If it makes you feel better, I use a dac that’s 50 bucks and it sounds great with my Sennheiser hd600s. Frankly I mostly use it for the analogue volume control and treble/bass switch. Also you don’t need an amp for headphones/earbuds. These are for only driving power hungry speakers.
DACs have been very good and very cheap for years now. A $10 Apple USB dongle contains an extremely good DAC. At the consumer level, you’re paying for pretty much everything except sound quality now.
You do need an amp for some headphones. They can even be used to deliver low power at a low noise floor for high sensitivity earbuds, but this isn’t always necessary.
If it makes you feel better, I use a dac that’s 50 bucks and it sounds great with my Sennheiser hd600s. Frankly I mostly use it for the analogue volume control and treble/bass switch. Also you don’t need an amp for headphones/earbuds. These are for only driving power hungry speakers.
DACs have been very good and very cheap for years now. A $10 Apple USB dongle contains an extremely good DAC. At the consumer level, you’re paying for pretty much everything except sound quality now.
You do need an amp for some headphones. They can even be used to deliver low power at a low noise floor for high sensitivity earbuds, but this isn’t always necessary.
Trust me, those Sennheisers will benefit from an amp. I thought the same thing about my HD 650s before I heard them with an amp in the audio chain.