Want the Best from Your Wired Headphones? You Need a DAC

Hooray to those who followed Spotify’s advice and switched to wired headphones for lossless audio — but you’re still missing a crucial step. Without a DAC (digital-to-analog converter), your phone or laptop only lets your headphones perform at half their potential. In this article, we’ll walk through why a DAC is essential, how it works, and how it transforms what you hear.

How sound reaches our ears: analog to digital to analog

Let’s trace the journey of music from storage to playback. 

Picture this: when a violin plays, the wooden top and back flex in and out, sending out ripples of air pressure. That is sound — tiny fluctuations in pressure over time, like ripples on a pond. When those ripples strike your eardrum, it vibrates in sync, turning the motion into signals your brain can recognize as sound. When those same ripples hit a microphone, the microphone acts as an artificial ear. Inside is a thin diaphragm that moves with the changes in air pressure, just like an eardrum. These physical movements become an electrical wave — a flowing pattern of voltage. This is an analog signal, the natural language of sound. 

But storing analog signals directly on our phone or computer isn’t possible. To save them, we convert them into digital form (strings of 0s and 1s). After all, a phone’s CPU, memory, and processors are designed to only handle digital binary code. That’s why music ultimately lives on your device as a digital signal. 

Here’s the problem: our ears can’t hear 0s and 1s. Binary code is just high and low voltages, magnetic flips, or pulses of light — it’s data about sound, not the sound itself. It’s like staring at the numbers inside a JPEG file: you won’t see the picture, only the code. This is where the DAC, or digital-to-analog converter, comes in. Acting as a translator, it turns those 0s and 1s back into the smooth analog signal our ears understand — delivered through your speakers or headphones as music.  

Why an external DAC matters

Smartphones and computers include built-in DACs to power their internal speakers and the 3.5 mm headphone jack. On newer devices without analog jacks, the internal DAC is still used for the built-in speakers, while external adapters or USB/Lightning/BT accessories include their own DACs for headphone output. As for bluetooth headphones, audio is first compressed with a lossy codec on the phone, then transmitted over Bluetooth. Inside the headphones, the Bluetooth chip decodes the stream, the built-in DAC converts it to analog, and an amp drives the drivers.

Yet all of the DACs mentioned above are constrained by cost, size, and design trade-offs, so sound quality falls short (made even worse in Bluetooth mode, since compression has already occurred before any digital-to-analog conversion takes place).  

It’s like relying on a bad translator — good enough to get the message across, but losing tone, nuance, and expression. Your high-end wired headphones may be capable of reproducing the full detail of lossless audio, but if the digital-to-analog conversion fails, your headphones never get to show what they really can do. It’s like owning an 8K master file and a top-tier display, but your graphics card only outputs at 480p. 

Compared to the tiny DACs built into phones and laptops, an external DAC operates on a whole different level. It uses higher-grade analog components and its own power design to keep the signal clean and free from digital noise. Precise clock management and lower jitter to reveal more detail, space, and depth. And a larger, better-cooled layout ensures stable, high-fidelity output. The result is music with wider dynamics, sharper definition, and arresting liveliness. 

How does it feel to listen with a DAC? 

You hear much more detail. Vocals, for instance, seem to step forward onto their own plane — crisper, more focused, like adjusting a camera lens until the blur sharpens. High notes are more present and open, without the harsh edges, while mids sound fuller and rounder. Subtle breaths and faint hisses emerge with clarity, as if the artist were right beside you. One Khadas Tea Pro(DAC/amp) tester, who had never used a DAC before, was surprised how it felt like “the singer has jumped right out of the headphones." Instruments feel different too. On a saxophone, tiny gestures — gliding between notes, quick accents — become more distinct. The contrast between soft and loud passages also sharpens, making phrasing more dramatic. Harmonic richness also increases, giving the saxophone a thicker, warmer tone. 

And then there’s the sense of space. As one Khadas Tea(DAC/amp) user put it, “it’s like putting on 3D glasses for music.” Tracks no longer collapse into a flat plane, but separate into layers with direction and depth. Of course, quality headphones matter too — the open design of a good pair works in tandem with the DAC to create a natural soundstage. 

Khadas Tea Pro as a portable DAC/amp

You might wonder why there’s an “amp”(amplifier) that goes with the DAC. The truth is, a DAC alone isn’t enough. Headphones need power to move. An amp boosts the signal to a level that can drive your headphones properly. DAC plus AMP means the music is both accurate and powerful.  

Tea Pro is a portable DAC/amp designed to unlock the full potential of wired headphones, bringing studio-grade sound wherever you go. The numbers speak for themselves: sampling rates up to PCM 768 kHz, DSD 512, distortion levels as low as –118 dB, outperforming many products in its class, putting it firmly in the class of a professional recording studio. 

When you hear “portable,” you might assume there’s a trade-off in sound. A big desktop DAC/amp pushing large speakers can give the impression of being inherently superior. But that’s no longer true. Since the 2000s, advances in audio engineering have put headphones and speakers on equal footing. The difference isn’t about better or worse — it’s more like apples versus oranges: speakers excel at physical immersion and bass presence, while headphones often deliver higher precision and detail. 

So, if you want a better listening experience with headphones while traveling, commuting, or working in the office, Tea Pro is your go-to. It’s lightweight and is slimmer than most portable DAC/amps. It also pioneers a built-in magnetic design that snaps onto your phone — no straps, no bulk, just slip it into your pocket. And slim doesn’t mean compromised. With space-saving separated circuits and an optimized component layout, Tea Pro improves sound quality by reducing signal interference. 

“A thousand songs in your pocket.”

Remember when Steve Jobs pulled the iPod out of his pocket and said that line? The iPod marked the farewell to CDs and the beginning of portable audio. Then came music on our phones, and now Bluetooth headphones have made it even easier to listen anytime, anywhere, in any posture. 

But at the peak of portability, we’ve also realized we might be missing something — a sound that is more alive, more present. When we sit down to really listen, MP3 files with lost detail and underpowered DACs no longer satisfy. That’s why Apple and Spotify have both introduced lossless formats, and why so many people are turning back to wired headphones and DACs. 

Yeah, perhaps we miss that era where music was fuller. The good news is: in 2025, you no longer need bulky gear of the past to enjoy Hi-Fi. No more choosing between portability and fidelity — all it takes is wired headphones and a card-sized DAC/amp. Whether during an afternoon coffee, on a run, or on the subway, you can now enter your own Hi-Fi world. 

Khadas is still captivated by that dream of “a thousand songs in your pocket.” Only this time, it’s a thousand Hi-Fi songs.  

Tea Pro

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