[greyhorse]

So Hi, I’m Jeff. I’ve been in this hobby since the Headwize days and I still find I like to tinker on the DIY side of things. DIY audio has always been a tweaky hobby and it’s all too easy getting lost trying the latest FOTM capacitor or wire or potentiometer that’ll FINALLY give the sound you’re looking for. As a reality check I’ve always wanted a somewhat “neutral” reference for my DIY builds as well as something that gives me decent sound without the obsessive tweaking. It’s why I recently made two purchases; the Modi Multibit 2 DAC and the Asgard 3 that reviews suggested make a decent pairing.

I have to say I’m pretty disappointed. The Modi was painfully bright hooked up to either the PASS diy ACP+ or WHAMMY for amplification. The Asgard goes too far in taming the Modi with the combined sound turning to bland mush. Taking the pair to a recent headphone audio meet confirmed my thoughts. Now this thread isn’t meant to bash Schiit Audio, but to question budget specialty audio in general. In all the time I’ve been in this hobby I don’t think I’ve heard any budget product that sounded balanced enough that I wanted to listen to it as my main rig. I’ve been to 6 headphone audio meets in the Toronto area over the years so I’ve heard enough budget, mid-fi and high-end audio gear to know what they can sound like. I KNOW that specialty audio can sound amazing, but it can also sound incredibly bad.

So what products do I listen through? Until I downsized my PC recently 100% of my listening happened on various Apple products. Before iPods came out I used a lot of Discmen. Lately it’s been the iPad Air 3 which does very little wrong. TBH in recent memory I don’t think I’ve heard vocals sound as sublime as the iPad Air 3 through HD-650s. I’m now writing this listening to the on-board audio coming out of an ASROCK H670M-ITX motherboard through the Sundaras. Though not the smoothest sound, the motherboard utterly SLAUGHTERS the Asgard in every aspect I can think of. The Modi and Asgard both have stayed boxed-up since they were taken to a meet I went to in June. That’s how bad I thought they sounded.

My question is does anyone else hear the same? I’m not saying that ALL generic audio sounds good. My previous PC build used an Asus ROG STRIX motherboard, and the on-board audio was bright, rough and unlistenable. I know economies of scale benefit the mass-produced stuff but it’s like specialty audio is made intentionally bad on the low-end so users are always tempted to upgrade. It’s kinda galling. Anyone else feel similar?

-poor guy’s rant ends.

 

[greyhorse]

Having thought about this a bit, maybe the more relevant question is whether there's any point in budget specialty audio at all. Thinking about specialty digital cameras, the mainstream equivalent smartphone has become so good that when you consider image quality for general use at smartphone focal lengths, budget DSLRs are basically irrelevant now.

I remember having a conversation with a semi-pro photographer around 5 years back. He shoots professionally with a Hasselblad, but used a full-frame Nikon D750 as a secondary backup camera. One morning he was driving to work and witnessed light pillars on his route. Even in near-dark this was captured with a single button press with his Samsung smartphone, but would have taken multiple images of his D750 on a tripod with extensive post-processing to take the same image using his MUCH more expensive DSLR. Similarly, and even though it pains me, I know my iPhone 14 Pro takes usable balanced shots faster and easier than my aging 5D Mk III. There are use cases where a professional DSLR is still superior to my smartphone, but it's mind-boggling how much computational photography has rendered my "big" camera obsolete.

Maybe we're at the same point with headphone audio where mainstream audio is just so good that there's no benefit to budget audio. IF this is true, I guess the question is at what price point does specialty audio make sense? At what price point can the average listener hear a significant enough improvement over something like an iPad to want to buy a piece of audio gear? Is it $500? $1000? I kind of want to know what others think.