I've hit the soft cap for my head-fi journey at the moment. I want to upgrade to an he-6 but may wait till it's true successor due to my current budget constraints(Turns out engagement rings are expensive). Now if I was able to trade my 500+cash for a 6 I probably would, but otherwise the 500s are staying in my stable for the perceived future.
FWIW as far as amping goes, and strictly talking about power, I feel like w should address the fact that almost all he-500s have measured higher than 38 impedence and lower than 89db sensitivity, add in that a lot of us are using pads that are thicker, angled, vented, or all of the above, which ALL will reduce the sensitivity, if the specs of amps can't always be trusted, neither can the specs of the he-500. I do not believe that power is the first thing to look for in an amp, but certainly there is a direct tangible interaction between cost, SQ, and power. Schiit makes good products that offer good min/maxing of the above. I heard the MJ and fell in love with it before I knew what it's power output was, but I will say it is certainly expected that for it's literal increase in size and price from the Asgard, even if their SQ is equal, the Mjolnir should be pushing more watts. I think that when you spend so much effort in designing a nice amp with high quality parts, it only makes sense to scale the design to what offers the optimum value,it just makes sense that as quality and price go up, so tends power output, and I think maybe that is why people conflate the two so easily.
