[magicalmouse]

In any case, find your musical bliss and enjoy. No need to experiment or upgrade when one has found YOUR audio nirvana... Congratulations my friend! Enjoy

I am in agreement with this comment.

After having read and posting on head-fi for some years, i am becoming aware of the need for many contributors to chase the new and often high-end as the holy grail. This is inevitable (I guess) as a result of human nature but not necessarily healthy and seems to often come before the actual enjoyment of the music.

Over the years i have bought and sold components and have found the following headphone systems to suit my kind of music (at a reasonable cost)

Sennheiser hd650 modified with custom cans weight/ silver copper cable etc, (musical fidelity x-cans v3 modified by pink floyd in the UK) with his little pinkie psu as well. This setup is now around 15 years old and still bring me as close to the music as anything else i have used.

Also oppo pm3 and schiit asgaard 3 which is close to the first system and for a solid state amplifier the schiit sound almost as enthralling/immersing as valves.

I use both of these with my turtable and hybrid phono amp. and with digital (arcam irdac2) and now concentrate on music - in the context of which i am struggling to increase my vinyl collection as s/h vinyl in good condition is either very expensive or difficult to source.

I also use a dap (coax) into mojo alternating with my cayin n3pro and meze 99/ex2xr for portable use.

I would be interested in other comments/thoughts.

 

[Somatic]

End game is when you realize you cannot hit perfection and learn to be satisfied with what you have. I’m slam it there but having issues with this lol

 

[cirrus101]

That is true.

This quest for the holy grail is quite insane, all in all.

It's as if it's an internal desperation for the inevitable fact we all have to face: our ears - everyone's - will get less and less sensitive over time, with different levels of degrading. Some less, some more, some none at all perhaps - time only can tell. Conversely and also ironically, over time is also how we earn more and more money, so we can spend on better gear (lol). A good tip though for actually improving one's hearing capabilities and will also train your brain to perceive everything differently is to actually be involved into music - play an instrument, go see a friend who does play, go see some musicians rehearsing, feel the live musical instruments as much as you can, let those perceptions drown your brain and gain its intimacy. The closer you are to understanding how strings vibrate, how air flows though woodwinds and how percussions resonate, the more you'll get a kick out of your system and understand what true fidelity really means. You'll escape all dictionary definitions because you know better. These things usually cannot be put into words. Ultimately, though, we also end up not giving much importance to good things around us because of preconceived ideas. For example, we all know how "dreadful" onboard sound sounds right? it has this fame to be the cheapest thing possible, whose existence is there only to provide some form of audio output whatsoever; the other day I went to check what's the chip in my motherboard onboard sound? this baby:

It's a VIA 1705 DAC. And by the specs of it it's really good right? quite impressive actually, for an onboard component. And I always thought this computer sounded good in itself without any fancy gear attached to it, but because of my preconceived ideas on onboard sound, I never gave it the credit that is due.

That's life.

 

[carbonF1]

Endgame = boredom. Or satisfaction, or maybe even mild nausea. I am sick of thinking about DACs. I immediately want to think about almost anything else. Very happy with my Directstream Jr. and will replace it with whatever the current model is when it's time. Same with my HD800S, same with my headphone amp, because a proper upgrade will cost several thousands of dollars. So I'm just satisfied with what I have

More realistically I'm at the point I'll need to attend an event like CanJam before scaling the summit further. No way I'm going for a 1266 Phi TC without hearing it first on what would be considered ideal pairings (albeit on a showroom floor but still). Or, I could, like, buy a motorcycle or something.

 

[paradoxper]

Just a fantasy.

 

[bfin3]

end game=the setup you happen to have when you die. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain (spend thousands on cables/fuses)

 

[jonathan c]

end game=the setup you happen to have when you die. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain (spend thousands on cables/fuses)

Go big before they dig…

 

[cirrus101]

Sometimes I wonder if even the bands and musicians are as passionate about finding "the endgame" as we listeners are.

 

[Coolmoose]

End game doesn't exist because human desires have no limit

 

[carlman]

Endgame is good enough for now. Bands/musicians are like anyone else.. some care a lot, some not so much... some don't know about a lot of technology.. Take David Gray who just found it easier to record everything on a macbook .. was it better or worse, he didn't care, it was just easier to create and record his art. Did Chicago care? I think so. Some albums it's clear that they care a lot about the music, how exactly it sounds and how it's recorded (Radiohead)... Then there's Dave Grohl/Foo fighters who practices and has the music in him.. and he fixes things that aren't sounding right.. and surrounds himself with people who know how to make the thing work...