Portable CS43131 dac/amp to Douk U3 amp

[MrNice13]

Hey

Ok straight to the point

i'm using my old oppo at my girlfriend house for my hifi streaming when she use the PC
Yesterday I plugged my Oppo > Samsung dongle (192/24) > Douk U3 (NE5534) > DT770 250 ohms, Sundara, even 32 ohms superlux's and it sounds fairly good.

But in my head I was like.... I can pass thru the caca amp section of the Samsung dongle with a better dongle/control so I plugged the Cirrus 43131 dac/amp so now I replaced the Samsung chip with the Cirrus.

On the phone I can go in the iBasso UAC app and put the gain to low and go further with the amp knob and I can feel like the music is more airy more soundstage and the bass is stronger.
Is it placebo or the Cirrus and the combination of the gain control and the fact that I can push further the amp make the sound quality better ? One thing for sure I'm getting fun
Is not weird that I put low or high gain before the amp? In my head the gain is at the end of the chain xD

Thanks guys

 

[Jimbob54]

The amp doesn't care, it's just receiving a voltage and amplifying it by whatever gain it has. Unless of course the input signal is more than it can handle which I doubt is the case with either dongle.

To determine whether what you perceive you hear is real or not I'm afraid requires a bit of work.

2 main requirements, one is to make sure the output of your amp is exactly the same to enable comparison, which requires a voltage reading with a multimeter and some fiddling with volume settings

The other is to not know which dongle is in use and have someone else switching for you.

Unless the Samsung dongle is utter garbage I suspect what you are hearing is equal parts different volume levels and placebo effect.

Or you could just forget that and use whichever makes you happy regardless of why

 

[MrNice13]

Thx @Jimbob54