Exactly, just an example when Samsung bought Harman Kardon or when apple bought Beat, if something happens, it's gonna take few years to see how they are going to handle Audeze.

You can use HQ Player within windows, and if you replace the OP AMPs of the AE-9 with sparkos then you will get an amazing sound.

What DAC and Upsampler are you using?

That's a good question, but I don't think so, otherwise they should mentioned it yesterday. Maybe they found that creating planar is not that easy so they decided to buy Audeze to go straight forward and get good quality planars in a shorter period of time. I think Audeze will be independent...

Why SPIDIF instead of using its discrete 5.1 capabilities?

If you are looking to use the sound blaster cards for ASIO studio stuff, then look elsewhere, they have asio but only for playback so they have "lag". About SPIDIF, if you are looking for an AE-9 just for the SPIDIF, then is cheaper to get another card, you won't see any real difference between...

What do you mean with the digital part of the AE-9?

To me the best match to expose this amp resolution (with proper op amps) I got a pair of Focal, before that I got a pair of Definitive Technology and I can tell you that there's a huge difference in sound quality from going Def Tech to Focal.

Yes but trading the SNR so now my sound card gets distorted at lower volume.

I've been using sparkos op amps with my AE-9 for about 2 years and I haven't found any destruction in my sound card yet.

Yep, even cheaper headphones like Sony Z1R have a way better mechanism.

Yeah that's what they said, but I doubt that's the real reason, look out other Hi Fi headphones, for example Abyss.

Thanks for the link. Still I think they should thread it instead of gluing it, same for the earpads.

Wow, I thought they were going to not do that after the complains that people gave them for their LCD-5s

Do the MM-500 has glued plugs as in the LCD-5? Some reviewers says that MM-500 and LCD-5 sound like HD-650, so how different and similar do they sound in comparison to the HD-650?

Thanks but too late, lol, I already have the Funk. Sound quality, smokes the n22 by far. But the n22 doesn't has that annoying pop sound when you turn off the amp.

By drivers I mean windows/mac drivers not speakers/headphones. In RME AIO you can set different voltages ranges in the sound card control panel.

My RME AIO has different output voltage settings, the ADI-DAC should be the same, are you using it without drivers?

Good quote, so they "Audeze" hopes the LCD-5 will be their studio reference too (just my guess of course). Good point specially on Bose etc, so yes, they (producers/mixers) most of them use cheap reference headphones but I've seen some of them using LCD, I saw one using LCD-5, not sure if he's...

One of the Audeze claims is that lots of mixings are done using Audize headphones (probably the LCD-X) so I'm wondering if the LCD-5 is an LCD-X with steroids because I never heard anybody recommending LCD-4 for mixing.

I know the LCD-5 is not LCD-X, in other words most studios (correct me if I'm wrong) use the LCD-X as mixing so now they should use the LCD-5 instead of are they still going to use the LCD-X. So in other words, the LCD-5 is a reference as the LCD-X?

So the earcups are PU Leather, what material is used for the headband? So if they are PU Leather - assuming that's the material used in most Sony's headphones - we have to replace them pretty often, at least every 2 years, so now the question is how much the headband and earcups replacements...

Don't know about the details but Licir is more closer to the Elite than the Empyrean, at least from the reviews I've seen.

For those that don't want to read long posts. Yes you can change the earpads on the Liric but they are not hot swappable as in the Empyrean/Elite.

Thanks, that's all what I need to know, if we are able to replace (not as hot swap as the Empyrean or Elite) but still doable, I would be fine. if the replacement process is not that hard, look how Sony did with Z1R, not as easy as Empyrean but still very useful and easy way to replace the...