I'll probably be headphoneless this time around (have to send HPs back for maintenance), but can bring the following if anyone is interested:   Centrance Hifi-M8 Meier StageDAC Pioneer SX-1050

Bump Let us know if you need any help.

Works for me as well

Haven't heard the 2.1, but if you read through the vintage gear thread, the pioneers match very favorably with orthos with plenty of power to spare. It's a ton of amp for the same amount of money. The tone match might be better with the 2.1 and concerto, but I couldn't imagine the power issues...

I have both the hd 650 and LCD2.2. The pairing with the 650s is phenomenal, however I would recommend you find a vintage pioneer to run with the LCDs instead for the same amount of money or less. The concerto is very detailed, but can be a bit lacking on power (especially with quiet classical...

Awesome, count me in

I'd be up for one anytime after mid May

Thanks everyone for the great Arizona headphone experience... Great group of people out here in Phoenix. It was fantastic meeting you all and look forward to the next one! Bryan

Do you have a source on that info, would love to read up on it. I always just used the lowest lowest resistive output, but I really haven't put much thought into the subject.

That does make sense with the perceived increases in gain/volume.. was wondering about that myself - thanks!

You should be pleasantly surprised... My W4Rs are dead silent on low and medium gain

But I can definitely understand the military / medicals industries use of extreme caution with tin products for sure. I also respect the wealth of knowledge I find from you around here Steve... do you have common examples of failures or increased QC problems you've come across after the switch...

I've read the NASA papers and various other links and I can't find examples of tin whiskers anywhere in regards to solder... The only thing that comes up for tin whiskers are for pure tin contacts

Was there a bit of a learning curve with using the lead free Dogmatic or was it something as simple for you as just dialing up the temp a tad bit and business as usual?   Thanks guys for the opinions pros and cons, keep em coming!

And thanks Tomb for sharing the K701 experience... is that a common problem with the AKGs? Only had mine for like 20 hours so never encountered any problems... but my hd650s are about 2 years old with thousands of hours, etc... hadn't really heard any problems either.

And to bring it closer to home, there are 8 gagillion cocktails of steel, one for each type of folding knife you want from cutting boxes to gutting pheasant... same pretty much for other alloys and metallurgic products, but we only have like 3 options for lead free solder? Or has the market...

Oh for sure I get that, and for workability I still am using leaded as well because I'm still pretty much a beginner... but as new products emerge due to mandates, the market typically catches up to the demand of quality... was just trying to gauge what progress has been made in almost a decade...

Kinda like how gun guys know pre 64 Winchesters are the quality stuff and the post 64 stuff is worth less, we don't see this with the hd650 for example... Never seen a post stating pre-rohs Sennheisers advertised on the site once... Thoughts on that?

That seems to be the consensus of Americans that don't use the stuff, however we don't see any one complaining about the solder joints on Sennheisers, Beyers, Meier amps, etc. so something must be going smoothly... or does anyone have any ground truth out of the big name euro factories of higher...

Bump... Thanks Tomb, I sent him a PM, hopefully he can share some of that captured wisdom     Anyone else using lead-free? Have the products improved much in the near decade that Europe and much of the world have been mandated to convert? With necessity being the mother of invention, I was...

And to reiterate... again this is the best portable I've heard... not a single negative or "adequate" thing to say about the M8 while using the W4R, SR80, HD650 so far. Well the HD650 does have a bit less soundstage, but it does a fantastic job - better than quite a lot of desktops.

By mixed I meant some think it's great, and other think it's just adequate (specifically with the LCD2)... lots of comments suggesting both. Finally just got mine in yesterday and I can see what both sides are talking about. Compared to my concerto there are quite a few differences, some good...

Also, just curious why mini-xlr?

A gain switch I think would be a must. Balanced would be fantastic as well

3W @ 8 ohms? 3W @ 50 ohms? What are the power specs? Definitely interested, thanks!