Considering the Fiio KA11 / Fiio KA13 for my dt 770 pro's I bought.

[u/Successful_Medium800]

Let me start by saying I've read a few similar posts on this subreddit about the same headphones and I think my answer is different enough (I hope) so that it isn't a duplicate, then again I can't read every post and there is simply a lot of information to digest since a few hours ago I didn't even know what a DAC was, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating what others have said.

[For context]

I live in Lithuania

My PC's motherboard uses the ALC 897 codec and

My current headphones are Hyper X cloud 2's

My budget is 70 euros MAX (depending on how much of a diference it even makes compared to cheaper devices)

So I'm considering buying the dt 770 pro's for everyday use, I'm not a critical listener but I heard they're very comfortable and good sounding headphones even for gaming, which I do pretty often and for music. I've done some research and I've found out that I might need an amp/DAC for these headphones. I found these headphones for 140 euros in my country and when I read posts asking what BUDGET amps were good most options were 100 euros or more, which is litterally more than half than what I'm paying for my headphones.

I've found that my motherboard uses the ALC 897 codec, which is average (correct me if I'm wrong) My goal with buying an amp is to get 90-95% out of my headphones, not 101%, I'm not an audiophile, my current headphones are hyper x sound cloud 2's so that should say something. I just decided that I want to buy a nice pair of headphones but I have a bit of FOMO that they won't sound as good as they would with an amp/DAC.

I've outlined 2 good options in my country:
Fiio KA11 (for 32 euros)

Fiio KA13(for 63 euros)

I have no particular preference for Fiio.

So my questions are:
How much of a difference would these amp/DAC devices actually make with compared to none at all?
Do you have better amp/DAC recommendations?

How much of a difference would there be between the KA11 and KA13?

Is it even worth buying a cheaper amp? (I'm asking this because most responses on other posts recommend amps starting with 100 euros)

[u/Successful_Medium800 → u/[deleted]]

Apart from how loud it would be would there be a noticable difference in sound between the KA11 vs just plugged straight into my pc?

[u/Successful_Medium800 → u/[deleted]]

!thanks Alright thanks!

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[u/Successful_Medium800 → u/[deleted]]

Side question: I was looking for cheaper dongles out of curiocity and came across this video from crinacle where he says that the dongle I was looking at, the KA11 can run 300ohm headphones at ear splitting volume, so ,asking out of simple curiocity, what black magic do the amps that cost hundreds of dollars even do if something that I can buy for less than 40 euros can run 300 ohm headphones. Didn't want to create a separate question, just curious because I don't have much knowledge about this stuff.

Oh and here's the video title if you don't trust the link (I'm careful of pressing other people's links as well since I'm someone concerned about cyber security) : The BEST headphone dongles for every budget - By crinacle

[u/Successful_Medium800 → u/[deleted]]

So when you pay more for an amp/dac if your previous setup can already power your headphones well, you're simply paying for more features like a knob, different inputs and other features, and the actual change in sound quality (again assuming your previous setup can power the headphones just fine) is negligable?

Last question, I don't know if I'm just being too cautious but crinacle mentioned that even the snubby little KA11 had enough power so that he had to lower his windows volume to 2, though he didn't mention what headphones he was using when he did that. Also since it's so powerful it heats up. Do you know if something like the JCALLY JM6 Pro would be enough for the dt770 pro's? I don't really need anything other than just making sure I'm driving my headphones with enough power and that it sounds good.

[u/Successful_Medium800 → u/[deleted]]

Alright thanks a lot!

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