The Thrax sounds interesting and looks super cool. The K50 is a staple for sure. I think if i had to sell and start over the one thing i would keep is the K50.
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Still relatively new to audio. I previously thought I was going to go into ‘25 slowing down, but thanks to some extra income from side things and a little pushing from a friend, a heck of a lot came by me.
I was going to pick the HE6se V2 or the Cayin iHA-8. The HE6 is a super interesting headphone to me that taught me volumes about my preferences. I feel it has insanely good time domain and does timbre in a very unique manner, almost like a dynamic and planar together at once. The iHA-8 has also been very solid for me. It granted my system at least the capability of decent control. Earlier on, playing around with amps at a level like the Midgard’s was wasting time. Almost all just have trade-offs and something badly missing in sound, but I feel much more on solid ground now, trying headphones and DACs with more confidence.
Thinking that either of those two would be the best of ‘25, I then remembered that last year I got the Altor USB galvanic isolator with the ISOUSB211 chip. Yeah no, that was the best buy. No question. Transformed my system. More weight, way more in dynamic peaks and dips, actual micro coming through, considerable stage increase, much more texture. Gosh, it was dramatic. I mean, I went from going “huh, huh?” to my friends in VC often during busy games to almost never having that problem again. It also led me towards pushing further in audio, going for the iHA-8, getting a plug-in filter, getting better USB cables and getting a bunch more dongles. Biggo deal lol.
Honorable mentions. AkLIAM PD6. Shockingly good dongle for the money with a heck of a lot of speed as a DAC. A70 Pro. Better amp than past Toppings with a lot of driving power for the range. Excellent as a pre-amp. Edition XS. Couldn’t pass it up for like sub $200 and I was surprised at how complete it is as a headphone. YYTCG Silver USB. Big upgrade over anything else lower in price; much tighter-sounding. Gustard DR70. Just got it in. Very speedy R2R DAC with good low-end control. Better than anything I’ve heard under $500 for sure, and better op-amps scale it well.
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Never hesitate to ask!
If you have a question that you think might is stupid (which there arent any) or too niche (I can redirect you), or just wanna chat audio topics in a closed space, drop by my DMs, send me a message.
First of all congratulations on your purchases, really nice picks.
Im glad the galvanization worked out great, it can sometimes be a solution for a specific problem.
The iha8 is a heck of a nice amp and the he6seV2 is a timeless classic.
You most likely already know this but the IHA-8 is not nearly enough to properly drive the HE6 to its potential, but it does have enough juice to show you what the he6 is all about and show you its potential. Also because of V2 insane sound quality to cost ratio, the IHA8 with the He6seV2 is still a hell of a good combo even while only providing around half of its potential.
A random dude I bought from on headfi casually mentioned how the DR70 improved massively (he overstated it) by upgrading its power supply, while we were talking about random dacs.
It was rather “interesting” because he built a very simple external power supply with affordable parts and then min maxed the sound of the PSU still with affordable components, and passed me a guide on how to build it even tho I wasnt interested LOL; since apparently its easy to replace the DR70s internal PSU into an external one in order to upgrade it, im sure it should work and improve the sound but its by no means practical or beginner friendly.
What I do think is a lot easier and cheaper to do is trying out a DDC (Digital to digital converter), the improvements you mentioned from the isolator sound just like the same ones I got when I tried my first DDC.
Im not sure if you know what DDC are so heres a simplified explanation: It converts your USB source of music into another digital format that is specialized for music data transfer, since USB are not necessarily built to transfer music but the other protocols are.
Also DDCs contain a microprocessor that operates the sound of your device (and drivers on windows) so that your music source is freed from that task.
So, with a DDC instead of using the USB C input on the back of your dac, youd be using one of your dac’s other digital inputs that are actually better to get the sound data into the DAC, in DR70’s case:
- COAX (uses a single 75ohm rca cable)
- optical (TOSLINK cable)
Both of which operate under the same protocol called SPDIF.
Im not sure if your isolator is compatible with ddcs, if theyre compatible id highly recommend to try one out, and even if they’re not it would be interesting comparing the improvement level they provide at some point.
If youre on windows and you need to select your isolator as your audio source drivers then it wont be compatible, if the isolator does not requiere that then it would work because DDCs do need to be the audio source on windows.
Working, the audio chain would look like:
Music source > USB Isolator > DDC > DAC > AMP…
Im sorry if this is too much for the moment, but I do think improving the source signal quality which you are already doing is the most ignored cost effective upgrade there is.
So if your usb isolator seems compatible, or you want to try it out even if theyre not in order to compare, the best starter one there is right now is really really good no competition, SMSL PO100 regular version (pro version is bad) with a ugreen toslink cable or similar generic toslink cable.
If anything, dont take this necessarily as a recommendation, just know that it exists because its really cool to me in the way it seems the isolator was to you, I love DDCs, even the cheap ones.
Theres something cool about dongles
If you wanna go ultimate warmth x buck, and great build quality, Venture Electronics Devastator is way too good, unrivaled in its power/cost and ability to color with warmth
And on the upper tiers, the questyles m15i models, and the luxury and precision regular w2 and w2 ultra are endgame dongles for me, the best of the best, just for you to know they exist.
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Thanks. I think for any PC, these ISOUSB211 isolators make a big difference. They also reduce noise on the signal as well as the power line, so universal improvements to the signal. I tried it through an android phone to dongle once and it still made a substantial improvement in the same vein.
Yeah, I went in knowing this. I think relative to headphone amps, it may be better than you’d think, but if we bring speaker amps into consideration, then it might not even be halfway there. I chat with Pokrog and from him, I know some about HE6se V2. I would add that the iHA-8 does a fair job with the HE6 in that it grants much of the finer points of control. It’s not thin sounding and the upper mids/treble never go into harshness, with stage size being big, coming close to the egg-shapes. However, it’s pretty clear to me that the tactility, slam and sort of bass speed are lagging behind.
Was it Ancient lol? He’s been enjoying it a lot. Anyway, yeah, the Head-Fi thread on it is currently constantly talking about external PS. In the DR70, there’s a normal three prong which goes into a standard 30W Hi-Link on the inside. Next to that, there’s a 5.5mm barrel jack inlet for 12V, so you can connect any PSU you like. I’ve actually tried the Ifi iPowerX 12v, and it did exactly what you would expect it to do. Slightly more dynamics, better background blackness, holography, somewhat calmer presentation much of the time, etc… It’s more than a noticeable improvement; limited, I suspect, because it’s reaching the maximum power it can deliver.
I’ve wanted to get a DDC for a long time and I’ve been eyeing the new Douk U2 Pro. The thing is, this isolator is really good. Like nearing Holo Red good. It is compatible with DDC’s without a problem and they work well together. Pokrog’s played with this quite a bit. In my context, which is getting the audio out of a power-hungry desktop PC using Windows, galvanic isolation first no question. DDC’s are great for reconstructing the signal and removing jitter, but sheer noise rejection is a must for me. I really should get one to try, though. My two little reservations are: 1. The DR70 is already well served by the Altor, and it’s a good DAC, but the sheer resolution is not up there or anything. How much benefit could I really reap? 2. I plan to go for an X26 III next. The USB implementation and clocking system in that DAC are decent. If I plan to use a DDC with I2s, which overrides the clocking of the DAC, I’d need a very good DDC to beat it in that regard. Food for thought.
The isolator works like a USB hub and in practice, it’s as if it isn’t even there to Windows.
I’ll definitely give that a look, thanks. I do actually need a few of the really compact dongles for travel. You should be able to see the dongles I have on my profile, just not sure if the ‘about me’ section is showing right.
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In all honesty, EVERYTHING I purchase is my FAVORITE thing until I get the next bestest thing…
Congratulations to everyone who has survived another year, keep spending till it hurts, YOU keep the world economy going on your broad shoulders! 
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Maybe not the best 2025 purchases but best value:
Auva EQ isolators and Hifi Tuning Silver fuses.
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Little to nothing to report here on my setup ( Wiim ultra, Carver CD player, Vista spark II and Triangle borea 3’s … the Vista Zest died blowing out 3 resistors and Verty audio has yet to answer mails ) but I did finally snag a Heed Obelisk III. It’s been in NY since December and hopefully I’ll get a family member to bring it when they visit lol.
I wasn’t willing to chance it coming through customs so gotta wait for now.
Oh wait … How could I forget! I also bought a pair of Vera- fi”s Vanguard Caldera 10’s. Those have added a whole new dimensional listening plain for me. I have not had the urge to use my headphones at all and enjoy my music on the 2 ch 100%.
As for 2026, I think I’ll buy some CDs . For January I got, This is absolution and Alive or just barely breathing - Killswitch Engage and Sarah McLaughlin’s the essentials. I think February Tracy Chapman and I don’t know what else yet.
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I’ve been thinking about it and the absolutely BEST buy EVER for me has been the custom switch @oberon built for me. Nice pieces come and go, amplifiers, pre-amps, speakers blah, blah, blah. Genuine pieces of equipment that cannot easily be replaced because they were purpose built, now THESE are special 
Oberon built me a Hi-Level switch capable of taking SPEAKER inputs and with NO NOISE and ZERO bleed it allows me to feed 3 separate pair of speakers from 3 separate pair of amplifiers AND it also allows me to feed my high level input subwoofers across all 3 speaker taps 
. The freedom and flexibility this buys me is priceless and I wanted to state this again and publicly THANK him for completely hand building me this mighty little multitasking tank of a switch 
Pieces like this can only genuinely be appreciated by true gear heads, thus a mighty shout out to all you DIY folks, I love all the stuff you build and modify no matter how small 
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Aside from the great functionality and being handmade for you, it looks awesome too !
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Some stuff a bit higher end comes already galvanized and some doesnt
A good example where this would be a necessity is the chord qutest dac and use it through its usb input it 1000% needs galvanization, and also changing its crappy PSU is necessary
Its a very very good single ended dac in its used price point heavily held back by these issues
Nope
I didnt like the whole line of ifi power supplies, including the elite, I dont think they provide enough of an upgrade to be like “yeah upgrading power supplies is the way to go” but I didnt knew better ones like some of the small green computer ones and others
The PSU upgrade does not necessarily incrase the power, its main thing is increasing the quality of such power by improving the conversion and filtering process, hans beekhuyzen has a great video were he very briefly explains how each type of PSU works
Im pretty sure pokrog introduced me to the seV2 a few years ago and I thought my burson soloist did a great job until I made an adapter for speaker taps and tested out some tube amps, maybe current is more important than potency (Vrms or watts) because they multiply such potency in the output (?)
I think a very important thing to do when entering the world of ddc is to use its strenghts, I had both the classic and pro version of the douk u2 and the issue with Ive found in many entry point ddcs is that they just add an HDMI port but dont implement it properly
Im of the opinion that the HDMI cable itself and the DDC both need a higher level of implementation (increasing their cost), so in the case of douk u2 pro I liked the classic version more as it reduces clutter and both of the spdif outputs it has sound better, specially the optical that has an added benefit of being cheaper and avoiding distortion because optical is a simple blinking light
I also liked the smsl po100 non pro better than the douk u2 but nothing beats testing it for yourself
A lot of benefit, I didnt think it was possible until I tried.
Id also open up trying some of the different brands because they are quite different, but thats me
Thats so nice, I wasnt sure because it uses the same xmos xu316 chip that smsl ddc uses
Take it easy