About the Purchase Advice category

[David_Smolinski]

What’s the best study (tutorial learning) audio gear (headphones, DAC amp)?

What’s the best for speed watching tutorials?

We should get a sense of price and value. If you recommend >1, rank them best to worst and give them points and ideally a price.

example: 10 model a $100, 8 model b $1

gear

1. DAC amp
2. ventilating headphones: They keep skin dry and healthy, and provide relief from non-ventilated headphones.
3. noise cancellation headphones: If your room is soundproofed, this might be unnecessary. Reduce sound sent to and received from the environment.
4. ANC (active noise cancellation)
5. PNC (passive noise cancellation)

What I’ve heard about ANC

1. It cancels white noise, but not irregular noise.
2. It sounds worse.

I have

1. FX Audio DAC-X6
2. Koss KSC75: Its better than ATH-M50X, worse than 280 PRO. It’s open back and vents.
3. Sennheiser HD 280 PRO: Ignoring the closed back sound, it sounds the same as Stax SR-5 and better than KSC75, ATH-M50X, and Skull Candy IEMs.

[victorb]

Denafrips or Holo May… is it a toss of the coin? I’m convinced that a ‘Dave’ is not worth 10K.

TIA

[Pappaboomboom]

How do I go about posting for purchase advice. I’m new here. Thanks

[SenyorC]

Welcome @Pappaboomboom !

As you are new, your first few posts need to be manually approved.

I have moved your post into the General Purchase Advice thread. We have a mega-thread for all these kinds of posts and it gets quite a bit of traffic, so I’m sure someone will be able to help you out.

[czuba]

Hi all! I can’t make a new thread in this subforum, so I’ll join the mega thread fun. I’ve pretty much said it all in my post in the welcome thread, so I’ll just quote that here. But the tl;dr is:

• looking for IEMs for wireless Bluetooth configuration
• total budget well under $1k, seeking used items only.
• love jazz music especially, so while I’m seeking a versatile set, the best dynamics and soundstage for jazz music under $500 used is the sweet spot. Dunu SA6’s seem to me the most likely candidate — thoughts?
• once again, versatility is the goal here, as I will be using them for a lot of academic work in my home office, but also during short commutes and flights, light exercise (walking/hiking and whatever else I can gently swing), cooking and hanging around the house, and for serious listening in quietude until I subsequently acquire wired cans.

For that reason I plan to pair with a Bluetooth adaptor set like the Fiio UTWS5’s to use with hifi and midfi sources on iPhone. Given this intention, I list the SA6’s as my primary candidate, as even buying used the Thieaudio Monarch’s or Clairvoyance’s together with UTWS5 adaptors would likely present too much of a budget stretch.

I’ve also given thought to the Hifiman Ananda BT’s, which would preclude the need for additional amplification. While this would provide the nice benefit of ticking the wireless/Bluetooth box, together with the added bonus of a nice set of wired cans to start exploring higher-end over-ear listening, they don’t exactly match the desired use case of mobility and convenience. I’d probably be happy enough with the IEMs and then moving to wired cans and a Schiit stack when I’m ready for something new.

Thanks for reading. My welcome post is quoted below. This is an X-post to the other purchase advise megathread: puzzlingly, we seem to have two going in parallel.

@czuba

Hey, Headphoners! (Is that the appropriate demonym?)

My name’s Matthew, and I’m really excited to be here.

I’m a Ph.D student in linguistics at UCLA, working on fieldwork and within theoretical semantics, pragmatics and philosophy of language. I love all sorts of music, especially jazz, and enjoy playing acoustic guitar and (when I’m back home) double bass.

I’ve been a lurker on various audio forums over the past few years, including audiogon, polk forums, roon forums, and (though I haven’t logged in for well over a decade) audiokarma. I was also an old member of the WCD community. 8)

This isn’t a stereo community, and I haven’t fired up my system regularly for quite some time since I’ve been bouncing around internationally for my studies these past few years, so I won’t list that setup. For the past few years I’ve made due lugging my Mission Aero around.

As far as headphones go, I’ve found myself in various stages of almost taking the hifi plunge, but never really getting there. I look forward to remedying that here! For awhile I was dead set on finding a used set of sub-$1k Focal cans, but was gifted some AT ATH-Mx50’s and their subsequent Bluetooth cousins, and between those and the Aero have gotten by without re-entering the rabbit hole.

My intention is to jump back in with a Bluetooth setup, kneeling to the learned convenience of wireless life. I’m hoping to start by hitting the audio boards in search of set of IEMs like the Dunu SA6’s to pair with something like the Fiio UTWS5’s.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of jumping in for the Hifiman Ananda BT’s, after perusing some reviews and entertaining their flexibility for wired use, for example by adding a modest Schiit stack. I like that they have their own rather powerful DAC, and so use with hifi audio sources (e.g. on my iPhone) would be straightforward.

I found this forum from Andrew’s YouTube review of the Dunu MA6’s, and while I have so much to learn and experience, I’m really looking forward to learning from and alongside you all. (And if you know of someone selling something that might help me meet my first goal, don’t be shy to reach out!)

Cheers, and see you around the boards,
Matthew