Which will give me better sound?

[The Ironist]

Got myself a nice new pair of headphones for christmas and I listen to a lot of music from my Macbook and was just wondering whether this idea would give me better quality sound or not?

I can either plug headphones straight into headphone jack on Macbook which will give me analog audio output with a 24-bit, 44.1-192 kHz D/A converter

or

Use a toslink cable to connect Macbook to my amp (which provides the amp with digital audio output up to 24-bit stereo and 44.1-192 kHz sampling rate and supporting encoded digital audio output (AC3 and DTS)) then plug headphones into amp using the larger headphone jack.

What I'm wondering is will there be any difference in quality between the analog and digital output and will the extra power added by my amp make any difference?

 

[David]

amped will be better, but kinda dpeends on how good ur earphones are as to whetyher you'll notice it or ont.

 

[The Ironist]

They're Grado SR80i's so first step on the decent headphone ladder. I've just looked on few other places and different people say different things about the effect of amp on them. I guess it's something I will just have to try for myself. It annoys me when people ask questions they can find the answer to by just taking 10mins to try it, yet I still decided to ask it lol

in my defence my toslink is still on it's way to me so I can't actually test it yet...

 

[McBunny]

id say with either of them a separate headphone amp

 

[Munson]

Nice cans. I have SR80 also.

 

[The Ironist]

Just tried it and putting it through Amp makes it much better as it adds more bass. Just had some Led Zeppelin on and it sounds lush