Nice setup, Hypron. Looks clean (and loud with the speakers that close ;D)!
How much difference do you feel the DAC makes? I'm considering getting one, but I'm not sure how much difference there really is.
Thanks!
I got the O2+ODAC because I needed something to adjust the sound volume of my headphones using a dial and got carried away. Initially, I was going to go for a simple potentiometer but then I thought "well, might as well get a headphone amp", and finally I thought I might as well get the ODAC if I'm already getting an O2. There is definitely a difference between running the headphones from the motherboard's sound card. The sound is definitely cleaner (there's absolutely no audible noise). I didn't do an in-depth comparison with the onboard audio, so I can't say for sure "yes the sound is clearer on top of being cleaner".
It does give you the piece of mind that what you're hearing is true to the source. The O2+ODAC is open source with all the available specs basically telling you it's simply amplifying the input signal without colouring it with an extremely low amount of noise.
The O2 is also way, way more powerful than a motherboard. It's almost too powerful for my HD555s, there's almost no room to play between volumes so low you can't hear anything/channels being imbalanced (that's quite common with amplifiers at low volumes, one channel will be louder than the other until you increase the volume above the first 1/8th to 1/4th of a rotation) and uncomfortably high volumes. This a good and a bad thing. It's good because some high-end headphones require serious power, but it's also bad because of that issue I just mentioned.
Where the O2+ODAC comes in very handy is when connected to a set of studio monitors like mine. Studio monitors don't tend to have volume control (apart from a low/high gain in my case), so you need to adjust the volume further up the chain. You can do it in software, but that presents two issues; first of all, software volume control is destructive - if you decrease the volume too much you'll start decreasing the resolution of the signal being sent to the speakers. Second, my monitors are loud
as fuck. At full volume, they'd probably give me hearing damage in no time. What this means is that I'd have to dial the volume way down (think in the 5% range), which would give me almost no granularity in the control. This also compounds with the first issue since you have to decrease the volume (and hence resolution) so much. Finally, there's also the chance of clicking in the wrong place and setting the output volume to max and becoming deaf.
Where the O2+ODAC comes in handy is that the volume knob also controls the volume of the ODAC's RCA output. This means you have analog (infinite resolution!) control of the volume. Now, the speakers are so effing loud I still need to decrease the volume to 50% in software to get a decent range of adjustment on the volume knob but it's better than doing it all through software. It's basically a nice two-in-one system to power your headphones, feed a low noise signal to your speakers and control the volume of the said signal.
Is it worth it? It depends on your finances. This is my hobby (well, I have other hobbies but they're essentially free so it's the only one where I'm spending money) so I don't really mind blowing NZ$350 on a amp/ODAC. Is it 350x better than that $1 DAC in your phone? Probably not. Could I tell the difference with something half the price? Maybe not, I don't know I haven't tested. But the peace of mind and the other advantages (convenience, it looks cool) make it worth it for me.
