Anyone found their headphone nirvana yet? - Page 13

Mark h is right but it took the experience to make that choice. The final decision is at what level of gear are you satisfied? If you heard nirvana and determined it isn't worth the effort, either financially or mentally, then you can jump off and start conquering other interests. Others intensify their obsession and delve into theory machinery, gear at the edge of the latest ideas. In between, you find the rest of us poor bastards.

I'm going to make a rather simple equation, when you are tapping your toes, you're there.

 

This really is what matters. For all that i love my D2, mjolnir and LCD-3s, i can still get my toes tapping here at work just listening with the ****ty Dell computer speakers that we've got hooked up

Man only if you also have a magic unicorn dac...

 

Well, who needs a DAC if you have the Magic Unicorn Phono Preamp.

 

This is an interesting topic to ponder. What I can say after going through a lot of gear and having an crazy (by normal, non-Head-Fier) standards expensive rig is that there is a lot of music I can now appreciate that I couldn't before I started. An interesting consequence has been that I now have a speaker rig that blows away what my father had for the same money as he spent a couple of decades ago. So if I were to answer the question myself right now, I'd say all I'm lacking is more interesting, well-recorded music! Here's the funny negative to this: A lot of music I used to like sounds poor through my equipment as the flaws in the recording quality is apparent. So all that music I used to like years ago has been relegated to being listened to in my car, or on public transport, on flights and the like. This has balanced things out nicely. I get to appreciate it still without any desire to hear it on higher-quality equipment and can just enjoy it whenever I'm not at home.

 

What I find sad though is that audio can be such a big quagmire for people new to it, but for headphone listening at least, you can get a lot better gear for less than was possible, say, 5 years ago.

Well said!

Indeed. Having heard and owning some of the finest gear money can buy, it opens up a standard of where you actually appreciate different genre's. I use to not listen to a lot of classical stuff, but then buying a few flagship headphones I started enjoying it more, hearing things I never heard before.

 

Of course I can opt out buying the best of the best (not perfect) but there's no fun in that and seriously involves lot's of time to hear what you are buying and lot's of cash throw into the hobby itself. I think at least for me is to enjoy what I have now, not the best out there but appealing to my ear's and knowing so one day when I have the time again or cash or survive through another Mayan apocalypse I can then buy the best their is to offer.

Do you believe one pair of headphone can give you audio nirvana? I think it must be at least two or three pairs of them with varying sound signatures to really satisfy an audiophile with all kinds of music.

Audio Nirvana seems to be a moving target for me.  I thought I'd found it in my Ultimate Ears Reference Monitors-- Until I heard the HD650.  Then I though I'd struck it with the Burson 160D.  Then I heard the Woo WA6.  Then I thought I'd found it in the HD800.  Then I paired it with a Woo WA5LE.  Which got even better with expensive tubes.  So then I'd found it-- but I thought a better DAC would make it 'Nirvana-ier".  

 

Now I think I have A.N., but I want to be sure because I hear such good things about the LCD 3.  This isn't going to end well.

Found it with the HE 500 they are fantastic can listen to music for hours

this is why sennheiser and grado or sennheiser and audeze are like the yin and yang, they compliment each other pretty well since they are on the opposite side of the spectrums

But do you not think that they are too different? In the sense that you either like one or the other. I know variety is the spice of life etc. But we are talking about reproduction of music. It's the music that matters and if my music appeals to me using headphone "a. Why would I need "b.? I know what the answer is; its because most of us on here appreciate a broad range of music and HD800 is going sound better with a certain genre than an LCD, and vice versa. Don't mind me.. Just thinking out loud :)

it is normally the case when people listen to a broard range of music, with different genres giving focus on certain aspects of the sound which is better replicated in some headphones more than others, thus to enjoy all the different genres with its different requirements people often buy multiple headphones, either that or just to get a new flavour, like dark chocolate icecream and lemon sorbet

 

 

 

 

An interesting way of seeing the upgrade/perceived improvement phenomena, is to witness a fellow head-fier. They may even ask you what you think, and even with all this being personal taste, you can still witness the side-stepping purchase in progress. It seems the view of the painting is so big that to see the whole picture is harder than it looks.

 

 

At times there is a profound over-all upgrade but at times it is tricky. Tricky when you tunnel vision in on a perceived change/improvement so much as to miss the other changes. That new flavor will loose the warmth for detail or not have an attribute somewhere.

 

 

 

At times we think we find an improvement to take place only because we really just want an improvement. Manufactures play the coloration game only to help us on our terminal illusion process. Hind-sight is always 100% 20/20.

Edited by Redcarmoose - 1/31/13 at 3:32pm