Full disclosure: I loved the original PXC 550's. After a year-long search for the perfect on-to-go cans, starting at the 50x and 40x and MSR7 Audio-Technicas, to the Meze 99 Classics, and I was feeling like nothing was really getting there. On the ANC route the Bose Quietcomfort and Sony WM-X10003's simply didn't have the fidelity I needed to truly enjoy my music besides hearing that it was there. I'd read the PXC 550's were a little bright (Tyll's review said as much) but figured I'd give it a whirl, and was glad I did -- they were great. They were...

**First, a brief review of a different DAC, the Topping D30** The Topping D30 is, in my opinion, a really bad DAC. When my burgeoning interest in audio first started to mushroom cloud into a curiosity about DACs and amps, I found myself awash in a sea of data. The world of amps and DACs is a complicated and messy and enigmatic place to a budding audio enthusiast, and nobody already in the know really takes pains to provide an ELI5: it falls instead on the burgeoning listener to trawl what they can from various forum debates, thesaurus-abusing...