Speakers are a pain to setup. The room, the placement, etc. And don’t forget other equipments like the power amp, the DAC, and the darn expensive cables for no reason. And at the end of the day, you need to do an outstanding job to get any where near the resolution / detail retrieval of good headphones or IEMs. I prefer a good pair of IEM and a music player, so I have my listening room anywhere.

I do have regret, but it's "learning experience", since I'm more interested in the gears (and reviewing them) than the music itself.

I imagine I would regret some kilobuck purchases due to incredible performance of the sub $500 IEMs this year. The IEM market moves so fast that buying kilobuck IEM is a risky move if you can't audition widely and carefully.

It's affordable, with real lossless (on my DAP, I can see the bitrate jumping up and down as I change sound quality). Dolby Atmos can be hit or miss, but when it hits, it's quite fun. I use Apple Music across iPhone, Android DAP, and my windows laptop. Unless you have problem with Apple itself, there is no problem with this streaming service.

https://iegems.nk-tran.com/

Wall of sound is the term I and some reviewers use to describe a flat and wide soundstage, like everything is on a flat surface without much sense of distance and layering. I personally dislike it, but then I know some who actively seeks that, so YMMV.

I haven’t heard the Atom so I can’t comment. I mostly review IEMs so I generally don’t pay much attention to desktop gear. A Fiio K7 is more than enough (though, again, a fellow IEM reviewer insists me to upgrade to K9).

In my experience, just grab a proper desktop setup (the one with external power supply rather than USB-C from laptop) from a reliable brand like Fiio, Schiit, Topping, etc., and you are done. Some people want to spend many thousands on these. Not me. An all in one like K7 or the Schiit stack is enough for me.

>I was under the impression that an amp/dac should not change the sound significantly. Yet the changes I am hearing are significant.

Oh they do sound different, sometimes drastically. I used to repeat after other people that "all of them sound the same", but by chance, I have access to quite a bit more to listen and A/B tests to review and now I have to take back the "they all sound the same" statement.

The thing is we are dealing with imperfect analog devices. Moreover, some manufacturers intentionally make the sound different. For example, some Shanling devices, such as the M6 Ultra (my review), are deliberately tuned for a thicker low-end, which happens to intensify the sense of depth in the soundstage. Some Fiio devices such as KA3 are brighter in the treble, which can trigger the "wall of sound" illusion sometimes. Recently I reviewed a weird dongle from a company called ACMEE, and that one has noticeably more upper midrange that the soundstage overshoots, placing the vocals right at the back of my head.

One may say "not the same volume", "louder is better". Sure. But then, when I deliberately push the volume of one device louder and it still cannot reveals details that the other one can at a lower volume, then one has to admit that something is going.

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Edit: one more point: some gaming laptop has very poor on-board DAC/amp. That can be the cause of the problem as well.

Other users told me that they changed the tuning already. It’s even more V-shaped with less treble extension nowadays. I recommend getting the shells and source your own drivers instead.

What a pick pile of Schiit :))

Congrats on your shiny, OP!

MP3 320kbps is adequate. You don't "need" more. Of course you might want more (lossless or hi-res), but you don't need more.

Even with my Andromeda 2020 IEM (very sensitive and generally considered a very detailed IEM), I have zero problem listening to properly mastered music on YouTube. Even a simple live performance like Ed Sheeran's Tiny Desk Concert on YouTube can reveal the difference in detail / "resolution" between my gears, but none of them sound bad because I listen to a music video on YouTube.

If the music is poorly mastered, you will suffer though. Decent headphones / IEMs tend to dig out those problems.