not sure where to ask this, but I have a question about headphones, DAC, Amp, and ps4 gaming in general.
I had Sony MDR-1R headphones for a while now and I love it, it's very comfortable and sounds great imo. I use it to listen to music and sometimes, to play games on ps4 since it's so convenient that I can just plug the headphones to the controller.
now just recently, I received Fiio E7 DAC/Amp as a gift. I've never use dac/amp before so I am a bit curious if there's a noticeable differences.
plugging fiio E7 to pc via usb cable and my headphone to it, I'm pleased to find out that I do actually notice the differences, especially in the bass. I had a flac audio file where it showcase the bass through a series of sound where the bass got decreasingly smaller. before using fiio E7, I can notice the difference between the loudest bass and the smallest, but not by much, it's actually kinda hard to tell. now with the headphone plugged to Fiio E7, the difference between each step is actually very noticeable. now I'm not an audiophile at all, but I assume my headphone having a wider range of bass is a good thing. and I only set my fiio E7 volume to 20 out of 60 max to have a nice loud sound.
now after having that experiment on my PC, I'm excited to try it on my PS4. I first try plugging my Fiio E7 to Dualshock 4 controller via standard audio cable. I'm puzzled to find that I had to crank the volume on Fiio E7 to around 40 to had comparable volume if I had simply plugged my headphones straight to dualshock 4. and while the audio sounds nice. it's not much of a difference compared to not using the dac/amp.
curious about this, I tried to connect the Fiio E7 directly to PS4 via USB cable, just like my PC. It works, but similar to connecting it via Dualshock 4. I had to up the volume quite a bit to get comparable volume, and again, the sound quality didn't sound that much improved, at least not that I can notice. again, I admit I'm not an audiophile that are sensitive to sound differences.
so I'm just wondering why my experience of improvement between pc and ps4 is very different. more curiously, about why I had to up the volume setting of my dac/amp so high on ps4 while I only need much smaller setting when I used it with PC. when I tried google around, I found someone mention that MDR-1R didn't really benefit from using amp because it's already designed to be used with low powered device like mobile phones anyway, so it's pretty easy to drive. but than I found another review who mention that MDR-1R need amp to reach it's true potential. so I'm not sure which is right since they both seem to contradict each other.
