Suggestion for a bit more

I use two headphones.

Bought a b&o beoplay hx last summer to listen on the go. Airplane, on location, watch movies in my car (sometimes have to wait a lot). Preferred it over a Dali io6 and B&W px8, they were way to dominant in the bass.

The other one I use is an AKG K271 mk II. My third AKG because I like the sound. Used them mainly to mix, or as a headphone during radio broadcasting or voice-over work. Never used them to listen to music that much.

But I wanted to be more portable with my AKG. So bought an Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt for iPad/iphone use. Sounds a lot clearer and detailed than the b&o and I want to listen more in house with headphones. Even though I have a dedicated listening room, I also want to be near my girl and/or daughter when they are watching tv and have the possibility to listen to music for a couple of hours.

Several options

  1. stay in the “mobile domain” with the cobalt. But I found the AKG lacking a bit of bass, cranked up about 3db in muse. And I have to put the volume almost up to 100…
    So I need another headphone.

  2. buy a headphone amp. I can’t use the one on my AVR when my girlfriend watches tv and I don’t have another Roon endpoint in my living. So a small headphone amp could be an option, possible with dac. Something like the Fiio k11 r2r sound interesting. But schiitt or similar is also an option. If I could hook up the iPad I’m happy.

But still considering a different headphone with the second option.

What am I looking for?

  • don’t want to break the bank. € 500,- is more than enough.
  • Like the clean sound of my AKG
  • A bit lower ohm’s or higher sensitivity so I don’t have to dial up volume that much
  • a bit more base would be nice but I can live with the amount I got right now. I think I got a bit used to my b&o.

I was in a similar situation.

I solved it by creating a Roon Headphone Station, using a Raspberry Pi 4 (running Dietpi and Roon Bridge - but other solutions like Ropieee would also work), and connecting that by USB to a FIIO K9 PRO (ESS version) which will drive single ended (6.35mm TRS jack) or balanced (4.4mm TRRS jack or 4 pin XLR). This will drive my headphones (HiFiMan Ananda Nano) with ease. However, note that this solution does not give me control of the K9 Pro gain. Instead I set the K9 to a maximum comfortable listening gain and then use DSP volume on Roon to give me volume control in the Roon client.

Once you have the Raspberry Pi in place, it will drive more or less any USB Audio Class 2 device including the Dragonfly Cobalt that you already have.

To build a Raspberry Pi Roon to USB streamer, you will need:

A Raspberry Pi 4 board (~ÂŁ45 - 2GByte Ram version is fine).
A Raspberry Pi power supply (~ÂŁ25)
A micro USB card - 32 or 64 GByte is plenty for a minimal Roon Bridge installation.
A suitable case (the FLIRC case is often recommended but I use the Argon One V2 case ÂŁ24).

Others have used a Raspberry Pi Zero W2 - even cheaper and smaller.

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My solution currently is this:

RPi4 > Ropieee (Roon Bridge, Squeezelite, Spotify Connect, DLNA/UPnP)

RPi4 > Dragonfly Cobalt > Audio Technica MTH-50X

And

RPi4 > Chris Mojo2 > HifiMan Sundara closed backs

Roon sees both DACs and I select whichever I want when I want

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I use this same setup for headphone listening. An RPi4 running Ropieee > USB to Mojo 2 or Dragonfly Cobalt > Focal Clear headphones. I sometimes use Sony WH-1000XM3 if I need to be quiet for someone else in the room.

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Have a look at the Qudelix 5K. A very portable DAC/AMP Solution.

According to the specs, the Dragonfly Cobalt that @Jeroen_de_Jong already has will drive to a 2.1 volt output while the Qudelix 5K specs quote 2V for an unbalanced headphone connection. Since @Jeroen_de_Jong already appears to be struggling with a lack of power for his headphones, it is unlikely that the 5K will improve matters with an unbalanced connection.

The Qudelix 5K, like the FIIO KA13, BTR7 and many other portable USB headphone DACs, does support balanced output which would get an extra 6dB gain but I don’t believe that the AKG K271 Mk II headphones used by @Jeroen_de_Jong will support that. Yes, the cable on the AKG’s is detachable but I suspect that the headphone itself is wired for unbalanced operation (Common, Signal Left and Signal Right) which would make it impossible to get a replacement cable that offered balanced operation.

I may be wrong on this last point - After a quick search, I can’t find any information about the connection to the AKG K271 headphone cable connection. But neither can I find any replacement cables that offer a balanced connection.

Note: DO NOT use some of the cheap Balanced to Unbalanced adaptors that are available on the market to connect your unbalanced headphones to the balanced output of an amplifier. They just connect both ‘-ve Signal Left’ and ‘-ve Signal Right’ of the balanced amplifier output to the Common signal wire in the headphone cable (and thus, to each other) which causes big problems for the amplifier and, in the worst case, can actually cause damage to the amplifier.

Thanks Everyone for the input.

A small streamer is an option, but not really necessary. When I have a DAC/Headphone amp with a bit more “umph” I can always feed the DAC with the iPad/iPhone (And pherhaps look for a streamer later, a Pi would be an option then)

I’m not going to say goodbye to the Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt for now. It’s very small and that makes it very portable with my telephone. Only played with the iPad for now indoors on the WiFi with the Roon app. So I can’t tell how it performs on the iPhone with ARC outdoors. But that’s a matter of experience. I’m just waiting for the right cable now.

But for sitting on the couch and bit more critical listening, the AKG has way more overhand than the B&O. It’s a matter of taste of course.

It’s going to be the second option.

Ordered an spl phonitor one d today. Chose the version with DAC so I can always add a streamer (or pi). For now I will plug in my iPad directly