General Music and Audio Equipment Advice

[turica]

Hi I need a lot of advice…

I listen to rock, pop, hip-hop, rap, pretty much any song that just hits home - here’s the playlist I listen to the most (the earlier songs are mostly just there from when I was younger and had less taste, but I keep them for the memories): The Good Ones 2791 on TIDAL
I’ve been into high quality audio for a while and I pretty much need a full comprehensive guide and what to do to get the top notch music I’ve always dreamed of. It’s like everything I do always has some sort of choke.

• I recently opted for a subscription for Tidal Hifi-Plus - which as far as I’m aware is the best option for music unless I want to fork over a bunch of cash to manually buy each song in Hifi quality.
• I’m looking for good headphones or IEMs (I’ll talk more about what I’m looking for in the end), and up until recently I thought that the combination of good headphones and high quality music would be enough…
• But then I learnt that even a PC’s built in ‘DAC’ isn’t good enough, let alone mobile, so now I don’t know if I should be looking into a portable DAC for my Moto-G(30) and a stationary one for my PC.

Right now I’m just running some old gaming headphones I had and Tidal Hifi-Plus on my PC, but I would like to listen to good music every where I go.

• I’m also super confused about audio settings on my PC and my phone. This is making my brain hurt. Like do I enable Audio Enhancements in control panel? Should I plug my headphones in the back or the front? What about spatial sound? Realtek audio console?
• Is there anything else I should know about? Once/if I buy headphones and a DAC will my search be over? Or is there some other miscellaneous product I’ve never heard of.

About the headphones:

• High quality, doesn’t have to be perfect, but to the points where I’ll barely notice a difference (as an inexperienced listener), preferably around 150 - 250 euros.

• If headphones - I’m not sure if open-back or closed-back is better, I would like to listen to music in public so I don’t want the music to leak.

• I’m happy with IEM’s or really good earbuds (if they exist) of some kind. They don’t have to be wireless, but if there’s a good pair where wireless doesn’t sacrifice audio quality, that’s always a plus.

Thanks in advance… :')

P.S. I may edit this post frequently if I remember something that’s important to me.