Hola Compadres,
I'm new to the world of Head-Fi and a fledgling audiophile wannabe. I've always loved listening to music with headphones but never really got into it. I was perfectly happy pumping my tunes through my stereo system... until I had my first child. All of sudden I could no longer listen to music the way I liked to. So I decided I wanted to buy a fairly good set of headphones. Simple solution right? Wrong! I started researching which headphones to buy and quickly realized how insanely expensive a hobby this could become and also that I wanted everything I was seeing. Grado PS1000's! Only $1800! Sennheisser HD800's! Only $1200! What a bargain! Oh wait, I need an amp too? And a dac? And Cardas cables? Alright, folks seem to be high on Benchmark products so lets check out that DAC1 HDR... $1900! This is insane. Then I come to find out that some people drop many times that on gear. As much as I would love to own all of this high end stuff, it's definitely out of my league at this point. Although I wonder how much the Law of Diminishing Returns applies here? I'm guessing quite a bit, unless you have superhuman hearing. So anyway, after reading many reviews in this strange audiophile language I couldn't fully decipher, I settled on a pair of Alessandro-Grado MS2's. Mostly because they had metal on them (very scientific). I also picked up a JDS Labs bb cmoy amp on ebay which I quite like for the money. Now I want a dac. I've only heard one, and that's the HRT Music Streamer II, which I felt greatly improved the sound coming out of my modest rig. I'm not going to get into the depth of soundstage and instrument separation and all that, just suffice it to say I liked it. Although, I have nothing to compare it to, so if anyone reads this and has any recommendations on a reasonably priced dac/amp combo, I would greatly appreciate your suggestions. Right On!
