I need a travel USB DAC/headphone amp, any recommendations?

[Barfunkel]

I'm not always home, but would like to make some music with the headphones when I'm out. The headphone out of my laptop is useless, as it distorts/limits the signal a bit. Not in a minor way either. It kinda sounds nice actually, but that makes it useless for making music obviously. Soundcard is a bit clunky to always carry around.

So, are any of those cheap-ish (say max 100€) portable USB DAC/headphone amps of any use? It'd need to be fairly transparent, not sweeten the signal. Pocket-sized.

Thanks, if anyone can help.

[borg]

I'm not gonna argue your laptop's output is not of the finest quality (there was quite a difference between my old and new macbook, with the old one being better), but have you checked whether the impedance of your headphones match the output impedance of your laptop?

[PERIAL]

it’s a bit over your budget, however this one can even drive HD800!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apogee-Groov ... 3665320490

[Barfunkel]

I'm not gonna argue your laptop's output is not of the finest quality (there was quite a difference between my old and new macbook, with the old one being better), but have you checked whether the impedance of your headphones match the output impedance of your laptop?

Doesn't really matter which headphones I use, HD25's distort, K701's distort etc. Could of course be some setting buried really deep that does it, but I haven't found it. My previous Dell of the same series didn't have this problem, I could easily drive K701's with the headphone output.

[illit_]

I got one of these https://uk.creative.com/p/sound-blaster ... blaster-e1 used it for my DT990s for a while before I realised my interface kicked out enough anyways.

Was pretty affordable from my memory