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