I recently picked up a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 phones @ 80 ohms. These things are great, but they have unfortunately exposed my subpar audio gear (mostly integrated audio). The only hardware I have that can drive them properly is, ironically, a gaming laptop with an integrated amp in the sound output.
The DT770s aren’t exactly the most portable headphones, but I’d still like something I can take with me on the go. Are there any bus- or battery-powered amps that would fill the role? Looking to spend $100 - $150.
For “strapped to back of phone”-use, iFi Hipdac or XDuoo XD05.
Another more compact option would be something like the Fiio BTR5.
All of the above can be used via USB from your PC/Phone and in case of the XD05 and BTR5 also Bluetooth.
For portable-use (= connected to a PC/Laptop), something like the Violectric Chronos could be interesting. The Chronos is outside of your budget though.
Found a stationary solution for now. I had an old Dell workstation with this sound card in it:
The drivers on that page did not work, however these did work:
The card also works OOB on Linux, and the X-Fi and the DT770s sound fabulous together on either OS.
The fly in the ointment is that it is a legacy PCI card, so finding transplanting it into a modern system will be tricky. For now though, it sounds great.
That leaves me without a mobile solution, but that is not an immediate concern. Would a modern DAC sound better than this old thing?
ssl 2 soundcard. its driving my monitors like crazy. . The sound card works under linux. The most worth of the soundcard are the plugins ilok so they don’t work really under linux
And if you not happy connect that to some headphone amp in the future that can swith its input like.