Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
It's kinda complicated, but in general no. If you are willing to spend >$200 on a good DAC then yeah there might be an improvement, but to be honest the built in DACs on newer (I know they were good as far back as 2014) mbps is phenomenal compared to the competition, and it will very likely out perform almost any sub $200 DAC.
I learned this the hard way. I bought an external DAC and as a test I tried a couple of "pick out the higher bitrate tests". I was better at it while using the internal DAC across the board.
Here is the thing. Apple cares very deeply about the audio quality of their devices because musicians are one of their primary targets. As a result they put in very, very good Dacs.