So I've had a lot of time over the lockdown tweaking things and today I picked up an old Fiio E17 and compared the old ATH M50 vs the Audeze LCD 2 with Fazor.

The Audeze is better with vocals but I thought the M50 was pretty good with pop music.

Set up - Flac -> Laptop -> DAC/Amp (Fiio E17) -> Headphones

Anyway - I realised the gain was set at medium. No EQ on the Fiio - everything flat so as to not add any additional circuitry hopefully.

Then I realised - maybe it should be set at 0. Then I thought because it's a digital system maybe it should be at max.

But does it even make a difference if it's all digital? And if it does, which way of gain tweak would do what to the bass mids highs? "Volume" on laptop is 100%.