So I'm coming from the following so you know what my reference points are:
Home Hifi - various, unremarkable sources, marantz receiver, polk and athena speakers
Head fi - Grado sr60 (the "gateway drug") and various ipods
My impressions about 20hrs in:
1. I initially missed some of the punch that I had had with grado (particularly when the grado was paired with the 336se before the grado blew up) I didn't have both headphones at the same time so I'm tainted here. The grados seemed to have more *apparent* resolution at low volumes
2. At normal listening levels i'm in heaven with my new combo. I've never had the combination of smoothness and detail - this is what I had been looking for. Listening without fatigue. Voices smoother and yet hearing more than i've ever heard.
3. Bass seems to be less intense than with the amped grado (flatter is probably the correct term)
4. The worst part about all of this is craving better produced records. Thee headcoates beach bums must die is just as lo-fi as it is listened to any other way!
As far as my tubes I have non-round-plate tung sol 6sn7gt and an rca 6as7
As far as my cable - i don't really have nordost odin.
I don't know anybody else who is in the headphones - so upgrades are going to be leaps of faith. If people are reading this, I'd be curious about suggested upgrade paths.
Thanks to skylab and everybody else for causing me to end up with this system!
JP
