Lost my SR535 a week ago. Decided that maybe I should avoid IEM as I had lost 3 pair in last year. Ended up replacing them with Sennheiser Momentums. Wow they felt heavy and so big compared to what I was used to for portable rig. In any case, started thinking a good home headphone system would be nice given that the new baby doesn't like loud noises.
Did my research and popped into local head/hi if shop, Audio High. Auditioned hd800 and lcd 3. While lcd 3 had good bass range and control, the lows just were overwhelming the rest of the music for me. The hd800 seemed more my speed, but the huge soundstage seemed unrealistic and deterred from enjoyment of music for some genres. For classical, hd800 were pretty awesome. For thinner music like most rock, the huge soundstage was distracting. Why does the 4 member band sound like they are coming from different zip codes? In any case, salesguy said I should try lcd-x. Took about 30 sec to decide they were the best for me. Soundstage seemed bigger than lcd 3 but obviously no where close to hd800. The bass was present and controlled, but no where near volume I heard with lcd 3 and more than hd800. Just musical and lovely vocals with good resolution. In any case, walked out of there with lcd x (btw how do I post my freq graph), a hd650 for my brother in law, and a couple of meredian explorers for fun.
My dilemma now is to design a headphone rig to properly play my lcd x. While lcd x seems relatively easy to drive, I do want a rig that will make it sing and hopefully work with any harder to drive headphones I might buy in future. So please give me any recommendations and positives/negatives of them as I basically only really know stereo equipment. Looking at woo audio stuff, wa7 etc; burson soloist/conductor; chord hugo; yulong. Feel free to suggest more, but please give me some strengths/weakness with the lcd x.
Thanks in advance.
Btw, now my Momentums sound terrible. I actually was walking around with lcd x plugged into ipod while running errands. Caught a glimpse of me in window. I looked ridiculous and I was reminded that these were open headphones and everyone could hear what I was listening too, including the embarrassing stuff, but it sounded so good that I kept it to a glance and promptly ignored it.