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Want to keep my DACs sound but use external AMP for better bass response, possible?

JohnYang1997

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Firstly, get an amp. or your xduoo x3 has really good amp already.
Secondly, it's not that digital equalizers all have problems but you are using them wrong. You need to decease all other bands in order to boost certain frequencies. That's called clipping. 0db is maximum, when you boost something it's going to clip. Of course it's going to be bad.
 
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FunkeXMix

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Mission accomplished!
1) Goal was to keep the sound of the LG music player app, why is explained in my first post. But it's weakness was lackluster shallow bass. And it's EQ sucks ass so you could'nt add body to the bass no matter if you boosted bass and lowered the other freqs. Bought the Fiio A1 and an amp solved the issue like amirm said it would. Bass now has body. Fiio A1 is set to flat (best), with none of it's EQ boosting. LG music player is set to flat as well. As a bonus, being able to tweak sound volume on both the Fiio A1 and the smartphone allows for some extra coloration of the sound to your liking.

2) I tweaked around carefully with 'Gain, Q, Freq' in low shelf/high shelf parametric EQ settings alot in Neutron music player. Also Teac, but Neutron had better settings and sound in my opinion. Could not reproduce the addition of body to the bass in comparison to Xduoo X3 and the Fiio A1. So better amping does seem to matter even for my easy to drive IEMs. Just to make clear what I mean by bass having body I will take an example: You can boost the bass for some shit ass speakers and it's gonna boost and rumble a bit more. But bass having body is like when you switch to a quality pair of HIFI speakers instead that have drivers that can handle bass better naturally, they give bass body. That was the sound difference between parametric EQs on my phone and switching to Fiio A1 or Xduoo X3s better amp.

3) Thanks a lot for you EQ advice everyone! I really needed to learn that being a HIFI nerd :) Didn't help on my smartphone but worked great on my different computers using Jriver Media Center, lowering the preamp by the same amount as your highest boost.
 
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Nartano

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Did you try the LG G5 "Hifi" module?
If I understand correctly it includes a very near Sabre DAC/Amp
 
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FunkeXMix

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Not with my current iems. I did, back when I had sony n3ap iems but they were not a good match with the module. Both are very stereo width focused and it get's to be too much. Sony n3ap sounded better with just the LG G5. The module is at a friends place in another country. I'll try it someday :) But I don't think it will be a good solution anyway. The module eats phone battery way too fast. But thanks for the tip anyway :)
 
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