Was a little disappointed with CanJam London this year - a 50% increase in entry fee - Sennheiser were not there (and I was particularly interested in hearing the new HD 820) and Violectric were not there this year. Interesting - especially the new Empirion headphones, which I must listen to...

  Mmmmm - 5 and 6 seem very reasonable, 4 does not, unless it's viewed flexibly.   I would have thought that it's very reasonable for an expert on the product to be able to comment on it.   However - such comments should be accurate and technically factuall based and not advertising.  ...

  Looking at the block diagram in the owner's manual it looks as if you are setting the gain staging in an amplifier.    There are two amplification stages, according to the diagram, before the main amplifiers - so it looks as is it is a gain control in 5 preset steps to deliver the crrect...

  What about the Violectric internal DAC board for the V200?   There is a choice of 7.

Personally, top of my list would be a Red Dragonfly and a proper 3.5mm to ¼" adaptor cable.   Small, excellent quality, USB powered, and the cable will prevent any strain on the Amp.   I know ithe Dragonfly doesn't have a ¼" socket, but this option may actually be better as it reduces the...

  Interesting - I have known about this for a little while, but was sworn to secrecy.   The Orpheus you heard actually belonged to Sennheiser UK - the one that was in the factory was stolen in the USA and Sennheiser UK were instructed to send their one back to Germany - there were some very...

This is a difficult one to answer really as all my music is on CDs - I do not have any downloads at all.   I have, though, several drives of between 500GB and 1TB to hold and archive all my 24/96 session recordings and masters which I have recorded myself.

  Interesting .....   My own HD 580 are the very originals from the first production run when they first came out - I did not know they changed them (or maybe it was just due to moving the factory to Ireland) and have not compared mine to later versions.   I had a pair of the 540 "Gold" but...

  Yes it would, I find my HD 800 very much better than my HD 650. HD 580 Jubilee and HD 580 - and also much better than the HD 700 which I had and then sold on.

  Yes, though I think the HD600 may be selected.   The HD 600 was originally the Limited Edition "HD 580 Jubilee" of which only 4,000 were made worldwide.   Sennheiser then realised how popular such quality headphones were, so they changed the paint job and renamed them the HD 600 (leaving...

  I would not offer such an opinion as to which is "better" - it's a matter of taste and personal choice - both are good, but they are different and you really should listen and decide for yourself.

These are quite different headphones and you really need to listen and try them out.   The Momentum are closed on-ear headphones and great for out-and-about.  The DT880 are a larger semi-open design.   similar prices, though.

Several posts have mentioned about studio monitors rolling off at the bass end.   There are two reasons for this:   1) is the fact that you need to move a lot of air to get a good bottom end.   As a comparison, one range of professional monitors:-   5" bass driver - goes down to 50 Hz...

  The Neumann KU 100 is about £7,000 in the UK (which I assume is about  $11,000 at 1.6 $ to the £).  

  Basically, yes - or, rather, as close to the original as I have ever heard it.   But my comparison was with my head in the same place as the microphones and the recording was a simple recording with no messing about with it.