Your post should go in a "feedback from satisfied customers hall of fame" section of the forum, this is the eureka moment after accepting that the objective measurements are more credible than the forest of anecdotal subjective opinions floating around.Guys, I wanted fro thank you all for guiding me through my purchase decision. My RME arrived last Friday and I’m very happy with my purchase. Even though I initially bought it for my HD800s (and it was way above my budget as a headphone amp) but now I have been also using it for my stereo system (with KEF LS50). The power of having a good EQ cannot just be explained just by words. For many years, I thought EQing is a bad thing and would ruin the music by making it “fake” or “unrealistic”, but after reading a few articles lately and joining this forum, I realized that contrary to the conventional wisdom EQing is a good thing to do. Now the difference (and improvement) that I hear after EQing, is something that I previously thought I could obtain only through upgrading my amp to a very expensive pre-amp+amp (that could have cost me above 10k), not by simply adding an EQ. The next step for me is to soon, purchase a “good enough” and “natural” power amp to replace my Yamaha NR-602 and use my RME as a pre-amp.
Very happy for you! I know from experience now your audio journey will go on a steep upwards hill of actual improvements in fidelity and experience with audio.
As for amplifier - yours might be somewhat sufficient, but here are ASR's "standard recommendations":
- TPA3255-based amplifier, AIYIMA A07 being one measured by Amir - this one does not do many watts, but it's clean and cheap.
- HypeX NCore, Buckeye has the most affordable propositions, also measured.
- Purifi 1ET400A, many manufacturers, measurements.