7Hz Timeless: Don’t like them much anymore. To my ears, there’s an exaggeration in the treble region where hi hats and snare drums are that I didn’t hear before and that doesn’t really sound good to me. Completely unbearable with the Bolt (a combination I liked before), more or less ok with the with the RU6.
Cayin RU6: I loved it for its timbre and plankton before. Now I hear better both from the ESS card of my Jot 2. It’s still okay to me, but not more, the missing blackground and microdetail bothers me.
Helm Bolt: I wasn’t much of a fan of its tonality before already, but liked its resolution. Nowadays, I hear much more of that from the Jot’s ESS card.
Sennheiser HD650: Still nice, but as I love the microdetail I can now hear from my Clear Mg so much, these have also suffered from a relative downranking.
There’s one big winner chain: The Schiit Jotunheim 2 with its built-in ESS card as a DAC powering the Focal Clear Mg. That combination sounds so damned f'ing good now that I can’t stop listening. There’s so much more to hear and explore now! Really an exceptional experience.
What I still can’t explain is, given I could hear *less* treble before, how the ESS card could sound more harsh and digital to me before than it does now.
But in the end it doesn’t matter, I totally enjoy it now. (And have started thinking about how much better a less modest DAC might sound.)
My experience wasn’t quite that drastic. But when I went in for my first set of CIEMs in like 2010, the audiologist told me she couldn’t make the impression till she removed this giant chunk of earwax impacted against my right eardrum
Instead of waiting I had her remove it on the spot, it was maybe one of the most painful experiences of my life, but I could hear so much better out of my right ear after that haha
I waited two weeks before writing this because I thought these impressions would be greatly reduced after a while, but they weren’t. It sounded different from now for some thirty minutes or so, maybe even less. Afterwards, it didn’t change much anymore.
Well, I see it this way: I can only now appreciate how great my main rig is. And how much better it is than the rest of my gear, which I use much less, anyway, and none of which was very expensive, too.
I’ll try to have clean ears before auditioning new stuff from now on, though.
Pro tip for ageing male audiophiles: every time you go for a prostate exam, get your ear-wax checked too. Remember to insist on fresh gloves after each procedure.
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