Anyone use one/both? After a bit of hunting for new headphones I’ve noticed these mentioned a few times.

I bought one of those FiiO things after it was recommended on here…It’s transformed my life. Fan-bloody-tastic. 😀

I’ve got one of the Fiio dac/amps. I use a pair of full size Sennheiser Momentum headphones and the headphone output on my iPod isn’t powerful enough to drive them properly. I do use it as a Dac connected to my MacBook occasionally and it sounds pretty good.
They’re used mainly by people wanting a bit more oomph out of their iPod, or those with very expensive headphones.

I have almost no experience as such, but have been thinking about trying one out.

I did get a FiiO E6, which is just as basic amp with some eq settings. It provides a LOT more oomph than the standard out put of my iPod, but mostly that just takes the available volume range well beyond what I want. The other use I have for it (was only about £20) is getting enough output to plug the iPod into any line in, which it does just fine.

However, I have been looking at a desktop dac/amp… been thinking about trying a Aune T1. Or, might also consider something portable to use just as an amp with the iPod and as dac/amp at my desk.

I’ll take the credit for the mention of the Fiio E06 a few months ago 🙂
I have one for sale – I upgraded to another model

email me if you want one for a good price Mr 🙂

Well worth the money and add more depth + punch to any music or headphones.

Yep – for £20ish the E6 is easy to like. I don’t think it does anything to improve my portable headphones, but they don’t need much driving at all. I got Etymotic HF3 in the end.

However, if I ever took a fancy to carting around my big headphones I would just slip the E6 in-between to drive them properly. The biggest pita was having to get a Lightning-30 pin connector and a 30 pin line out cable to make it all work with iPod Touch 5th Gen. Bit of a jumble of wires, but it does work.

I used to have a Ray Samuels Tomahawk for driving a large pair of Audio Technica ATH-W1000 headphones, fantastic and effortless sounding huge sound stage with the amp but the headphones underwhelmed me on their own so the amp in this case definitely made a vast improvement, unless you have a pair of incredibly inefficient or hard to drive headphones then i wouldn’t bother, are you going to be walking about with the headphones/amp or are you going to sit down and “critical listen” so to speak 😉

For listening to compressed or mp3 music i personally wouldn’t bother with an amp, I’m as hypercritical bout my music as just about anyone and these days i’m happy with my set of Plantronics Backbeat Go2 bluetooth wireless earphones for listening when i’m out and about as there is no wires dangling down my shirt to rattle and get microphonics from, pretty decent sound quality as well for what they are. If i wish to get uptight bout clinical musical reproduction and ignore people when out and about then i’ll use my Etymotic ER4P or if i wish to annoy folk wi sound leakage then i’ll use my Grado SR-80’s which are just fantastic with all music.

I’ve a hankering for a set of Bowers and Wilkins P3 or P5 , i’d want to try them out for a few hours though and i doubt any store would allow me to wander about or sit and listen for a few hours whilst i made up my mind.

I’ve got a FiiO Alpen E17 for use with Grado SR80i’s – the difference with and without is more than palpable! I can use it purely as an amp when used with my Rotel CD player, or as DAC and amp when listening to music from the PC – don’t really listen to music on the move.

Great bit of kit for the money and if I could afford/justify it I’d happily spend serious money on headphones and DAC/amp.

Cheers all, very useful 😀