I do tend to appear as a bit of a jazz maniac but my musical tastes are quite eclectic, with lots of non-jazz thrown into my daily listening mix. I’m just not that much of a current popular music fan. I’m more of 1960s and 1970s rock music kind of guy. My tastes in jazz, while centered around the freer side, are much more open, from Armstrong, Duke and Basic to Metheny and Kamasi Washington. It’s all good.
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You weren’t exaggerating about the DCAs not playing loudly - they’re definitely giving the M11 a run for its money. Minimally, high gain in the low 70s before they become listenable. Depending on source, well into the 90s.
I’ll compare to Meze Elites. Dave Holland, Not For Nothin’ - my library FLAC rip of the original issue CD. Comparable volumes, on high gain, are somewhere near Elite: 74, Aeon2: 94. This is with the Aeon2 closed - perforated pad convolution filter enabled.
These are much happier being driven by my Uniti Atom HE. Going to give them a little time but they’re not an obvious fit for the M11.
Power hungry little beasties those DCAs. As the saying goes - with great power comes great sound - or something like that. 
On a serious note. Does using headphones that require more power have as much impact on battery drain as, say, leaving the display on? And if so, then how much longer would one be able to listen to more efficient headphones versus less efficient headphones?
If one can listen to the DCA Aeon 2 for several or more hours before draining the battery then I don’t see why using them would be a problem.
Cranking the volume up on high gain will use more power, using high gain in general uses more battery.
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I’m curious what difference this amounts to in practice but I’m not sure if I’m motivated to test it. I might give it a shot.
I’m going to start by figuring out if I love the DCAs. They might not be what I’m looking for regardless of source.
When I looked at this post I thought it was interesting but not actually about the M11. I changed my mind about that after doing some experimentation.
I don’t do anything with DSD and I don’t have any DSD files in my local library. I was curious how my core would handle it. Blue Coast Music offers a free album of a single track in a variety of formats including DSD256 : https://bluecoastmusic.com/free-download. I downloaded it.
The song length is 3:04. The DSD256 version is 521MB, the DSD128 is 261MB. The download also includes a variety of FLAC (including 44.1/24 - MQA) and WAV.
My NAS is a rack-mount with a pretty decent CPU. My core is a Docker container with a Debian-slim image. The short story is that the only scenario that broke my core was the DSD256 version run with convolution. You can see it ailing in the image below.
Without convolution, it can handle DSD256 even with speaker gain settings applied (I adjust gain down a bit on the left side) which forces the modulator pass. If I turn that gain adjustment off, it goes bit perfect and still works fine.
Other than DSD256, I can play every track on the album with convolution enabled, and it all works fine.
Here’s the actual point of this post. I started off thinking about the capabilities of my core. A ways in, I realized that regardless of what I threw at it, the M11 just chugged along and the Roon Ready stack just worked. The only issues I had were with my core.
I turned convolution off, played the DSD256 version and walked around my house. I watched the M11Pro move between access points. Absolutely no issues whatsoever. This is very different than my experience with the Chord Mojo (Roon Ready) and the iBasso DX320 (not Roon Ready but 5GHz and better WiFi stack). Neither of those could manage to reliably play anything at all let alone a 512MB track while transitioning between access points.
It’s become a given that the M11 is just going to work. Such a great little device.
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You’re very much in the danger area there anything below 1.2 is asking for dropouts. DSP on DSD is always going to push things.
I know - It was just a test. I don’t have any DSD256 albums - only DSD128 
Torben
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I’m curious - what’s your core running on?
I’m pleased to see that my core can easily handle two simultaneous DSD128 + convolution streams - not grouped, started simultaneously, with processing speeds well above 2x. I don’t do anything like this in practice, but it’s nice to see that it works.
@gTunes - Same here:
The core is running on:
(Roon - ROCK OS) cirrus7 nimbini v3 - Intel® NUC Comet Lake i7-10710U
16GB DDR4 SO-DIMM, SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB, M.2, SSD 870 QVO 1TB, SATA
Torben
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I see you use crossfeed, it’s not something I can get on with, it really seems to reduce the soundstage for me tried all the different levels and it just doesn’t appeal to me. I understand it can help early recordings where you have instruments extremely panned to left or right.
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Thanks. This image gives me a direct comparison to what my core is capable of. A similar signal path for me processes at about 3.3x. That’s about 30% slower than yours. I’m quite happy with that 
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Your using a synology if I remember right?
My core is in a Debian-slim Docker container on a Synology RS1221+. It’s their network-depth rack-mounted model. It’s a little different than the consumer-targeted NAS devices many folks have. It’s a Ryzen V1500B quad-core 2.2GHz proc. All storage is on spinning media but fronted by a pair of SSDs acting as R/W cache with all file system metadata pinned. It’s a fast, capable device - I treat it like a reasonably competent Linux box with a nice GUI that helps with a lot of stuff. When the GUI runs out of gas, there’s always SSH
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That is a valid point THX - will do some test next week.
Torben
Funny one crosstalk I think it’s one area that is very personal. I know some that swear by it for all listening some only use it for older recordings and some that don’t feel any advantages of it, I am in the last camp but you go with what you feel works best for you as in anything in this hobby. I have been up and down on DSP for headphone eq at moment using it but still get times when it seems to rob what I can only refer to as the musicality of what I am listening to and turn it off. It does seem to work better on some iems and cans better than others.
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Sure - But I think you (me) always have to be open for new suggestions/ideas And it do not cost anything to test it
I am 100% in on DSP for headphone
Torben
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Looping back to a few earlier posts, I’ve been picking up new cables for many of my headphones that will work much better when used with the M11 Plus, namely 4 to 5 feet long and balanced (if applicable). As I acquire the new cables, I put the headphones through their paces with the M11 Plus to see how well they sound together. I’ve getting the cables either from Amazon (when I’m feeling cheap) or from Fog City Audio when I want a higher quality cable.
Well now I’ve just about finished buying all the new cables that I might need and so I’ve been listening to the many different headphones through the M11 Plus to see if there is one headphone that can dethrone my current favorite, which remains the Beyerdynamic T5p, used with a balanced cable form Fog City Audio. While there are some headphones that edge out the T5p with respect to sound quality, such as the Focal Radiance, the Focal Clear MG, the Sennheiser HD800 and HD820 and the Dan Clark Audio Aeon open and closed back, all these headphones are much larger and require more power than the T5p. The Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro and DT 17XX Pro, sound very close to the T5p but again they are larger and require more power than the T5p.
So for me the Beyerdynamic T5p remains my go to headphone when listening to M11 Plus. Closed back and easy to drive with a clear engaging sound, they are just the right size for portable use. I always feel a little self-conscious when walking about wearing a full sized headphone. I don’t mind wearing full sized headphone when stationary but not while mobile.
Of course things may change 
Shown below with one of Fog City Audio’s beautiful balanced cables
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You’re making it hard for me to not buy a pair of these (actually the 3rd Gen T5 closed, which replaced the T5p). I’m still holding out because I suspect that I’ll still mostly prefer my favorite IEMs. It’s hard to resist, though, given how positive you are about them.
The T5s can’t share a cable with the Focal Clear MG, right? It looks like Beyerdynamic has a proprietary connector.