I’ve spent a lot of time looking at different DACs. I started out with sound cards, eventually moving to external DACs and finally getting the Xonar Essence III. I was never completely happy with the sound I was getting from my other DACs, as I kept looking at what I was going to upgrade to next. With the Essence III though I feel like I’ve arrived at the end. This is the sound I want. My speakers and headphones have never sounded better than they do now.   Before upgrading to the Essence III I had a Xonar Essence One Muses Edition. It’s a great...

I’ve owned the HD 800 for about 4 years now and I had the LCD-2 for over two years before I sold them. The LCD-2 were great, but as I improved the electronics around my headphones the HD 800 kept getting better while the LCD-2 hit the ceiling for their performance. When I heard that the LCD-X had specifically targeted the treble area for improvement my interest was piqued. The upper frequencies have always been the HD 800 strength compared to planar magnetic headphones, and I was intrigued to hear what Audeze could do there. Well, now that I’ve had...

Having owned the HD 800 for more than three and a half years now I've spent untold hours looking into ways of bringing the best possible sound out of them. When Sennheiser announced the HDVD 800 it made my future upgrade decisions easy. I took the chance of being an early adopter, getting it before any reviews were out and hardly anyone had even posted impressions. Now several months later I feel comfortable expressing just what it's really like owning in practice, and how it stacks up to other gear. My perspective might be a bit limited, as I...