I´m an old guy so I want to start with a bit of a background and a few pictures from when I started.
This first picture are from a rather evolved system and room. The room is very small and room treatment are everywhere to control these Tannoy and all reflections that would occur if they arent there. Reverberation time is low for all freq, even the bass.
I have used several amps to drive them, in this photo they are driven by diy 6c33 tube amps
Many more pictures will follow.
Mike
I like the Tannoy’s. Heard a pair when I was at Overture in Wilmington DE while auditioning speakers for my office system.
Very cool! I haven’t seen a lot of amps with the 6C33 tubes. They are pretty serious! (like 3x 6AS7G in a single tube IIRC). I’m also curious about the tapestry(?) on your cabinet - looks very psychedelic 
Its not very apparent in the picture that I listen in the near(ish) field so the step to headphones wasn´t that different if you forget shaking room with bass 
I drove those Tannoy lots off different amps, tubes, silicon, integrated but these 6C33 was one of the best.
After many years with these I decided to move sideways but still in the classic family
First I bought these in Germany
And then their smaller brother locally
Both were surpricingly good and worked really good in my room.
Mike
After many years using CDs only I tried to move towards a computer+dac set up (we will come to headphones in the end 
)
This was my first combo
Ubunty laptop and a Lavry DAC
A change of speakers again to these
Mike
So how this new combo sound? Hmm, somewhat flat and boring. My DAC before the Lavry was a Ontech 1865 R2R DAC that was just fantastic so the step down was bigger than I expected.
The speakers made this very clear.
Mike
The next step in my journey I was kicked out of my room by my sons who turned it inte a computer game room so I fled into our living room. Sadly that ment converting to headphones so the next step I ended up with a Grace DAC and a Dan clark modded Fostex T50 plus Focal spirit headphones.
Cant say the T50s worked that well for me so I tried a pair of TH600 (also modded) and a few other models that I cant remember any more.
Mike
Um Mike. Here in this forum we celebrate converting to headphones, or tell of the silver lining. But I do get it. I like choice.
Haha, sure headphones provide fantastic sound but they dont energize the room as a pair of 4430 does
Mike
The room is, well, less my preference.
Energetic enjoyment is more of a personal thing for me
About this time two things happened, I found Innerfidelity and I got a new job with a noisy daily commute. So enter Etymotic ER4 that worked wonders when listening to speech, news etc but not so much for music. My taste in metal and rock did not fit the ER4s that well and it was never fun or enjoyable. Later I found out about the balanced driver tamber, i.e. distortion that they had plenty of. The fit never bothered me and isolation is very nice when I don’t want to hear my fellow passengers.
So I started to look for new highly isolating iem and on the now closed Changstar forum I got the idea to try a custom. Off I went to the audiologist to get my molds and sent them off to the US for a pair of Ultimate Ears - In-Ear Reference Monitor.
They looked nice, fitted well, had decent sound, easy to drive but lacked low end and clarity to match the price. No omphff. I should have read the recommendation more closely as it referred to the NS10 monitor that also lacks low end and have a piercing top. An expensive lesson in life as customs have next no value on the used marked. Ended up dumping them in the bin after a year or so.
I did mention this on the Chanstar forum a got a bit of beating for this, it was not popular. How are they rated today?
On to the next chapter.
On to some a little bit more current setups
One of the changes I did was to buy me a new DAC, a PS Audio Directstream DAC. Nice sounding and I really liked the free software upgrades I got during the time I owned it that got me an improved sound step by step. Today I would call it medium resolving but I didnt know that at the time.
Nice but not state of the art sound.
Also tried a new amp, a swedish Harmony Design 909
Mike
Next I tried a lot of iems both at home and on the go, liked the planars the best
The mangird tea was nice
The 7Hz timeless was an eye opener - it could move air.
Never became a friend with the ergonomics so I have used the Raptgo hook a lot
Mike
All these iems did show that the noice floor on the Ear909 was to high so a I invested in a new amp. After some googling I ended up with a Burson that did suite my needs very well. Flexibility and good sound.
Audio nervousa made me buy a Farad ps to the Burson wich resulted in a lower noise floor. Suble but its there.
Micke
I like planars also Mike. I picked up a used Audeze iSine20. Liked them so much I bought some open box Audeze LCDi3 from Headphones.com. Then when Audeze had their annual sale, I snarfed up the LCDi4. They move air. They have soundstage. They are endgame.
penntac
Yes we are few that like planars or rather what planars do to sound. My daily home headphone is a XC with Resolve eq.
Mike
Do you not find that the Burson is overly hot for IEMs?
While I enjoy it, I just find that there is no real way of listening at low volumes. At 01 I already find them loud enough, at 02 they are at my usual listening levels and then over that, well, I just don’t go over 02 with IEMs on it 
Ehh no, iems are no problem at all, There are 3 power levels on my Soloist and I use the low setting on most iem but my Helios SE needs the medium setting to perform. With my new Plunge, a comfort volyme is 45 out of 100 on lower the setting.
Mike
Sorry, I completely skipped over the Soloist part!
I was referring to the Playmate 2. Good to know the Soloist fixes the issue.
