Better headphones won’t fix bad audio — your source, settings, and DAC shape the sound far more than most people realize.

For the longest time, I thought better audio meant just buying a better headphone and calling it a day. But after going through a few setups, wasting money in places that didn’t move the needle, and slowly figuring out what actually changes how your PC sounds, I realized something uncomfortable: that most of us start in the wrong place.