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Selling a pair of like new Yamaha YH-5000SE's. I am the first owner and received these from Japan directly in February. Due to traveling I haven't really listened to them much at all, maybe 20-25 hours on the high side, so I'm putting these up for sale. Comes with all of the original...

Selling a pair of Focal Bathys Bluetooth headphones (https://www.focal.com/en/Bathys) in the original gray-black finish. Outside of some fairly exotic options, these are the best sounding bluetooth headphones on the market. They can also be used in wired mode, which bypasses the internal DAC...

Sold in a local trade to Souldriver - smooth transaction and would highly recommend!

Selling a pair of Focal Utopias. These are the original version and come with the original extra-long 6.5mm cable. Cosmetically I would rate them ~8.5/10 for some minor use marks. No sound issues or major cosmetic damage. I no longer have the original box, but do have a focal carrying case...

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Up for sale is an MSB Discrete DAC virtually brand new, with boxes, accessories, the optional second PSU, and the MSB network module. This unit is less than 1 year old and has all the minor upgrades introduced in 2022, including the upgraded feet, new PSU design, and the chassis logo cut. I...

If people are listening at a volume where they can hear distorted bass, they're in for an unpleasant surprise in a couple years when their hearing starts to degrade. Most people listen louder than what professionals recommend already, but I have to get these to ~100 db before any bass weirdness...

The CA-1a is excellent - and I was a (the?) early adopter of the SR1a's - but they are still rather lean and no longer have the staging advantage of the SR1a. My motivations for running the YH-5000SE over a ribbon headphone are mostly not SQ related - comfort, ease of driving them with a DAP...

If a 5/5 in every category means "tepid"...what is even the point of having a score in the first place?

I've listened to the HE1 for hours in different, controlled environments. One event was a private booking specifically to listen to the HE1 (among 2-3 other setups) for as long as I wanted to. So I think I understand the cans perfectly well. Sennheiser isn't magic. They are constrained by the...

Have you tried any of the systems I mentioned? Just because it runs hot doesn't mean it is necessarily better - and if so, the SR1a requires 150w into 8 ohms without a dedicated amp. Without knowing the design, I am almost 100% certain the fins are cosmetic, since I can't recall them ever...

I have demo'd the HE1 in private on multiple occasions and with different setups, including a Chord Dave and a TotalDAC, and I was never particularly impressed. The system doesn't really do anything for me meaningfully beyond either alternate eStat systems (009S, Shangri-La, etc.), or top end...

Every headphone gets polarizing reviews at Canjam. That's just how the show works. You can get good impressions but you need to know what to do and calibrate expectations with gear you are intimately familiar with. Even then, it works better if the upstream is designed to have synergy, and even...

I thought the Nagra was terribly mis-used as they were driving some real tough cans on the Tube DAC's headphone out. The stack wasn't connected to a real amp, and the Tube DAC's headphone out is a filtered output from the preamp which is a tube stage running on 12v 1a. My DAP has more output...

Being in NYC, the best way to try those DACs out is probably to make a few purchases with one of the two-channel dealers, and they'll be able to get you an evaluation unit for a week or two. That's how I listened to most of the summit-fi DACs I've heard. For MSB in particular, though, email...

You should re-evaluate. I would call them a bit bass light, but treble is a strong point and on treble extension and imaging alone I'd put them up against any flagship planar that I've heard. This is coming from someone who once had the Abyss 1266 Phi with a system I would put up against...

I wouldn't necessarily trust the FR measured on a reviewer's own testing rig. FWIW my experience is not even remotely close to that curve, and it's at least as good as the D8000 pro on most aspects outside of the lighter bass response. Testing the DCS Lina with my own pair at Canjam:

I thought it was a little bit tighter and better controlled, although it could just be the cable and pads. The LE pads are much nicer feeling than the stock 8000 pro pads, which I always thought was a pain point of the system.

I only managed to be there for two half-days because of other commitments, and I spent most of the morning trying to critically evaluate the DCS Lina stack (which was much easier at 10 am, when the room was decently quiet). Overall - it's a fine system, but the amp sounds somewhat anemic for its...

I can bring mine.

Not quite I would say - I think both the D8000 pro and the Susvara are more closed-in and lower-mid oriented. The Susvara is also IMO either slower or more muddled, unless you spend significant resources in amp pairing. It just doesn't scale down very well unless you shop around for $2,000...