If you have a MAC, you don't need a DAC | I (with a small...

If you have a MAC, you don't need a DAC

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JGalt

Stromboli5

Mar 1, 2018

Excuse me. I have a specific question. Is it possible to drive an HD6xx with an Macbook Air mid 2013 without needing an external amplifier?

Mar 22, 2018

Stromboli5jes, but its going to be a bit silent and by far not as good as even a cheap little dac/amp.

Stromboli5

Apr 2, 2018

tylli have tested my hd600 with the macbook and nuforce udac3, and i have not noticed big diferences betwen both, i mean, actually the headphone sounds slightly better with the DAC/AMP but the volume it seems almost the same...

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Apr 2, 2018

Stromboli5Thats probably because it's a small little amp, the hd 600 are "Hard to drive " and the amp is probably not designer for 300 Ohm headphones , but as you wrote you can hear a difference, so you might wanna think about getting something more powerfull that can fulfill the hd 600s potential.

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Stromboli5

Apr 2, 2018

tyllAlso, i used the hd600 with the udac3 (ONLY DAC) and amplifying the signal with a Receiver Sony str k660p with 6.3mm out. The sound quality was the same but the volume was almost the double in comparison with the udac3 amp option. By the way, in the features of udac3 says that it support 300ohms headphones.

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May 18, 2018

Stromboli5My HD6xx sound fine from both my iPhone6 and my 1st Gen MacBook. Haven't tried them with an Air but I'd expect your Air's internal amp to be very close if not identical to my MacBook.
What I have found though, is that you will notice the lack of power with the internal headphone amps on smaller devices. My HD6xx are not as loud on my MacBook as with my iMac 27". My HD6xx are not as loud with my iPhone as they are with my MacBook.
Subjectively speaking, I find that my HD6xx powered by my iPhone only get as loud at max volume as a less demanding headphone would get if I turned Volume Limiting ON in my iPhone settings. That's the setting that lowers the max volume to prevent hearing damage. In other words... they aren't LOUD on the iPhone, but they're loud enough. They're loud enough ++ on the MacBook... and they can get louder than I should probably be listening to them with the iMac's internal headphone amp.
.. and yet, I'm here because I'm jones'ing for a nice external Amp or DAC/Amp for my office iMac. ;-). There's way more to amp quality than just volume.. there's bass response at volume which is strongly affected by how much power is delivered to the amp circuit (and how quickly it can respond to peaks in draw)... etc. Big transformers, big quality caps, and proper gauge wiring matters. ...not the kind of thing you get with a tiny amp circuit on the corner of your laptop or desktop MB.

tiad

May 18, 2018

Stromboli5 HD 6xx definitely benefits from a good headphone amplifier. It sounds amazing with my CEC HD53N driven balanced (2x 3p-XLR).

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TronII

May 18, 2018

sbandykThe 13" MacBook Air has a ridiculously powerful amp for a laptop, imo. With low impedance headphones, the highest volume I can use is 3 blocks; the lowest volume setting isn't low enough. For medium impedance headphones, though, I would assume it would just right in terms of power (not necessarily in quality). I haven't used it for such headphones recently, though. It does deliver plenty power to the HD 6xx, but is a bit weak, I think

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Jun 8, 2018

tyllEvidently you actually have a pair of HD6XXs and a Macbook Air mid 2013, and can explain why you purchased both when according to you, a cheap little dac/amp would have saved you enough money to buy a new MacBook Air and a better set of headphones? Or were you, like so many Windoze boys with a bad case of Apple envy, just talking out of your Vista installed ass?

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Jun 8, 2018

sbandykChrist--you sound like you actually own the stuff you're talking about!That makes you just a tad over-qualified for this Info Wars inspired thread. Leave the rest of us to our here-say and penis-envy diatribes, will you? Truth and reality have no place in this damn conversion!

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Jun 8, 2018

RayFi think your confusing people here, i have hd600 and a macbook 12 inch and a bunch of other stuff. But please fuck of with your "apple envy" cause that aint no argument .

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Jun 8, 2018

tyllDamn did I say Apple-envy? I meant penis-envy.

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Jun 8, 2018

RayFoh, good one. still apple sucks with their hardware. times have changed, neither their screens or there keyboards or build quality is state of the art, the only thing they have the best in is the touchpad, that one is pretty good. other hardware sucks. (including dac)

Jun 8, 2018

RayFDepends on your definition of "own"... I get paid to support, among other things, about a thousand or so Macs. I've been 'the Mac guy' at this and my previous job for about 20 years now and they're still my preferred platform. ... More accurately, these days I get paid to manage a Divisional IT Office that supports them but some Users won't take "Management" for an answer when they demand that no one but me should touch their computers. You fix one completely insurmountable problem for someone and they never let go of you.
I can't honestly say I "own" ANY Macs right now and I haven't for quite a long time. I do manage to keep a few around solely for my own use at any given time though. So yea... I'm a little familiar but maybe my current lack of actual ownership is the loophole that qualifies me to participate.

Jun 8, 2018

tyllWell I'm said to hear you say that, but I suspect Apple will continue to conquor the universe--even if they have to do it without you. SAD (as you know who often says).

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Jun 8, 2018

sbandykSounds like working at a See's Candy factory--I suppose there has to come a point in your career where you just couldn't possibly eat one more Dark Chocolate Bordeaux!

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Jun 8, 2018

tyllI (with a small staff) support a couple thousand systems. Most are Dells and Macs though there's a wide variety of other systems around from the small vendor computer clusters in my DataCenter, the parted-out beige boxes in the labs, to whatever the foreign Grad Students bring in. My opinion of Apple hardware is that it's rarely designed to be easy to work on for anything but Apple-approved end-user maintenance/upgrades... though PC (especially laptops) have also become more difficult to work on as they've shrunk their form factors like Apple's. Overall build quality has been excellent and remains so. I don't know of any Laptop that feels better built than a MacBook or MBP (in the same market segment at least). I'm not a fan of the 2nd revision of the sissor keyboard mechanisms on the current laptops but I haven't used a recent model persistently enough to say if I'd get used to it. I love their desktop keyboards though.. best wireless keyboard in the world, and I prefer the wired models over any PC keyboard I recall using. Reliability of their equipment is generally VERY high, with Macs still remaining in service longer than most of our PCs. This is confirmed by a number of Industry ratings. When there are quality issues, they are pervasive design or component problems and Apple has had a number of those over the years. There were the bad ATI GPUs on a revision of iMacs... the fraying video signal cables on the white MacBooks, the floppy hinges on the early MacBook Airs, the anti-glare coating on the MBP model that flaked off for some users... These aren't issues that don't also affect other vendors though. I remember way back when Dell, IBM, and a number of major vendors bought, Literally Billions of counterfeit capacitors from a Chinese manufacturer who's industrial process was only partially stolen from a competitor. The silver lining of Apple quality failings being intermittent but systemic is that they tend to end up being directly addressed by Apple with Warranty Extension programs.. where as a more general problem with another vendor that might lead to a 5% higher failure rate with their laptops (compared to competitors) would fly under the radar and be unlikely to prompt an official recognition and accommodation from the Manufacturer.
So no. Apple hardware doesn't suck. They make some of the best made, most reliable hardware in the industry. Granted, I've only got the tens of thousands of Macs I've supported over the last 20 years, and pretty much every industry report to back that up (http://fortune.com/2018/03/12/apple-macbooks-most-reliable/) but, that's what my gut tells me at least. ;-P
My guess... just throwing it out here... you're conflating their lack of a Gaming Rig that's up to your standards with the actual quality of the hardware they actually design and make. Am I close? :-)
P.S. Can you tell it's a slow Friday and I've officially reached "Completely Unmotivated©"? Time to get up to stretch my legs and make a last-ditch effort to refocus before the end of the day... If all goes well, I won't be back to continue the banter today so feel free to really let me have it with the most snide of quips. ;-)

Nonyabuzi

Dec 25, 2018

sbandykDude wtf does your long rant have to do with audio quality?

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Jun 8, 2020

NonyabuziNothing. I was replying to tyll. :-)

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