I’ve never had a DAC/AMP before because as far as I know, I’m completely fine without them, I’m curious and would want to start somewhere cheap so I know whether to add them to my set and if the benefits are good enough to warrant an upgrade.
edit: if a decent sub $50 exists, I might go for that first
Shanling UP4 honestly. I think bluetooth dac/amps are a gamechanger in not having your phone tethered to a cable.
Depends what headphones you wanna drive. If yours don’t get loud enough, you need a bigger amp.
As far as dacs go, you probably won’t notice a difference to what your phone has build in, but you could give the apple usb-c to aux “dongle” a try.Don’t let online people give you fomo though, in my experience these YouTubers and redditors that talk about how aMaZiNg their 700$ dac/amp stack sounds with hEaDrOoM, they’re full of shit