Welcome to the Rosefinch family!

Here is an Oriolus Isabellae back in the wild. Second owner, obtained 2/24 and independently graphed on mmagtech.squig.link Other than that, you know the drill: Awesome sounding set, but I’ve got too many IEMs and want to make sure this has a good home to be loved in. The price is the price...

If you want an actual dongle dongle, then NiceHCK sells a pretty great lightning to 4.4 dongle for under $20 on AliE

They’re a young company trying to get market share and make a name, so they undercut the usual expected price. But there’s enough profit there to do the undercutting. Also, I’m not worried about some company’s profit, more than worried about them overcharging their audience because they can...

Hifiman would disagree with this, in desktop form

Scarlet Mini for K-Pop, you say? I like a rebel that blazes their own trail. Tip of the cap to you!

Serratus and Ripples for me. They are a yin and Yang to everything I can throw at them

It’s awesome you know your tastes, what works for you, and can cross something unnecessary off your list of gear that interests you. It’s helpful to not feel like you’ve gotta chase everything. So far, I feel that way after getting the 500. It’s gonna be a fun honeymoon period.

Anecdotally, when I demoed the 499/500 at CanJam, the moment I A/B’d them at the same time it was clear as day Hifiman was pushing you up to the 500. Just as a thought experiment, why would they want the 499 with the Phillips R2R dac to be on level with their in-house Himalaya mid-tier dac...

Thank you for your thoughts and impressions. You did a great job!

Aful, Kinera, and Dunu walked into a CanJam booth…🤣😂🤣😂

Where the reviews at?!? Daddy needs to buy a new amp and I wanna be talked into the EF500! 🤣😂🤣😂

Could depend on the rest of the chain. I just learned the JDS Atom+ has poor soundstage/imaging: it crushes the staging to a narrow, very deep staging. That would sound recessed to anybody.

Aurora is the one that stands out most for me

Which can make sense when you know what the frequency response they’re grading headphones/IEMs to is. I don’t go to Rtings for audio reviews cause there’s not a lot of information for me to gleam from them. TVs? I’ll go there all day, though