[erikiksaz]

<--- Anandtecher too!

For me it all started two summers ago. I had some POS Yamaha headphones, and they weren't doing me justice. I read about the RumbleFX headphones, and they sparked my interest in headphones. So i start to research, then i hit up on Grados somehow. I eventually find my way to Headwize, and from that point on, i'd devote at least 40 mins of every day searching the forums on information about Grados. I then purchased a used pair of sr60s. After that, well, i immediately fell in love with the Grado sound and couldn't resist the urge to up-grado. I went directly to Headroom and bought the sr325 and Creek obh11 amp. Shortly after, headwize went down for some reason, and head-fi was born (or at least most people said we should go there).

Aye, now i'm on my way to Etys.... Let's hope these headphones will carry on with me as i grow old!

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Calanctus ...then I read this review of the Sennheiser HD600s. I remember thinking, "There's no way I'll ever spend $350 on a pair of headphones...but maybe I'll spend $100."

wow, i'm so glad somebody else read that article! that's where i first heard the fabled hd600's and boy did i have the exact same thoughts when i first read about it.. that is until i actually heard them.. now i've spent thousands of dollars on amps and headphones and love every second of my listening time ever since..

 

[Kubernetes]

Two years ago I had my first job that paid a "serious" salary as a law school summer associate. I realized that I would have several thousand dollars to play with at the end of the summer, so I started looking into HT systems.

My research led me to believe that I would get far more enjoyment from a two-channel music system. But after doing some demos, I realized that I would have to spend far more money than I had to get the level of quality I wanted. So then I discovered headphones.

Funny thing is, I knew about this little hobby years ago (~1997/98), when I was researching the Sony D-777 I wanted so badly. I came upon some usenet posts where people were talking about using home-built portable headphone amps with the D-777. At the time I thought those people were crazy--"Who the hell needs a dedicated amp for a discman and headphones?"

Even funnier is that I've owned both the D-515 and the D-777, without having any clue as to how good the sound was compared to other discmans--I just liked the aesthetics at the time.

 

[scrypt]

I was driven to consider audiophile headphones when I made the decision not to remain a mere studio whore. In studios, I'd mostly used V6s; in my experience, engineers have a tendency to scoff at the audiophile's fetishism of non-professional gear and so discourage looking beyond flat studio phones. It was only when I began working as a writer-editor, and after my downstairs neighbor began complaining about my listening habits, that I began to buy portables and noticed Sony earbuds sounded hideous.

I am also protective of my hearing and noticed that, while traveling, one can sometimes mistakenly increase volume in search of a desirable frequency range. That discovery led me to consider various earphones by Etymotic.

After that, it was a downhill descent to addiction exacerbated by the fact that upgrades to my ten-year-old studio monitors would have been assailed by complaints from my downstairs neighbor -- which is why I'm currently putting together an uptown studio with a much older friend who used to play with Can in the seventies.

While turning down studio gigs for a few years, I listened only to classical music. In the past few years, I've been listening to IDM, arty minimal techno and various hip-hop/electronica hybrids as well. Different styles of music would seem to demand rarefied headphones, hence my recent purchase of ER 4-s.

Not to be elitist toward anyone else or their tastes (because there is no such thing as absolute taste), but I was forced to play rock in the studio in the late eighties and I would rather give myself a manual cornea transplant than listen to it for any reason. That's why I haven't been interested in auditioning headphones with extra characteristics (such as pronounced warmth or coloration) and so have avoided Grados.