Finally someone talking about diminishing return in this hobby. Since I'm a broke student, I'm glad spending $200 ish for a pair headset and IEM. I bought ath m40x and hexa best purchase of my life:)
I've set a pretty hard limit on myself for audio stuff. No more than $1000 unless I feel it does something my other equipment doesn't. Nothing above $6000 for any piece of equipment at all. I've heard things for $20 sound amazing and $1000 things sound like shit. Just gotta know what you want and if something makes a difference for you, go for it (within reason)
I do not have a "hard limit", but I have a soft one: how much does it make sense to spend on a piece of tech judging by how often I'll be using it? Which for audio results in a limit that depends on the graph I see between like 500 and 1000ish. But if I find a closed back with good isolation, good comfort and good graph, I'd be willing to spend more... Unfortunately the market for this is pretty small^^
Depends on what you are after. Just for measurements, the Apple dongle does totally fine. If you'd like a bit better measurements (dynamic range, channel-ross-talk, SNR...), something like the Moondrop Dawn, Tanchjim Space, Jcally AP98 or the relatively new Fosi Audio DS2 (at least judging from its spec sheet, there aren't too many reviews of it currently though) will get basically everything you need. However, if you want features e.g. Bluetooth, EQ, "Upsampling filter" etc. you can easily stretch the inflection point to a couple hundred dollars.
Great exposition ! I'd say the sweet spot is the $350 range. Enjoy audio, cheers !
Totally fair evaluation as well. I just guessed a a price range, but the gist of it doesn't really change when one ups the price to even 500ish ^^
Finally someone talking about diminishing return in this hobby. Since I'm a broke student, I'm glad spending $200 ish for a pair headset and IEM. I bought ath m40x and hexa best purchase of my life:)
You could also go lower without any issue, apple dongle plus any of the 100ish planars will make you more than happy for X years to come :-)
I've set a pretty hard limit on myself for audio stuff. No more than $1000 unless I feel it does something my other equipment doesn't. Nothing above $6000 for any piece of equipment at all. I've heard things for $20 sound amazing and $1000 things sound like shit. Just gotta know what you want and if something makes a difference for you, go for it (within reason)
I do not have a "hard limit", but I have a soft one: how much does it make sense to spend on a piece of tech judging by how often I'll be using it?
Which for audio results in a limit that depends on the graph I see between like 500 and 1000ish. But if I find a closed back with good isolation, good comfort and good graph, I'd be willing to spend more... Unfortunately the market for this is pretty small^^
For the dac where is the inflection point ? $50 ?
Depends on what you are after.
Just for measurements, the Apple dongle does totally fine. If you'd like a bit better measurements (dynamic range, channel-ross-talk, SNR...), something like the Moondrop Dawn, Tanchjim Space, Jcally AP98 or the relatively new Fosi Audio DS2 (at least judging from its spec sheet, there aren't too many reviews of it currently though) will get basically everything you need.
However, if you want features e.g. Bluetooth, EQ, "Upsampling filter" etc. you can easily stretch the inflection point to a couple hundred dollars.