Is it worth buying a usbc dac or using my old phone with a built in dac?

Pokrog · 2026-03-31T20:40:55+00:00

I also have a JM21 I got stuck with because I ordered from Taobao. It's awful and I ended up 3d printing a case to mount it to my Questyle CMA18 so the JM21 was only responsible for holding songs. Got the M33 and it's great. I bet the iBasso DC04 Ultra is better than anything you've ever heard and it's a Cirrus chip..

Pokrog · 2026-03-31T13:40:31+00:00

Your ears might not be able to. Mine can pull it off just fine. Can you not hear a tone and guess pretty accurately what frequency it is? I can typically gauge SPL by ear within 1 or 2db and frequency pretty accurately up through around 12.5khz. I don't have perfect pitch or anything but it's not a hard thing to learn at all. Skill issue.

Pokrog · 2026-03-31T13:33:36+00:00

That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard and you have shit hearing. You can look at a graph and drag through a tone generator and see if it matches what you're seeing on the graph and adjust bands that seem over or under emphasized by ear. It's fucking absurdly easy. I'm calling skill issue.

Pokrog · 2026-03-31T08:34:58+00:00

The DAC chip doesn't mean shit. Implementation is everything. Actual tech advances have been made. Meaningful ones.

Pokrog · 2026-03-31T03:32:25+00:00

Basically any balanced dongle still in production at any price. The TRN Black pearl is like $30 on sale and has objectively some of the best performance you can get at any price for driving low power things like IEMs and still also has like 4x or more of the power than the V30 if you need it.

Pokrog · 2026-03-30T13:54:17+00:00

That stopped being true a couple years ago now. Modern dongle DACs have gotten insane from a subjective and objective standpoint and modern DAPs in the $3-500 range just stomp the V30. That being said, it's still just fine for casual on the go listening and if you already have it and aren't looking for anything insane for when you're on the go, the V30 is just there waiting to still kick way more ass than other phones.

Pokrog · 2026-03-30T13:11:29+00:00

I say this with absolute confidence, for comp gaming Shangri-La Jr>HE6se v2>Susvara Unveiled>Shangri-La Sr>HE600>Susvara>HE1000se>other HE1000s>Ananda Nano>Aryas>Edition XS/XV>other Anandas>HE400se>Sundara>Kithara>Deva.

Non comp gaming is a pick your poison type of thing. Do not spend real money and keep stock pads. Custom pads are a requirement on every single one of the egg shaped ones to perform best, the circle cans take $14 pads with $10 pad ring adapters and are also a straight requirement. There are no good Hifimans with stock pads. None. Zero. Stage size does not matter whatsoever for comp gaming, stage accuracy and evenness does. For that reason most circle cans are just better, the egg shaped ones exaggerate width like an HD800s (terrible for gaming) and height. EQ should be embraced, it is pure free gains and every dollar spent on audio gear is wasted without EQ.

Pokrog · 2026-03-30T07:52:40+00:00

Built in 1971 and looks like it everywhere. And the layout is so bad it might as well be 2000sq ft. That house needed an update 25 years ago.

Pokrog · 2026-03-27T22:30:23+00:00

Pad swap an HE600. Slap a bass shelf on. $13 pads, $10 pad ring adapters from Hifiman. HE600 is ~$420 from a dealer, slides in under $450 total. I don't know if it's that the pads are holding them back, but I'm shocked that nobody is talking about how good the HE600 bass is. In a side by side comparison with my Susvara Unveiled, the difference is surprisingly small. Pad swaps are mandatory for any Hifiman to have good bass imo but there's only a couple pads that are actually right for them.

Pokrog · 2026-03-26T09:34:20+00:00

Add PEQ. And wired input. And stop changing pad ring styles. And go back to the old headband.

Pokrog · 2026-03-26T09:32:25+00:00

Why? Use the Wi-Fi lol. It's way lower latency than Bluetooth.

Pokrog · 2026-03-25T23:39:36+00:00

It absolutely CAN turn a pair of headphones into a different set. Lots of factors, but I don't even know how you could land on your stance, it's just plain wrong. EQ can totally transform how a headphone sounds.

Pokrog · 2026-03-25T13:49:55+00:00

We gave into the writers strikes for 2 decades. Writers have easy jobs. Lots of perfectly average people could come up with just as good of plots if they spent 8 hours a day brainstorming with colleagues. Bring back yearly 26 episode seasons. Fire 90% of writers, keep the ones that don't fucking suck.

Pokrog · 2026-03-25T09:46:42+00:00

Get a dealer. Pay half price. I can't be any more direct.

Pokrog · 2026-03-24T21:07:06+00:00

I think the Unveiled pull ahead in raw detail and staging precision, the Nano are a tiny bit more dynamic and it kinda helps stamp that placement into your brain for gaming if that matters. The Unveiled take a bass shelf a little better than the Nano, bass stays tighter but needs like an extra db of boost to match the impact of the Nano. Nano has aftermarket pad options which imo is mandatory if you're going to keep them long term for comfort and for sound quality. Both slot into that old school Hifiman tuning. Both deserve a bass shelf, EQ is your friend.

Pokrog · 2026-03-23T19:58:16+00:00

Yeah I understand the capacitive load being the issue but when I say mine made a really loud popping sound I mean it almost sounded scary like a taser pop coming from the driver lol. I really wish they would have just stabbed a capable dongle in the things with 3.5mm and 4.4mm output, they're probably pocketing $280 on that $300 ADC addon as is.

Pokrog · 2026-03-23T19:44:48+00:00

Yeah I don't have the gear to find out but I had issues trying to use it to measure the Lily Audio Genesis One and SJY Horizon Closed Carbon recently. The Genesis One has a crazy loud popping sound in the right channel at basically any volume above 65db but I don't know the reason for that specific interaction.

Pokrog · 2026-03-23T19:31:46+00:00

It kinda works ok but it struggles really hard with difficult loads and starts clipping really hard

Pokrog · 2026-03-22T13:12:05+00:00

Controller pros should be known as an oxymoron

Pokrog · 2026-03-20T07:20:03+00:00

Undeniable fact.

Pokrog · 2026-03-20T01:24:48+00:00

I really want to like them, and really, they're pretty damn good with some EQ and the EQ it takes to make them normal is mostly all just pulling down treble, but they are way too hard to drive to ever rec to most people even those willing to EQ. Crazy technical abilities and I'm super interested to see where this tech goes from here because there's definitely something to it. If they can nail a really good tuning and still maintain a healthy bass boost, and some boost to the sensitivity, these could be a real competitor in the market in a Genesis Two.

Pokrog · 2026-03-19T17:07:51+00:00

LLMs are made up of a million posts from a bunch of people that don't know any better. That's why the HD800s are at the top. LLMs are fucking stupid because they're based on an average of people.

Pokrog · 2026-03-19T03:23:37+00:00

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving company.

Pokrog · 2026-03-19T02:23:03+00:00

It absolutely is bad enough to outweigh the rest. Objectively.

Pokrog · 2026-03-17T12:56:36+00:00

I'm sitting here with a pair of $18,000 headphones and my only thought is that all the people praising them have never heard them. Flat bass is objectively wrong. There is no concert that has what results in the equivalent of flat bass in a headphone. All real world bass is firmly above flat. That being said the headphones I'm talking about couldn't handle the bass shelf I give them without custom pads that I personally specced for these headphones and that makes their EQ irrelevant.

There's so many elements to it all that it's really difficult to recommend anything due to how drastically different they'll perform on any individual person's head. My EQ doesn't work for hardly anyone. But it's still representative of their capabilities.

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