Stuff like imaging, instrument separation, soundstage etc. is entirely source dependent. A song has been produced/mixed/mastered in a certain way and once you have the final file/signal, no DAC in this world will „improve it by faithfully converting 1s and 0s“ or whatever that even means. This is way, way, way beyond its ability. The information is either in the source or it isn’t and measurements show that any half decent DAC does nothing to the signal that you can hear and even if it did, it wouldn’t be improvements to the instrument separation lmao

I understand that accepting this would probably mean that you wasted money on expensive gear that does the same job as some dongle at a fraction of the price, but your claims in the first paragraph of your comment are absolutely ridiculous.

I‘ve said it in my other comment but these people would really benefit from spending a weekend with a DAW just to see how hard it is to “widen the soundstage” and “improve the layering” when you’re actively trying to do that with tools specifically designed for this purpose and have the individual song stems at hand, let alone if you’re working with nothing but the final master.

Amp differences are easiest to spot based on the shape of the soundstage and how well sounds/effect/instruments are separated and layered. Amp performance is reasonably easy to gauge on an audition.

I‘d highly recommend getting into music production to fully comprehend how stupid this sounds.

What you’re hearing is either a case of louder=better or placebo

It’s a standard Shopify feature and it’s dumb but from their perspective, statistically somebody is going to tip so it means some free money for no effort at all so might as well keep it.

If an amp/dac measures well at the power level required to drive a headphone to your preferred listening volume without (audible) distortion, it’s enough. Virtually any modern amp released nowadays does this, so if the headphone power calculator that’s been linked here already says that the amp can do it, it can do it. No need for a better (stronger) amp as there is literally nothing left to gain.

Moondrop Variations from Amazon. Part of me hopes that they disappoint me so I can return them and stick to the much cheaper Aful P5.