Ladies and Gentemen,
Thank's a lot for all your posts, sharing your experience and knowledge. A talk with my friend made me realize how much had I made liberal use of this and many other forums. As a result, I've decided to cotribute to the forum, although I don't concider myself an audiophile and my knowledge compared to many members of this forum would be a 4-year-old facing a Porn Pros' rubber cock (you being the dildo ;)
The oldest portable audio I remember owning was iriver t30. I've been using it with stock cresyn I guess and complemented it with porta pro some time later. If I recall correctly, I've liked it. I'm pretty sure I didn't distinguish bass from electric guitar these days :) The improvement from cresyn to kpp was great, but I didn't appreciate it in a sufficient way. Although, as I was to realize later, the kick of better quality and details was my rabbit to chase and my red pill to take.
I'm not going to mention all the equipment I've owned, it's not a review, I'll write only about some, but I had some stuff on/in my ears :)
The order is more or less chronological.
headphones: koss ur20, koss porta pro, akg k26p, grado sr60, philips hp8900, akg k518dj, CAL recabled with conducfil sonoleone 3014 and not, koss ksc75, philips hp1000, sennheiser hd 555; 595; 380pro, ath sj5, philips hp890 and many cheap headphones with good or extremely bad price/quality rate :)
earphones: iriver stock cresyn, a drawerful of cheap stock ones, sony ex82, soundmagic pl12; 50, apple addiem, a-jays two, nuforce 6, sennheiser cx300, phonak audeo
Some of these I've listened to a couple of hours, some a couple of hundreds of hours :)
Comfortwise, I've always concidered my head, not my pockets; that's why my top audio set for a long time was ipod nano 1st gen -> line out -> portable amp made by forum.mp3store.pl members [maybe a nickname majkel rings you a bell] -> recabled CAL. I liked the stage widht and the bass, altough now I concider it too dark for me :)
When my CAL broke down, being tired of carrying all that stuff, I've decided to get >good< earphones. That's when the forum came in handy. There are some guys who have real experience, know how to describe sound and I trust their opinion. I ended up getting audeo without listening to it and i wasn't disappointed at all. I loved it. Its stage widht was amazing [in in-ear cathegory] and I dig the sound that favours percussion [being a bassist myself].
However, it's not that comfortable to listen to audeo for a couple of hours. After doing some reading, I've decided to get hp890, due to the reviews. Again without listening to, I got them when an opportunity arose. This time I was dissapointed. The scene's really wide, ok, but there was a little bit too much bass for me. And the worst, my mids were hidden! Especially the low-mids, the drums and bass [including slapped] just didn't sound right. But I had decided to give them a chance. Spending a few hours on adjusting EQ, I've made it PERFECT. It's my new reference :) Of course, as an all-rounder, hp890 is not perfect in any aspect. But nobody's perfect ;) Go to the review if you're interested in it.
Here comes my conclusion: listen by yourself. Don't get fooled by people yapping about synergy. Synergy is just as subjective as good/bad sound quality distinction :)
Listen and compare. Don't be afraid to use EQ. It's all about what YOU hear and like.
Good luck to all of you. Fortunately, experimenting isn't about money. But buing stuff to experiment with is ;)
Remember that if you find YOUR sound, you'll listen this set for hunders of hours or more ;) I'm not done of course, but I really enjoy the sound I've got now. It's THE sound.
Cheers :)
