Upgrade options from asus xonar essence one

[shadroth]

Hi Guys,

New member here, i've been browsing through all the reviews and threads for the last few days and am a bit overwhelmed with the amount of choice for headphone amps/dacs.

I currently have an asus xonar essence one and shure srh1440 headphones. I'm looking to upgrade as the asus is pretty old now, however my budget is about $500 usd and im not sure if anything around this price will be "better" than the asus?

I'm looking to get some new headphones over the next few months, probably audeze lcd2c.

I dont mind having an amp/dac combo or seperate devices, so far i like the look of the jds labs element II but i'm open to suggestions otherwise.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Bamboszek]

I doubt you will hear any significant differences.
Essence One measures reasonably well. Only thing I can recall is about 10 ohms of output impedance.
But this isn't terrible also.