The All Purpose Advice Thread

E-mu does the same thing for their headphones like the E-mu purpleheart and E-mu teak, which is pretty confusing.

 

Yep, no worries.

Yeah, I almost skipped over the Teaks in the first place because I thought they were a different versions of the $79 massdrop ones.

 

Been listening to Auteurs all morning. For giggles I switched out to a pair of closed Beyer T5p gen2s that I bought for portables. Listening to both sets balanced on the desktop rig.

The Beyer's don't suck at all. Very far from it. In the price range I'd take them all day everyday over the LCD2Cs that I heard on the loaner.

I'm pretty sure that the treble on these is toned down compared to what most of you associate with Beyer. The Auteur at twice the price is a better, clearer, more dynamic headphone with better stage, but these Beyers don't do anything offensive to my ear, are very comfortable, and deserve, I think, to be a consideration in the ~$800 range for closed cans.

 

In relation to my other post, maybe I should add the t5p to my list. A used one falls within that price range and is sonically similar to the others.

 

I did introduce myself. Was it not proper enough? I can edit it.
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...rs-introduce-yourself.17/page-141#post-213997

I did do a bit of reading (seems like not enough from your reply?), some of my questions here are asking for clarification from the reading. As I mentioned in my post I have read the Schiit shill thread and also the Schiit amp comparison thread. Although not mentioned, I have read a couple other threads too.

Sorry, still learning the culture here, was just trying to provide as much info as possible hoping to get better, comprehensive replies.

Would like to hear more about it.

My experiences with gear other than my own are all very brief, so I don't consider myself to be experienced.

As I said it is not really important, but would be nice if there exists a magic box that can do it all very well.

 

@Hogcryat
I think your post was just too long and overwhelming for some. You can ask follow up questions which might make things easier, although I know you wanted to get as much information out there as you could.

 

@Hogcryat intro works, just missed it after skimming last time or my language comprehension tanked. I... might have misspelled your name when searching. Tut mir leid

As for the Amiron, I demoed it and didn't find it much good, especially for the price. There's a hot spot in the treble that just straight up hurts and really messes up the sound for me. I couldn't listen past it, but if it suits your fancy then that's great because it had a lot of good going for it, but you may be risking your hearing with that one a bit (sorta kidding, haha).

Marvey seemed to rather like it, which was a bit of a WTH moment for me, but then again I'm anal about treble and tubes very likely help take the edge off (I ran them out of a Micro iDSD).

Found the measurements:
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/beyer-amiron-measurements.4022/

 

I'd rather soak my penis in fluorosulfuric acid than listen to the Amiron again.

 

LOL. That bad, huh?

 

I don't know if you're looking for closed cans. I'd expect that for the price, or less, you could find open cans that most here would prefer overall.

 

Not for my ears

 

According to Don Sachs, the amp builder, the fairly loud h from the power transformer only seems to suggest dc offset.

Fortunately I did find a dealer who had a CMX-2 in stock so I snagged it. Should be arriving today or tomorrow and will update this post.

He also suggested the humdinger, but I'm a very particular type of asshole

 

Yeah, I'm more looking for closed or semi-open cans on the warmer side - because it often gets too noisy to use Stax around here.

 

AQ Nighthawk is definitely on the warmer side, but the weather round my parts is bad enough and I don't need the extra heat, haha.

Jokes aside, I did enjoy my demo of them, only I found them to not be to my tastes, exactly. I've got the X00 Ebonys and just going off measurements I think you may like the Teaks. The Fostexes aren't particularly warm-sounding to me, and as has been mentioned elsewhere they do a spectacular job of keeping sound from leaking, though they're not particularly good at blocking external noise.

P.S.
Where the heck did you find a Paradox for $300?!

 

Nighthawks seem interesting but I wouldn't dare buy them without demoing, and my local shop just cleared them all out.

Teak's are at the top of my list but they're hard to find - I did find one for $420 used with an upgraded silver cable, but I'm not sure how good of a deal that is, considering they're 450 new when up for drop. I think I might end up with these if Zach doesn't have any blackwoods in b-stock.

I don't think the Paradox is what I'm looking for - a little too neutral. Someone on head-fi is selling them used for $300 with a magni 3. They don't want to split them but still, that's a damn good deal. If anyone is interested here's the link:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lff-enigmatic-paradox-magni-3.881799/

 

Good for you. I owned these. I paid MSRP when they came out. With the Massdrop HD650/580/etc out, they're not worth $600. They're barely worth $200, imo, and that's with generous EQ and a listening preference that borderlines on hyperacousis. YMMV.

Wish I never sold them, despite the earpads sucking beyond all belief. Some twatwaffle did a massive amount of pad swapping on a HF thread for these, so you might want to check that out.

It's such a good neutral though...

Don't rule out the ZMF Vibro Mk3. Yes, they're a poor man's Ori.

 

The Nighthawks somehow manage to have much better isolation than the Fostex/E-MUs which may be important. The ZMFs would be even better in that department.

 

The NightOwls I tried sounded like a wool sock was stuck in there. No idea what the deal was. Demo’d them in an empty store with Gungnir Multibit and Mjo2 at the time using my laptop as source.

 

The pair I'm looking at has Dekoni pads on them already. If I can get this guy to go under 400 I think I might hop on it. Otherwise I'll keep searching.

How about compared to the Blackwood? I'd think that with the larger soundstage the Blackwood has more potential to come closer. Most people seem to prefer it too...