first off congrats on the masters degree! I think its cool you have the excel spreadsheet to rate and keep track of your albums. With you saying that, it makes me wonder if you enjoy bouncing between the headphones more then sitting down with one pair for long listening?
I have a friend that I consider to be the "Mid-fi King". He has about 12 headphones and a lot of them are in the $200-$450 range I would say. I tell him, "you know, if you took all that money on midfi you could easily have a TOTL flagship by now." Something that I realized over the friendship is that he LOVES to listen to each and bounce around a lot of them for different genres. So if that sounds like your cup of tea then just upgrade your Amp and DAC and have fun with all of them!
If you want 1 or 2 headphones to "rule them all" then listen to what you have an develop your tastes more.
Thank you !
Wow, 12 headphones is a lot haha. I think I'm an hybrid. I don't particularly like to bounce around headphones, but they all have their roles.
TH-X00 for hip hop, bassy stuff, doom metal, etc.
AEON C for everything else
HD-6XX for re-listens, more laid back
So I'll probably use all 3. But I also want to own 1 or 2 headphones to rule them all in the future, but as you said I wanna develop my tastes before. I feel like I won't be stuck in mid-fi hell cause I have 3 really good headphones right now to discover what I like and what I don't like. Anyway, that's exciting !