what headphones do you own thread - i own dt150's :)
- Thread starter garyfl
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I'm shocked people still buy cd's or physical media to be honest. It does feel like something you think they should have tested, "hey this media thats read using light, reckon we should check it still works when it's made transparent?"
Soldato
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CD's are making a small comeback, quite a few Chinese brands are releasing variety of CD players at the moment, I've started buying them again because they are so cheep in the charity shops, owning a DAP makes them a worthwhile endeavour, I just convert them into flac and chuck them in a CD flip case.
The convenience of streaming platforms like Spotify sidelines buying physical media for me, I had racks and racks of CDs and DVDs back in the college days, ripped to local files because mp3 players and never touched the CDs again, plus disliked the limited number of songs you had on a CD and no real viable metadata on CD either (WinAMP days of scoring songs and tagging etc). So each rip involved a run with Musicbrainz Picard to get album art and the mete info. Never looked back at CDs since then and now it's just a greater convenience with streaming with no loss in enjoyment of the music.
Caporegime
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I still buy CDs, but only Taylor Swift CDs 
I do actually have 3 months' of Apple Music free that i can activate, waiting for the Fosi Audio i5 to show up first before doing it so I can experience it with it to its fullest.
I do actually have 3 months' of Apple Music free that i can activate, waiting for the Fosi Audio i5 to show up first before doing it so I can experience it with it to its fullest.
Soldato
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Streaming will always be a greater convenience, and I'm glad it exists, I love Spotify and it's ability to find new music based off your listening history, but sometimes I find it almost to convenient, I never listen to full albums as much on Spotify, I tend to listen to curated play lists, where as when I switch over to CD (FLAC) on my DAP I end up enjoying full albums more, I guess in some respects this is what I ultimately miss about vinyl, your commitment to the album was stronger with a ritual like procedure to start the listening process where by then you was locked in, plus the process of buying vinyl was amazing, it was like flicking through poster art! and you always ended up meeting other music enthusiasts in the record stores and having a good banter!
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Problem is back in the day an album contained many great tracks and it was nice playing it as a whole, in modern times an album maybe contains a small few tracks that are genuinely 4 or 5 stars, the rest are 3 at best. Old skool albums also had skits that were fun to listen to, these are rare now too.
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Soldato
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I'll give that artists/bands back in the day usually put more thought and considerations into the track curation, especially with vinyl where they would want to try and give you a reason to flip to the b-side and often a great track would be waiting for you there too.
I'm really happy with my Qobuz > ROON setup and listen to full albums exclusively, whether via streaming or local FLAC files. ROON combines the two libraries and my collection between the two is somewhere in the region of 100,000 tracks and 8650 albums. The recommendations are decent too, whether as recommendations listed below the album page or as ROON Radio tracks, whereby ROON continues playing music once the album or selection you were playing is finished and tries to pick music in the same vein. I also love the DSP built into ROON and use it to upsample to 768kHz before squirting it into my Holo Audio Cyan 2 NOS DAC, a partnership made in heaven (I tried HQPlayer and didn't find that it sounded any better). It has great EQ facilities too, either parametric EQ or OPRA which is a built in database of supplied EQ's for supported headphone models - currently using Oratory1990's Harman Target for my Arya Stealths. A nice touch is that you can save the EQ curve and open it up in the PEQ and customise it to your preferences. Personally I like what Oratory1990 did so use it unchanged.
Fair, I skip that step and just download flac using soulseek. It makes no difference to the artist really whether you buy a used cd or download it.
I'm taking the DX5 II to Richer Sounds tomorrow to demo the Susvara as ran out of time last weekend, and RS said they don't have any dedicated headphones amps and the guys there wanted to demo the Susvara too so figured why not. I'll update on findings.
Hey just started my own CanJam
Hey just started my own CanJam
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@mrk based on what you know now would you have stuck with the K11 R2R over the DX5 2 if headphones were your only requirement? And then moved to X9 later?
Very envious of Raymond and his X9
I have the K11 which I really enjoy, have the DX5 on preorder but am thinking of cancelling and just waiting to get X9.
Very envious of Raymond and his X9
I have the K11 which I really enjoy, have the DX5 on preorder but am thinking of cancelling and just waiting to get X9.
Just for headphones I would have stuck with the K11 R2R yes, that is assuming I stayed with the Hifimans of course. I bought the DX5 II on a whim though as you may recall, at this price it was silly to not check out anyway and I can just sell it on with little to no loss after.
Soldato
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That is true, but it helps me pass the time hunting out albums while the other half bumbles her way through various charity shops looking at tat!
Soldato
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@mrk based on what you know now would you have stuck with the K11 R2R over the DX5 2 if headphones were your only requirement? And then moved to X9 later?
Very envious of Raymond and his X9
I have the K11 which I really enjoy, have the DX5 on preorder but am thinking of cancelling and just waiting to get X9.
I would always go with what has more power and neutrality personally, the DX5 will be be much cleaner sounding over that of the K11 R2R but not as 'fun' some might say, the DX5 costs 4 times less than the X9 and you have a headphone amp that can pretty much power any headphone in the world with a neutral sound signature, the question is how far do you want, or rather need to go, with the money you save on the DX5 you could always add a nice DAC to it in the future and still have a good chunk of change, I do get the appeal of the X9 though as an all-in-one device but I'm hearing of more failures on some of the units so might be worth waiting to see how they fair in that respect.
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I've been buying CD second-hand recently although I've long since had a CD/DVD player that can actually play them. Years ago I ripped all my CD Albums and singles to FLAC and they sit on the server. The actual CDs all archived away in a one of those big CD holders. I was going to buy a cheap USB CD/DVD Drive, but as noted here I am noticing this re-emergence of CD and Cassette hardware from Fiio, SMSL etc. And that might be worth me picking up one of those instead. I hope that CD doesn't suddenly become the latest fad like Vinyl and prices go to silly levels. CD was the format I grew-up with and I have way more nostalgia for that then other formats.
With everything now I'm pretty much all-digital. The convenience of everything being accessible on all devices is simply too appealing. It's only physical Nintendo games where I've kept buying those, however with Switch 2 I think I'm fine going digital too. Even in the world of retro videogames I think getting original hardware and modding it to play SD cards, or whatever as this is more appealing that buying loads of physical cartridges and discs. That was one of the massive appeals of buying into a MiSTer; everything under the sun and indistinguishable from the 'real' thing.
However that being said Spotify has changed the way I listen to music and I don't always like that. Something Dave Grohl was talking about years ago and why he still loves vinyl because of your relationship with the album and you are more likely to listen to it in full and not skip tracks. Interestingly my eldest daughter has grown up in love with music and she is all in on a vinyl collection. Often super expensive at that (she may even be more of Swiftie than @Raymond Lin having seen the Era's tour last year and last night was at Lana Del Rey). So that need for something tangible has impacted her generation too. The other thing about streaming is that from time-to-time I do encouter tracks that dissappear off the streaming service for rights reasons, or whatever. Lisa Misovsky - Still Alive (from the original Mirrror's Edge) was an example of this. One day greyed out and not available to play. So I do appreciate why people hang onto physical media and CD's in particular.
With everything now I'm pretty much all-digital. The convenience of everything being accessible on all devices is simply too appealing. It's only physical Nintendo games where I've kept buying those, however with Switch 2 I think I'm fine going digital too. Even in the world of retro videogames I think getting original hardware and modding it to play SD cards, or whatever as this is more appealing that buying loads of physical cartridges and discs. That was one of the massive appeals of buying into a MiSTer; everything under the sun and indistinguishable from the 'real' thing.
However that being said Spotify has changed the way I listen to music and I don't always like that. Something Dave Grohl was talking about years ago and why he still loves vinyl because of your relationship with the album and you are more likely to listen to it in full and not skip tracks. Interestingly my eldest daughter has grown up in love with music and she is all in on a vinyl collection. Often super expensive at that (she may even be more of Swiftie than @Raymond Lin having seen the Era's tour last year and last night was at Lana Del Rey). So that need for something tangible has impacted her generation too. The other thing about streaming is that from time-to-time I do encouter tracks that dissappear off the streaming service for rights reasons, or whatever. Lisa Misovsky - Still Alive (from the original Mirrror's Edge) was an example of this. One day greyed out and not available to play. So I do appreciate why people hang onto physical media and CD's in particular.
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It's not neutral if it's lifting the upper mids and bringing them forward out of the box resulting in the feeling of sibilance/harshness on certain headphones/speakers.
Of course the PEQ can work around that for the most part, but the PEQ system is partially broken right now in that it loses your uploaded PEQ randomly as reported by enough people now including one comment on my review video where a guy said he had no issues, then followed up with a reply saying "never mind, my PEQ has gone..." or words to that effect, so Topping need to fix that along with adding some other life comfort features that are missing but exist on older models like basic tone controls without having to use the PEQ, DAC mode that can be applied to specific outputs instead of a blanket "all" (this is a dumb omission IMO), a basic no-activity standby function instead of relying on a 12v trigger signal assuming you have something else sourcing into it, and a bunch of other smaller stuff that can boil down to use preference.
Topping's D50 III has issues still as well and the last FW update was in December last year, so that unit has basically been left behind by Topping, hopefully the same does not happen with the DX5 II as time goes on.
I think my verdict on the review is fair, it's got strong potential, but should have released in a better state of QC, and it is clear that this is why no review samples were sent to anyone, as the consumer is left finding the bugs.
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Soldato
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"It's not neutral if it's lifting the upper mids and bringing them forward out of the box resulting in the feeling of sibilance/harshness on certain headphones/speakers."
At the end of the day that's down to the tuning of the headphone, that is overwhelmingly going to dictate how something sounds, the speaker/headphone, you have a speaker with horn tweeters which are known to have a high top end and HiFiMAN eggies which lean brighter also, ultimately you have to get them matching your preferences first and foremost, otherwise it's like like using a teaspoon to dig a trench, you end up dealing with only the thin end of the wedge.
I'm glad we both agree with the Topping issues overall (and possibly Chinese brands reliability), but at the price for performance it's offering it's worth a punt as thus far it is allowing you to do it's primary function, powering headphones with a lot of power for peanuts, I agree the PEQ should be functioning.
At the end of the day that's down to the tuning of the headphone, that is overwhelmingly going to dictate how something sounds, the speaker/headphone, you have a speaker with horn tweeters which are known to have a high top end and HiFiMAN eggies which lean brighter also, ultimately you have to get them matching your preferences first and foremost, otherwise it's like like using a teaspoon to dig a trench, you end up dealing with only the thin end of the wedge.
I'm glad we both agree with the Topping issues overall (and possibly Chinese brands reliability), but at the price for performance it's offering it's worth a punt as thus far it is allowing you to do it's primary function, powering headphones with a lot of power for peanuts, I agree the PEQ should be functioning.
Caporegime
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How dare?!
( I actually had 4 tickets!....sold the other ones at cost to a friend. )
I also been to Reputation (Darren was the guy who meant to go but me and my friend bought his ticket)
And Speak Now. I didn’t go to 1989 though. Check out the date on this
(I have more since, this was 2021)
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How dare?!
I apologise. You and my daughter would get along...