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
this is an integrated amp with a low power headamp built in, so it can power passive speakers and switch inputs, but the headamp output looks to be pretty low power, some of the core specs arent listed at all, and it doesnt look like anything special on that end compared to say a schiit, grace, or bottlehead, etc. this would be more for speaker folks.
For most scenarios, active speakers would be speakers with a built in amplifier. typically these are most commonly monitor bookshelf speakers such as say audioengine A5 or jbl LSR305 speakers, rokit's etc. active speakers would typically have RCA inputs etc, passives would have binding posts or terminals for speaker wire, spades, bananas, etc, to connect to an amplifier. you can think of the nfb11 as sort of a preamp, with a headphone amp in it but not a speaker amp in it.
the particular unit, the NFB11 is a headphone amp with a built in dac, it can drive headphoners, or output to powered speakers or a separate amplifier for speakers. a comparable product would be say, the audeze deckard, or the massdrop CTH+sdac.
the sprout/2 is what you would call an integrated amp. it has a dac, phono preamp, and a speaker amp, and a headphone amp all in one unit, but the emphasis is on the speaker amp, not the headphone amp on a unit like this, the headphone amp is pretty low power.