Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
so your question is probably "do I need a dedicated external DAC ?" no. so why people are buying an external DAC ? -the sampling of the music file is not supported by their phone /pc ...(ex a PCM 24bits at 192 kHz) -they like the architecture and the D/A processor (sound quality, filtering, clarity, noiseless...) -connectivity/dedicated device.
note a "pure" DAC do not usually play music: you need a player , a software to read and "understand" the format of the file , how it is stored (ex ntfs, ext3, fat32) or how it is shared or streamed on a network (SMB/SAMBA) ....so you play on your computer/phone, and send to the DAC via USB.
a "pure" DAC do not amplify the sound...you need an amp for that.
I'm not sure if you are confusing the DAC with the AMP. Some products have both of this. The DAC, as mentioned already, only translates the digital signal (0 and 1) to analog signal (a waveform with variable voltage which will go to your headphone drivers and will be transformed in sound). The AMP gets the analog signal and boosts it.
Your PC and phone already have DAC, but it is usually not as good as an external DAC, have more noise and cannot work with really high bitrates and frequencies.
I have a Sennheiser HD 598 SE and CS and I can use both of them with my iPhone, but I use an external DAC on my computer and I can notice it clears some background noise, especially in quietly parts of the music. Considering they have low impedance, I did not buy an AMP.
After purchasing the HD 6XX I decided to purchase a DAC + AMP. You will be able to use your phone without an AMP/DAC, but it will not sound as loud and as clear as it should be.
If you are not sure, I suggest you to buy the headphone, use it with your hardware and see if it fulfills your needs. But I'm almost sure you will get better results with an AMP/DAC. I will give you a feedback when mine arrives, but it will only be in march 2018.