I think it's great to focus on lower priced, high bang-for-the-buck gear, but it makes more sense to consider the overall system budget rather than arbitrarily setting an equal $ limit per component. For example, if you are willing to spend up to $500/component then you are willing to spend up...

  I had the HD800 and HE6 driven by mjolnir2 at one point. The HE6 does beat the HD800 in bass extension, but other than that their bass performance was much more similar than I expected it to be. Impact/slam is about the same. And the HE6 is just generally a little worse otherwise - not as...

I ordered a Kenzie at the show in Newport and have had it for a few months now. It's a great amp with HD800 and I feel its a nice step up from my Mjolnir2 and Sonett.    Some background: I went to Canjam partly to try a bunch of higher end amps with my HD800 and came away mostly disappointed...

  Seemed about the same to me. I didn't have comfort issues with either of them.

I went up to The Source yesterday and compared the Utopia to my modded HD800, and briefly to the HE1000. I was using a WA5 with a QP1R as source/dac.    It is a smoother/lusher sound than HD800, but I thought it was better than HE1000 in this regard, which I view as too soft/smooth/polite. The...

Agree you should try to audition if at all possible. There is so much I've read about headphones that I've found to be just not true for me after listening.   It's hard for me to recommend any Audeze. The 2's are too dark to be a primary headphone, the X's are just not that great (loose bass...

Fostex/Massdrop TH-X00. Great sound quality, bass heavy without being boomy or bleeding into the mids, and soundstage on par with open headphones. Isolation is not as good as other closed headphones though, if that is a concern.   If it's out of budget, or you need more portable or more...

@zolkis have you heard the 007 through an SRD-7 pro? I want to get an 007 but am wondering if I can get away with running it through an SRD-7 at least for a while before I move to a dedicated stat amp.

I'll be heading up tomorrow. My first CanJam - should be fun.    @warrenpchi - that Cavalli room sounds pretty cool, I'll probably be camped out in there for awhile.   PS - I'll have a TH900 for sale if anyone's interested.

  Finally got my replacement QP1R. This one works and plays all files (the first one would only play DSD). It came with fw 1.04 and I haven't had any crashes so far.   The wheel on the new one is much better also. The first one was essentially unusable, this one actually turns. Sonic...

  Yes, you would plug the headphones into the amp and the amp into the line-out port of the PC. The reason I suggest this is there's a pretty good chance the dac in your sound card isn't much worse than a $100 dac, but you really need an amp that can properly handle the high-impedance...

Agree with the HD600 or HD650 recommendation. These are excellent sounding headphones, former TOTL models, and are known to scale up exceptionally well if you decide to upgrade the rest of your chain later.    Disagree about Fiio though. I used to have a Fiio E17, tried it with an HD650 and it...

Appreciate the response. I pretty much tried all that (I let it sit off overnight last night). Guess I could try more unplug and play/pause cycles on 1.0.2. I went to the 1.04 from their site, thinking maybe the one it came with was a beta, but nothing changed. Then I found that it will play DSD...

@moedawg140 , have you or anyone else found more explanation for the not being able to play music issue?   I just received a new Q1PR and cannot get it to output sound no matter what I do. I tried a bunch of resets, internal and external memory, and downgrading fw from 1.04 to 1.02. With 1.04...

  Have you or anyone else with this issue found a resolution? I just received a new Q1PR and cannot get it to output sound no matter what I do. I tried a bunch of resets, internal and external memory, and downgrading fw from 1.04 to 1.02. With 1.04 it was also crashing every few minutes. No...

Given this is for the bedroom I think the first thing you should decide is if you need closed or not. Based on "the less than tolerant wife trying to sleep beside me" it sounds like you probably do.   The TH900 leakage is not as bad as some people make it out to be. Sure it probably leaks more...

A top-tier headphone like the HD600 sounds good with any type of music. Don't run it with a Fiio though, get a Schiit Modi2+Vali.   Edit: Just noticed it's your first post. Welcome to head-fi! Sorry about your wallet 

I think the ATH M50x are overrated as well, unless you want boomy bass.   Do you want a basshead type headphone even if it's a little boomy, or do you want a more neutral sound signature?   If the latter and you can stretch to $250, I recommend checking out the NAD HP50. To me it has the...

  There's a transaction number in the confirmation email, and also displayed on the page after I paid.

  Same here, got mine now back to sleep!   I ordered the instant I could when it went live and I'm about 100 numbers later than you.

  I wouldn't recommend trying to reduce the harshness with tubes. Good tubes are pretty transparent. The harshness comes from a 6KHz peak/resonance that can be nicely mitigated with a simple mod. Google "Anax 2.0".

^ This   I used Modi 1 -> Asgard2 with my TH900 for a year and was very happy with it. The modi is thin on bass compared to the Gungnir multibit I upgraded to, but it didn't matter as TH900 has plenty of bass anyway.   The Bifrost is a great choice as you can get it upgraded later to multibit. 

  Sure I'll bring the gear. Darin, can I still get table space (w/2 chairs please)?   Edit: Does anyone care about my TH900? If not I'll just leave it at home.  Also FYI my HD800 is Anax 2.0-modded.

I'd definitely say the fact you use 256AAC/320MP3 is by itself no reason not to get an external DAC. These formats still sound very good and the difference vs lossless is quite small.   I'd recommend the Schiit Modi2, although the ODAC is probably a good choice also (I haven't heard it). IMO...

Great, an adapter to allow even more tubes to try. Don't tempt me, I'm trying not to get sucked too far down the rabbit hole...     Edit: Actually it's not clear to me if this allows the use of any 5670 tube or only the ones that come with it.