FiiO K11 Desktop 1400W Power Balanced Headphone DAC & Amplifier 384kHz/24Bit DSD256 for Home Audio/PC 6.35mm/4.4mm/RCA/Coaxial/Optical (Silver)

This is a wire with gain. Mine came with firmware v125. Sound can now be somewhat controlled through Windows in USB mode. Firmware v125 has filter number 3 as default.As for the DAC part of the deal, it blows onboard sound implementations out of the water, even the ones from high end motherboards. It also blows the old Xonar DX / STX dedicated sound cards from last decade out of the water. Those were CS4398 (the CS43198's grandpa, this is what the K11 is built around) and BB PCM1792A, great parts.As for the amplifier part of the deal... with the balanced output, it drives my HD650s to ear damaging sound levels in high gain mode. It could easily be run in low gain mode for most modern content that's loud and compressed by default. Middle gain is a good middle ground.Go get a balanced cable if you have one of the 300 ohm Senns, it's worth it. For other cans the single ended output is more than enough.The complete package is outstanding. Sound quality is amazing.For music and movies, you get detail, dynamics, engaging presentation, speed. Not dull at all. You will hear it all as it was recorded in all its glory. If it was recorded good it will be amazing. If it was recorded bad it'll be bad. You can't polish a turd. I'm using filter 6 (no filter).For gaming (CS2, for example) the presented image is expansive and accurate (and this also applies to music). You will have no issues pinpointing where the other players (or instruments) are around you.The price/value is amazing. I firmly believe this K11 right could be considered endgame gear for most. I don't know how much better things can get in both DAC and amp departments over $129, if they ever do.FiiO really outdid themselves with this little beast, and the K11 is just the entry level product from the new generation.Oh, and when you read in reviews that the HD600/HD650s don't have a ceiling and they keep scaling and scaling with better gear, that's completely true. Now I wonder how much more those headphones can do...

Sound Quality is FANTASTIC. I wasn't expecting too much considering it's pricepoint, but once I set it up (change the filter from the default 3 to 6 TRUST ME) and dialed in the rest of the settings and loaded up my FLAC files, plugged in my Sennheiser HD598CS I was floored by how well this performs! Music sounds crisp and full and the volume goes all the way to maximum without distortion. This is all without even mentioning the build quality, it feels solid but not heavy and the knob has a solid tension to it both in terms of actuation as well as turning it left and right, setup was stupid Easy and switching from my PC speakers to headphones is intuitive and easy, this is a fantastic entry to mid level DAC and I couldn't recommend it more!Bonus points for the RGB ;)

I bought this unit to replace the audio section on my PC's motherboard due to an instability problem with the hardware that could only be rectified through a cold reboot of the system. I did not buy this unit to improve sound quality. I only wanted to stop using the motherboard's onboard audio section.As an electrical engineer who has designed and built Class A amplifiers, I'm generally skeptical of the snake oil that is sold in the DAC market so I was honestly not expecting any improvement in audio quality here, but after I wired it up it took only a few seconds of listening to notice a significant increase in stereo separation / imaging, a much cleaner high end reminiscent of my class A amps, and a much lower noise floor. In short, this thing sounds fantastic and it's breathed new life into my audio collection.The volume control and display as well as the headphone jack on the front panel were not a requirement for me but they are certainly perks that are worth the slightly higher cost of this unit relative to the SMSL or other "faceless" units.One issue: I initially connected the USB-C port on the rear of the DAC to a USB-A port on my PC using a known-good cable. In this configuration my OS (Linux) refused to instantiate the USB interface and reported a power-related error. I found this strange because the unit is powered independently from an external AC/DC power brick and not the USB-C interface itself, but when I switched to a USB-C port on the PC (and hence a USB-C to USB-C cable) the interface came up and the device was recognized.

Plug and play.Amazing Qaulity.Has direct power so no battery life worrying.I bought this after realizing that my simgot ew300s were not giving any bass even after EQ.I realize the little DAC that look like erasers are just not enough. Crazy because everyone on reddit is like "I dont understand why people by bigger higher power DACs.Well after installing this device and getting bass for the first time which adds a completely different feel to the audio, i understand. And let me tell you this is a really good price for what you are getting Good DACs dont have this kind of price anymore.This DAC is going to make you drool.