I think a lot of it comes down to whether you are a music enthusiast or a headphone hobbyist. If you are into headphones as a hobby and have the disposable income, expensive headphones and gear is absolutely worth the price.
But what would be considered expensive? I realized the other day that I was cross-shopping two pieces of source gear and one was $300 and the other $1,100. And the thing is that the sound quality wasn’t even a differentiator for me. I’m sure they both sound excellent if not identical to me. It’s really coming down to design and build as they have a similar feature set.
But that’s not even the realization that interested me. What I realized was that I wasn’t comparing prices as a multiple (one costs almost 4x the other) or even as a difference (one costs $800 more than the other). It was both more vague than that and also less of a difference. It felt more like “does the improved design and build justify spending $1,100?” And for me the answer is yes, absolutely. It’s like the price of the $300 option didn’t even factor into the decision.
It’s always a major consideration for me. I think the question is what value I give the money vs what value I give the purchase. And that is not always the same for all purchases or even all sources of money.
Yep that much is a given or I wouldn’t be on this forum. I was attempting to elucidate how the value of the gear is perceived by me. That I just recently realized it isn’t a mathematical concept like I have seen many others assume. The phrase “that costs 4x as much” might not mean much if you can afford the more expensive option and you are only buying one anyway.
And then there is the missed opportunity cost. That’s what it costs you mentally every time you look at the cheaper option and say I should’ve gotten the other one.
Or, the opposite. You regret spending extra $$$ on a headphone after someone introduces you to a model that sounds better (to you) at a lower cost, usually from a different manufacturer. This can occur when one buys into the hyped reviews, only to discover their “house sound” does not align with your preferred “house sound”. Happens all too often in this hobby, especially with headphones.
Hell, even the “experts” don’t agree on headphone rankings.
Valid points.
What really started me re-thinking this issue was finally getting a pair of Sennheiser HD 650’s. They sounded more right to me than a lot of more expensive headphones, which really started to change my perception of value. Yes, they don’t have the last word on deep bass, but for most music genres, they fill the bill quite nicely.
More recently, Danny Richie recommended I try the Verum 2. Danny owns GR Research, which makes speakers and supports speaker mods/upgrades. His listening skills are excellent, so I trust his advice. I obtained a pair, and they are amazing at their price point. I’ve had FAR more expensive planar cans that didn’t sound as good as these. There are so many headphone choices out there, it’s hard to work out which ones to own for one’s personal preferences.
Regarding DACS and Headphone Amps, that seems a bit more straightforward regarding price/performance. Still, there’s a crossover point with cost to performance ratio. That point is up for debate.
The longer I’m in this hobby, the more I realize that the opinions of others, including professional reviewers, can only point out which headphones are worth auditioning. Only an audition can determine if a headphone is worth owning. I’m lucky enough that, although there aren’t any local headphone stores, there is a local enthusiast group that gets together to share headphones and equipment.
This is a double edged sword though as much, if not all, of the equipment would be considered very expensive.
More on amps than DACs. With a DAC its get to one that has no artifacts and where the parts that are not the DAC chip are of sufficient quality that nothing is hosed. For me that’s somewhere like the discontinued Schiit Modi Multibit 2, or the Bifrost 2 or 2/64.
Amps, particularly tube amps are an entire rabbit hole of their own.
Well, I mostly concur with this. Having said that, I have noticed that DAC’s that support higher resolution upscaling, such as the Topping D900, do sound different when upscaling a CD file to 705KHz/107 bit processing. It’s not easy to put into verbiage, but the sound from the D900 is smoother, with greater clarity than if the file is played back without the processing. Once you hear it, it’s hard to go back to just listening to CD’s.
Haven’t tried the Schiits. But I agree with your general point. Some EQ features would be nice as well. For a basic no-frills DAC though with minimal hosiery, what about somethin like the JDS Labs Atom DAC 2?
Since it’s exactly the same price as the Schiit Modi 5, and both companies have reasonable return policies, you could pretty easily get both and compare for yourself.
If you want some EQ as well, then you would need to step up to something like the Schiit Mimir (at about $300, double the Modi 5 or Atom 2) to get 3-band PEQ.
If you really want more bands than that, I guess you would go all the way to the JDS Element IV (12-band PEQ and it’s a DAC/Amp), but now you’re looking at $549, and I would put that outside of the “no-frills” category. Still great value for the money, though.
FWIW, I’ve found the most optimal option to apply EQ is to use convolution settings from PGGB. The limitation is that this option can’t be applied for streaming.
I appreciate your thoughts on this as well, SSN757. Most of my content is streamed though, including live TV, movies, YouTube videos, and so forth. So a DAC with some on-board EQ controls would probably help with all of that.
OT, but I recently added a digital antenna to my TV, and was surprised how much (free) OTA content I could get, even though the nearest broadcast towers are about 50 miles from my area! I’ve been playin around a bit with some different video streamers as well, like the Roku.
The PSRM DAC’s from Topping provide onboard EQ options available to download. Haven’t tried it myself yet, but will investigate in due course.
For streaming, I mostly use the Verum 2. ASR gave a positive review of the cans, which they do not hand out very often, Amir actually stated that they don’t need EQ for listening.
Ok, well I semi-impulse bought the ZMF Atrium last night so I’ll be able to give my input on high end headphones a little better. I’ve been thinking about getting something to tie me over while I wait on my Tungsten to arrive and seeing the release of the Meze Strada getting praise it got the gears turning and for some reason I jumped straight to ZMF. I wanted to get something good on tubes and it was between the Bokeh and the Strada but somehow my path lead me to the Atrium.
I’ve (strangely) never had much interest in the Topping line. But it might be interesting to see what it can do.
Lowest distortion ever measured is quite impressive! The group delay gives me a little pause. I don’t think Amir does excess group delay though, which I believe is probably more relevant to the minimum phase characteristics.
FR looks pretty decent, though maybe a bit forward in the mids for my taste.
Impedance looks unusually low, but also exceedingly flat. Not quite sure what to make of that. I have generally tended to prefer somewhat higher impedance headphones for their better damp factor, and goof-proofness with certain gear.
I don’t think Resolve has measured this on the 5128 rig. But it looks like Earphones Archive has…
I use the Topping D900/A900 to drive the Verum 2. I never cared for Topping gear until I auditioned the DX9, which is where I think Topping started to cater to the audiophile crowd.
The D900/A900 is a top notch combination, one where I feel no need to upgrade further. The A900 drives the Verum 2 nicely. No issues with low impedance/damping.
Silly me. Because I thought Topping was one of the more affordable options. The D900/A900 are well beyond my budget for a DAC and amp combo though.
JDS Element IV is closer. My only reluctance there is that its more than using separate components. And I still prefer the modularity of separate components for potential upgrade purposes.
