Many thanks for taking the time to do this, and share it with the community. I was curious to try your curve for the M50s, but since I use foobar and Spotify, I wanted to find an eq solution that worked system wide (Spotify doesn't support vst's, and the third party eq's that I saw were pretty...

That's a very smart strategy. Good luck!

The component that will most change the quality of the sound is the headphones (providing it's sufficiently well powered). That is exactly where the majority of your money should be going, if you want the best possible sound for your money. Upgrading from a low-end DAC/AMP to a high end one in...

First of all, never say never (killer samples exist in every codec - regardless of bitrate, all have flaws), but they are very rare, and thus highly unlikely to be encountered by the general public (in addition, you often need trained ears to hear things like pre-echo, an artifact typically...

The Westone 4 will not benefit from amping. 

Brainwavz B2 is essentially 99% identical to the Fischer Audio DBA-02, the difference being in colour and company. 

At that price range, and matching your description perfectly, you want to take a look at the Etymotic HF5 (or HF2/HF3 - they are sonically identical, the latter two feature a mic and iphone controls).   It can be easily found for under £100, has the best isolation of pretty much any IEM out...

Interesting, I'm getting the E9/E7 pairing with the HE-5LEs, hope it will be able to drive them well as planar magnetics are notoriously hard to drive. Noticed that someone who reviewed the E9 said that his HE-5 was amply driven by the E9 at 10 o'clock, so hopefully there should be no problem.

Might be the wrong place to ask, and I realise not many will have had the opportunity to hear this combination, but has anyone tried to drive the Beyer T1's with the E9, and if so, how did it compare to mid-high end amps?

I realise this may be a rather 'naive' question, but has anyone tried the T1 with a low end amp, like the Fiio E9, and compared it to mid-higher end amps? I realise I'm provoking the 'they won't drive them at their best potential' response, and I realise not many will have tried such an...

I own both the UM3X and the W4, the isolation is exactly the same for the same tips.

No one on these forums will be able to help you. Like the second post says, go see a specialist doctor, immediately.

First of all, don't upgrade your source - put your money into the IEMs instead: the rule of thumb is that you put money into IEMs first, only then into source/amp. The difference you are going to see between a low end and a high end custom is going to be far, far greater than going from an...

1. Definitely not overkill, for most people well encoded mp3 is completely transparent at 192kbps, never mind 320 (killer samples are rare). 2. The difference will be large - it's very unlikely that you will not be satisfied. 3. They are on the warm side of neutral and definitely not bass...

The fact that you find little difference between LOD and HO on SE530s on an ipod classic, yet a lot of difference with UM3X is a little strange. The classic's internal amp is poor, you should see a difference if you are using decent quality IEMs (like the SE530's) and a decent amp (which you are...