Quote:
Originally Posted by RagingDragon  And stranger still:
So what DAC are they using for headphone out? Since there's no mention of a second DAC, so I presume the DAC output must be split to feed both the front out and the headphone amplifier? If so something in the headphone amplifier circuit is degrading the signal. Some of the difference can be explained by the TI TPA6120A2 headphone amplifier chip (120dB SNR compared to 124dB of front out), and the different opamps may explain the rest: the LM4562 is a well regarded audiophile opamp, while as far as I can tell the JRC 2114 is cheaper and presumably lower quality unit. Judging by the SNR specs the front out gets the better opamp and headphone out the inferior one - but the Essence STX has swappable opamps so it'd be easy to switch them.
Robscix: if/when you review the STX it'd be interesting to see what effect swapping the opamps has on headphone and front output quality...
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There is nothing strange about this. The DAC is routed to the stereo outputs or routed into the Headphones amplifier based on the software.