I guess I am an "accidental" head-fier. I've always been mostly into speaker based systems. I've spent the year building up a great little desk-fi, based on a Little Dot DAC I, a Virtue Sensation M901 and a set of Era D5s. I work from a home office, and have been happily jamming my way through the day. Well just last week, my wife announced that she'd be able to work from home now. Yeigh! I love my wife, but I quickly realized that the honeymoon with my desk-fi was over.
I have never been a big headphone fan by choice, but now I've been forced into it. I have a decent set of phones - Allesandro MS100s (based on the Grado 80s) which have been getting heavy use lately. Now this kind of got me thinking, maybe I've been missing something all along. Maybe this headphone thing has something to offer - the ability the really get immersed in the music, the detail and dynamics, in another way. I've been driving the MS100s from the headphone jack on my mac (yikes). Not even using my DAC, because I have no way to. So I ordered a Little Dot V to go with the DAC and better drive my phones. And I'm already thinking of an upgrade on the phones.
There is a wealth of information here, but I find it very interesting that there isn't usually much encouragement to go out and try phones. It seems like a lot of newbies are buying based on what they read here. Is this the case? I know from speaker shopping that there is absolutely no substitute for auditioning in person. I'm going to try to hunt down all the contenders and give them a try, because it seems there is a lot of personal taste that goes into choosing headphones - there are really big sonic differences between different products, without one clearly being better than the other. I like neutrality, and high resolution. But am intrigued by the idea of a headphone, like the Beyerdynamic DT 990, that could introduce it's own special mojo. My desk-fi is pretty mild mannered, and it would be fun to really be able to feel the music, kind of like you do with a good car stereo.
Anyway, I've always found this site to be a great source on information for non-headphone hi-fi, and now I'm looking forward to getting more into the headphone end of it.
And if there are any jazz-fusion fans out there, please come over and check out my forum, the fuze-zone.com
Thanks!
