorly are not going to image or soundstage so a really good DAC and decent one will sound the same but that dosen't mean there no differences just that you stand no chance of hearing them.

Measurements are interesting but you are only looking at small slice of what is happening. The real interesting part is what it actually sounds like and measurements are really only good for confirming or denying that. Thtats what things like the Audio Precision are made for, helping engineers design hardware not for plebs to loose their shit over on ASR.

And as to the human factor, psychoacoustics and the perception of sound is not linear, everything about perceiving sound is logarithmic and the nature and scale of that varies depending on what aspect you are talking about. Also even though human hearing starts falling off as you age you are still hearing the harmonics of 15-20Khz content and are able to perceive that information in the sound. Thats why audio engineers and audiophiles can be in their 60-70s and still do their job.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Clearly there is the law of diminishing returns when talking about most tech. While it's great reviewing gear with oscilloscope and spectrum analyzers to differentiate one dac from another we must not forget the 2 big elephants in the room, poorly engineered human ear. Old ears, hairy ears, waxy ears, diseased ears.... Limit of human hearing will always trump the perfect dac. And music source, Flac, MP3, Tidel, etc... Personally I agree that at a certain point dacs all sound alike. I have many dacs that I listen to with headphones. The one that comes on my Pixel Phone, then onboard motherboard dacs, creative soundcard, Fiio K5 Pro, new Topping DX3 pro+ and Topping DX7 pro (sold).
To my ears the best sound I get is from my desktop PC via DX3pro + and HiFiMan 400se headphones.

I sold my Topping DX7pro as I could hear zero difference between it and the very much cheaper DX3pro + and the same with my headphones. The Hifiman 400SEs are amazing with a touch of EQ to boost the bass, they currently cost $109 from Amazon. I sold my Focal Clear because I heard no difference.
I spent $199 on my dac amp, $109 on my headphones and I am a happy camper.
So why then did I sell my even cheaper Fiio K5pro with AKM dac not ESS as in my DX3pro+? Amplification.

While dacs are all much of a muchness, I do believe that a decent amp will make or break a dac...

Agree the amp matters more. It's one of the reasons I loved the Chord mojo. It's also one of the reasons some of the most expensive stuff for what you get and lack features (ifi diablo, earman angel) seem just like amp cannons and not much else.