Both of them tryin to change the way HE-R9 is designed. Lows are not that punchy when i'm tryin to fix muddy mids and vocal. I'm pretty sure good dac could do somethin about it. Reason?
When i pair R9 with Creative E5 and turn on Scout mode which is designed to boost sound in FPS games R9 sounds almost same as my Audio Technica ath-m50x. It's not what i wanna hear ofc
I'm tryin to stay with aweome stage and separation which is best i experienced out of box and keep those amazing punchy lows.
Testing with Tidal MQA or Flac tracks and some games as well.
Just checked Fiio KA5 but it lacks MQA support sadly. I'm listening music mostly from Tidal.
My kiddo can't stop listen Van Halen - Jump with these