Set your total budget for a complete system — headphones, amplifier and DAC. Each lane shows the best combination that genuinely fits that money, with every component priced and totalled, so nothing here quietly costs half as much again as the number you set.
Prices are approximate new-in-2026 figures in USD and move around. Buying used typically shifts you a full tier upward for the same outlay, which is often the single best value decision in this hobby.
Every lane above splits a total between headphones, amplifier and DAC. The database has a blunt answer to where that split should fall, and it is not the one the hobby gives. For each of the 567 non-electrostatic models here, take the cheapest source that passes all three published tests at once — enough power for 100 dB, an output impedance low enough for the one-eighth rule, and a noise floor below the audible-hiss threshold. The median answer across the whole catalogue is $29.
One product covers most of it: the FiiO KA11, at $29, is the cheapest fully-passing source for 561 of the 567 models. The dearest case in the entire database is $149 (Topping L30 II, for the Simgot EA500). There is no model here that needs a four-figure source to satisfy its published numbers, and nothing at all above $149.
Two things that sentence is not saying. It is not saying those are the best-sounding products, because published figures cannot rank sound. And it is not saying nobody should buy anything dearer — a desktop amplifier buys a volume knob you can reach, a balanced output, headroom for whatever you own in five years, and the plain pleasure of owning a nice object, none of which this database can measure. What it is saying is narrower and harder to argue with: on the three numbers that can be checked, the source side of a stack has a floor in the tens of dollars and a ceiling not far above it, so a budget that puts most of the money into headphones is the one the data supports.
One check on that claim, because this site owes it. Run the same search across every source with all three figures and the answer is cheaper still — $20, the JadeAudio JA11, for 545 models — but that record’s numbers stand on a shop listing rather than a document from its maker, so it is not the one quoted above. The 72 sources with all three figures drop to 70 once shop-sourced records are excluded, and the conclusion survives the stricter list. How that distinction is drawn.