I'm brand new to the forum, and I'm certainly not an audiophile. I wanted to show my gratitude to the amazing information and dedicated folks who share their incredible knowledge. I'm a part time musician of about 25 years (bass guitar) and amateur audio/video engineer for recording and capturing local bands for about 1 year.
I usually mix/master through my budget Behringer reference monitors and subwoofer in a mildly acoustic treated home bedroom studio. I practice bass 95% of the time through headphones. I use a Behringer UMC404HD as my home audio interface, and a Behringer X Air X18 digital mixer as my 16 channel interface for mobile recording of bands.
After reading these forums, it was good to know the UMC404HD is a capable DAC. But I never realized just how bad the internal headphone amp was until I realized how noisy and distorted it gets past noon on the volume. I figured it was my assortment of budget cans and IEM's. I have a few other budget portable headphone amps I use for IEM feeds when performing or capturing. The budget amps are slightly better than the UMC, but volumes are maxed out when powering my new Audio Technica ATH-M50x's. So when I browsed for budget headphone amps, I came across Schiit, and eventually this forum.
All I can say is WOW. After having the Heresy for less than a day, I had no idea what I'd been missing. The lack of hiss and distortion makes practicing bass SO much more enjoyable. Listening to some of my favorite songs has brought out detail and articulation I had never noticed. I was kind of disappointed with the ATH-M50x's at first. Even though they're only 38 ohms, I knew something had to be off as I see a lot of professional bass players and engineers use these for captures and swear by them. The Schiit Heresy has really brought them to life. I look forward to getting a proper set of open back headphones for mixing now that I have the power to push them. The inexpensive Samson SR-850's have served me well, but I think I've outgrown them. Time for some more forum rabbit hole diving to pick the brilliant minds of this forum.
One thing I have to agree with is that the outputs of the UMC in general seem a bit weak and under powered, regardless of USB power or an external PSU. The Heresy really helps negate this with it's power and low noise. I'm a believer. Again, thank you to the work and advice of the members of this forum.