Recommendations for DAC/AMP for Arya Stealth

[antanast]

Hi everyone.

Looking to get some recommendations for a dac/amp for the Aryas. I am with the K5 pro ESS and considering the K9 Pro ESS but not so sure as some people said that I would barely notice a difference.

 

[staticV3]

Are you missing volume with the K5 Pro?

 

[jae]

Not a particularly hard to drive headphone, it can be powered fine off just an Apple dongle. K5 Pro should be more than enough according to the measured specs. If you want something that measures a bit better/lower noise floor, you can get virtually any new Topping product. You won't really hear a difference.

 

[antanast]

The k5 pro powers it more than enough. I just thought that a more expensive dac amp will make it sound better. But to be honest even my fiio q3 sounds almost the same as my q5…

 

[Dunring]

I've had the Arya with several setups, a balanced DAC will help stay in medium gain but short of avoiding high gain mode, you're not in for a noticable difference unless it's a DAC with both filters and colors like the SMSL M300 or DO200. If you fiddle with both you can get it to sound a little nicer. Main thing is having overhead to equalize with a preamp reduction if you want to get better sound. If you're not running out of power or hearing clipping at high volume during busy passages, then keep what you've got and run a few EQ profiles like the one reviewed here for those. APO/Peace has the presets now with the Autoeq button to make it really easy.

 

[antanast]

I've had the Arya with several setups, a balanced DAC will help stay in medium gain but short of avoiding high gain mode, you're not in for a noticable difference unless it's a DAC with both filters and colors like the SMSL M300 or DO200. If you fiddle with both you can get it to sound a little nicer. Main thing is having overhead to equalize with a preamp reduction if you want to get better sound. If you're not running out of power or hearing clipping at high volume during busy passages, then keep what you've got and run a few EQ profiles like the one reviewed here for those. APO/Peace has the presets now with the Autoeq button to make it really easy.

Thanks alot! So then my 200 usd k5 pro ess seems to be fine just wanted to convince myself that spending another 950 usd for the k9 pro would not make the aryas sound 4.5 times better