Interesting, thanks! Right, it's not how I'd look at amps, in my price range; the super-subtlety-oriented wine-taster audiophiles are in a world well beyond mine, haha. Appreciate all your insight!

And as a separate but relevant post/comment to this thread I'd like to aim at anyone reading: If I were to drive LCD2Cs with something temporary at around $100, where would you personally put the money- a DAC/amp, or amp? Any specific recommendations?

But those sorts of things aren't exactly listed under 'specs' right? I see Schiit for example listing THD, but it's one number that doesn't appear to take into account volume... Lol at the imagery- definitely gleaned that these parts of the chain can impart 'flavor' to sound and aren't always...

Oh absolutely. Just, in all my research, I haven't ever seen anyone point that out, and I've noticed multiple people operating off of that assumption (people using "they get loud" as their rationale for believing 'x' device can drive 'y' headphones just fine). On that note, how does one know how...

Ah, thank you! That explains so much- something seemed off about the model I had in my mind and how people spoke about power. As for the events, I'd love to. I'll be keeping my eye out- unfortunately I missed one in my area about a month ago.

That all makes plenty of sense. One thing that I'm actually a bit confused on though: Regarding 'scaling', you make it sound like power != volume, and that more power is better. I understand clean power being important (though it's an area I know nothing about), but I was under the impression...

Right, I don't plan on really trying to use the Classics for portability... Remember the DAC/AMP pairing with the Classics is temporary- what will work for the time being, and will eventually be upgraded to something the Classics deserve. The talk of portability arises really just out of the...

Thanks for posting! Have any recommendations? The Schiit Fulla 2 comes to mind (as well as the Origen and Q1- though I haven't checked their compatibility with the LCD2C yet) simply because I've heard good things and seen love for Schiit, but I've yet to deep dive my options; I think I'd also...

Generally, I'm wondering if certain links (DAC, AMP) in the audio chain can be true bottlenecks, or if they'd really just be considered weak links. For example: If I want to walk comfortably and buy stellar shoes but crappy socks, the socks are not a true bottleneck, rather just a weak link (as...

Hello all. Between jobs when my cheap [but solid starter] headphones (well, the cord) died, realized I love music far too much to be using $40 phones (HD668B), and started the full-time job of researching the everloving heckeroni out of this audiophilia thing :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye...