What would be a good portable Dac/Amp to use with my HD6xx and Sony Xperia 1 V cell phone?
I am new to this hobby. I purchased a HD6XX and plan to use it with my Sony Xperia 1 V cell phone, that has a 3.5mm jack. I was wondering if I needed a portable dac/amp or just a portable amp and if so what would one recommend? Any assistance one could provide, would be greatly appreciated. Kind regards, Haz
Mar 7, 2024
If you want no-compromise quality, I configured these custom ones on RedCo using Canare cable (one is red and one is white. I set the length to 10 feet so you change the configuration to be shorter if you'd like): https://www.redco.com/Custom-Cable.html?cableid=Q9BTG https://www.redco.com/Custom-Cable.html?cableid=PZRT5
Long version: Hey, your Grace m9xx has two headphone outputs on the front and one set of RCA outputs on the back. For maximum quality, we don't want to use the headphone outputs in this case because they amplify the signal and we instead want to give the speakers an unamplified, line-level signal. So we have to use the RCA outputs. RCA outputs are unbalanced and your speakers have TRS balanced inputs, but we can feed your speakers a TS unbalanced input and it'll still work fine (once you connect the cables, you might need to experiment with flipping the +4dBu/-10dBv switch on the back of your speakers to get the signal level right).
In the tldr I gave a link to Hosa cables, which are really inexpensive. The reviews on Amazon are good but I personally don't know how well they'll work - I remember being disappointed by Hosa cables in the past, such as the one that shipped with these LSR30X speakers.
In the tldr I also gave a link to Redco cables. I have had an awesome experience with RedCo cables, where you can customize the length, connector, and most importantly, the cable manufacturer used. So if you really wanted to go all-out and use Mogami cable, you can select that. I configured it with Canare cable because I'm still a bit cost-conscious and Canare is still very very good.
Now, if you ever want to connect your speakers to your UR22 for its low latency or some other music production purpose, you should use TRS balanced cables like these: https://www.redco.com/Custom-Cable.html?cableid=K1WT6D
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.
I think the best option is a male 3.5mm TRS to dual male 1/4" TS cable, like the Hosa cable that shipped with these LSR30Xs. If you plug in the Hosa cable and the sound quality does not seem to have a problem, then I personally would stick with the Hosa cable.
If you would like a higher quality cable, I've had good experience with Monoprice, despite how inexpensive they are: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=601040. Unfortunately the maximum cable length is 5 feet. And here's the Redco equivalent: https://www.redco.com/Custom-Cable.html?cableid=KB6252 The Redco option is more expensive ($30) than I would like because Redco doesn't use any Y-cable manufacturers other than Mogami. Mogami cable is very high-quality, but whether or not it's worth it is up to you.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Do you have your speakers really far from your computer? If not, it might be worth switching to the 15 foot or 6 foot version; because in general, we would like to keep cables as short as possible to minimize the effects of electrical noise from the environment.