Digital to Analogue Converter. An audio signal must be converted to analogue in order to be fed to an audio driver, so anything that takes digital audio data and actually plays it, has a DAC somewhere. Your phone has a DAC, your laptop has a DAC…
Headphones that use USB, have a DAC, because USB doesn’t do audio. It only does digital stuff. Hence USB heaphones are actually DAC and heaphone combos. The USB goes to a DAC, which goes to the headphones. Except they are connected together with no way to use either separately from the other.
But you can get USB DACs, little USB stick looking things that plug into a USB port and have a headphone jack on the other end. If you then get any other normal pair of headphones, you can use the USB DAC to use those as if they were USB headphones, whenever you need.
Digital to Analogue Converter. An audio signal must be converted to analogue in order to be fed to an audio driver, so anything that takes digital audio data and actually plays it, has a DAC somewhere. Your phone has a DAC, your laptop has a DAC…
Headphones that use USB, have a DAC, because USB doesn’t do audio. It only does digital stuff. Hence USB heaphones are actually DAC and heaphone combos. The USB goes to a DAC, which goes to the headphones. Except they are connected together with no way to use either separately from the other.
But you can get USB DACs, little USB stick looking things that plug into a USB port and have a headphone jack on the other end. If you then get any other normal pair of headphones, you can use the USB DAC to use those as if they were USB headphones, whenever you need.