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The Cool Beyerdynamic Impacto DAC & Amplifier -- REVIEWED
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May 29, 2025
If you already own Beyerdynamic headphones, congrats, you've got some sweet audio gear. Take it to the next level with the new Beyerdynamic Impacto DAC & Amplifier and really get the most out of your audio source, whether it's an Android or iPhone, computer or even your laptop. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ checks out the Impacto Universal and finds that it makes his Amiron Home headphones sound significantly better, with more dynamic range, a wider soundstage and greater max volume. The Impacto works with the Beyerdynamic T1, T5p and Amiron Home headphones only, however, but he talks about the tradeoff with a custom DAC of this nature. Learn more at: https://www.beyerdynamic.com/
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A DAC just for biodynamic headphones? Let's check it out
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Dave Taylor here, and this time I'm looking at audio gear, specifically this
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This is the Biodynamic Impacto, and it's a digital-to-og converter designed specifically for biodynamic headphones
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Very interesting. Now, you're looking at it and you're like, what? What does this thing do? It turns out that if you
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have biodynamic headphones like these, these are the Amaron Home. It also works with the T1 and the
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T5P. That's it. And those headphones are designed so that you have a wire going into each earpiece
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So I'll take off the regular wire and now I can plug my DAC directly into it. Let's see, red is
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right and then white is left. And so now I have my DAC and it's ready to go. But here's what makes
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this interesting is this package comes with a ton of different adapter cables. So let's have a look
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So here's the top one and this one gets me lightning and we'll come back to that. So I'm
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going to put that aside. And then there's another one and this one gets me USB-C so you can plug it
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into your computer. And then there's another one. And this one, let's see what this one gives me
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They all have micro USB on one end. And this one actually has micro USB on both ends. So you could
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use this with, for example, an Android phone. And finally, there's one more. And that one
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let's see, it's a little longer. This one gives you just a USB 3.0. So for older computers and
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systems, you can plug in using this. Now, what you don't get is you don't get a 3.5mm
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AUX plug. You don't have that on either end of this thing. It's just that's not what this
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is for Now one other interesting thing is the Impacto comes with a battery Now you only need the external battery when you using a lightning connector because for everything Apple did right with the lightning connector they don have enough power to drive the DAC So you end up if you going to do that one then you going to need what
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called the universal version of the Impacto. It's a little bit more expensive. We'll come back to
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that. But the universal version comes with a lightning cable and it comes with the battery
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which is just like that, easy enough. And then it conveniently has a micro USB connection
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and that's how you charge it. In terms of charging, it's about three hours for a full charge
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and they say it'll run four, four and a half hours. My experience is it runs longer
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Like most of these things, I think it depends on how loud you listen to music, so how much work it's doing. But really easy to work with, so no problem. And then without it
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boy, look how thin that is. This is a very slim little unit. And on the front, as you can see
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there are all sorts of controls for volume up, volume down, play, pause, previous track
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next track. And at the very bottom, if you're using what they call high res audio, it actually
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will light up and say, aha, I found a high res audio source. I'm giving you even more dynamic
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range. Really cool. So all of these different options make this a really great choice if you
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have the right headphones. Now, let's go back here and talk about the DAC itself because it is a
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pretty slim unit. But it does have what's known as an ESS Sabra 32 reference DAC, which is really
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nice. And it can handle things like high-res audio uncompressed. So the whole purpose of a digital
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og converter is to give you more dynamic range. It's like an amplifier and everything
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So anything that you feed through this is going to just sound bigger and louder and have more
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sound stage and more richness to it. It's just basically like magic. It takes good audio and
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makes it great audio. And if you have headphones like these, which are like, again, I said the
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Amaran Home, then these already sound really good. This makes them sound terrific. And they did a
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really nice job thinking through lengths So with this if I actually plug it in and since I using lightning I will need to have the battery So just a magnet here And if I plug this
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into my phone, you'll see the cable's actually pretty much the optimal length. There's not
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a lot of extra cable going on. Oops, let me pause that. Not a lot of cable going on
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And you can see here that the play button has lit up now that it has power. If I take
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the battery off, then it gets unhappy and it won't actually work, which is kind of a drag
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but, you know, is what it is. You have all these other cables, so you can try all these other
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alternatives. And let's see, what else can I tell you about it? So there are, as I said
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two versions of the Biodynamic Impacto, Biodynamic Impacto, and they are the essential version
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which is the one without the battery. And then if you add the battery and the lightning cable
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then that's what's known as the universal version. So that's the difference between the two
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And let's give you some stats is that the maximum sampling rate with this DAC is 384 kilohertz at
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32 bits. It has a range of 4 to 52,000 hertz, way more than I can hear and probably a lot more than
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you can hear. And total harmonic distortion is 0.002%. So this is not adding any distortion at
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all. Whether you're listening to classical or the latest thrash metal, it's going to sound really
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good. Although thrash metal, I don't know, maybe it'll all sound the same. I don't listen to that
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kind of music. It's compatible with three primary types of biodynamic headphones. The T1, I believe
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it's just the second generation of the T1, so you'll want to check with that. The T5P and the
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Amaran Home, all of which are great headphones anyway, this just makes them even better. It does
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not have a 3.5 millimeter jack. I cannot plug this into my phone or my computer and then plug any old
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headphones into it Why Biodynamic made that decision I not entirely sure It something that seems to me you might as well just make it a 3 millimeter plug and then have it be more universally useful But this is their choice and these are their headphones So I sure it
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tuned for specifically how these, how their headphones work. And connections, we already
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talked about them. Lightning connector for the universal version, USB-C, USB 3.0, and micro USB
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and they sound great. Like I said, these already sound really good, and I have the T1s, and I have
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the T5Ps. All of them sound really good, but you put this DAC in line, and they just sound better
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much better, and it's really, really a wonderful thing. If you've never heard a DAC, you really owe
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it to yourself to go to a high-end audio place and just ask them to demo one, because everything
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that you push music through just sounds better. It's like getting a really good amp for your
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stereo. It's just going to sound better. Now, only thing left to do is talk about price, but whoa
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before we get there, can I ask, click on that subscribe button. Really appreciate it. Now
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price. The version like this without the battery and without the lightning connector, so just the
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different versions of USB, that is what's known as the Biodynamic Impacto Essential, and that's
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$329. Add the battery and add the lightning adapter too, and that will actually jump it up
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to the Impacto Universal, and that is $379 at Amazon.com. That's the difference. I think this
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is terrific. If you're going to be using biodynamic headphones, it is an absolute no-brainer to spend
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the extra money to get the DAC and to have them sound even better. It really makes a difference
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It's very noticeable. So this is Dave Taylor. I am going to go back to my music
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So I will catch you in my next video
#Audio Equipment