SHAMuuu
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2013
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Yep...Senns, Beyers, AKGs, HiFiMan, etc. can all be had for great prices...many others as well.
David Mahler bargain choices = win win
Yep...Senns, Beyers, AKGs, HiFiMan, etc. can all be had for great prices...many others as well.
Back on topic: I refuse to pay for anything without a decent build quality and a pleasing aesthetic(yes that matters to me). Some audiophile top rated headphones are well built but look like large, heavy and unwieldy Franken-monstrosities to me, so I'm avoiding them no matter how good they sound. That Diana actually looks decent enough to me, although I don't think $3K worth. It appears way too lightweight to cost that much. I'm not seeing premium build quality. Can't pay for looks alone. I'll pay for sound quality, but the whole package doesn't seem $3K worth at first glance.
Old or "vintage" as in collectable? Simple old cars are an absolute pain to maintain. You'll regret most old car purchases unless you like to tinker and/or have the funds to maintain them. Ask my friends who insist on old cars but are also making their mechanics rich. Plus old cars don't even have things considered basic now. Like audio out jack, so forget listening to your own music, since almost no one takes tapes or CDs in the car anymore. Car charging port is so cramped on one, you have to search for a tiny charger to fit; standard won't cut it. The cup holders are ridiculous. I could go on but seeing my friend's problems have convinced me to never buy anything older than five to seven years. And seven is pushing it.
Vintage collectable cars on the other hand, can be fun as long as they aren't your main car. Because they aren't very efficient or even safe sometimes. And you should live in a climate that's good for them, which can be hard. I knew someone who complained salt air eroded their cars within two years(California beach community). In the Midwest, forget vintage cars in the winter.
Back on topic: I refuse to pay for anything without a decent build quality and a pleasing aesthetic(yes that matters to me). Some audiophile top rated headphones are well built but look like large, heavy and unwieldy Franken-monstrosities to me, so I'm avoiding them no matter how good they sound. That Diana actually looks decent enough to me, although I don't think $3K worth. It appears way too lightweight to cost that much. I'm not seeing premium build quality. Can't pay for looks alone. I'll pay for sound quality, but the whole package doesn't seem $3K worth at first glance.
My old Porsche was fun and actually pretty reliable. But some interior bits got old and would have been very expensive to replace. In the end, I sold it recently. But while I had it, it was a good example of what is being talked about here - a car that hugs the road like a go-kart with lots of feedback for the driver in a way that modern cars don't generally replicate.
It was my only car for a long while, so when I first drove a modern car, it felt all floaty with the much stronger power steering and felt like I was driving on marshmallows. I didn't like it at first, but got used to it. It was better in some ways...and not as good in others.
My Grado pair reminds me of that - not as sophisticated or high-tech as a more modern headphone, but with its own kind of dynamic approach that not just any cans have.
Well Audeze just announced $600 LCD2 "classics" with the pre fazor design.
MrSpeakers has the new $800 Aeon Flow open which is supposed to be almost essentially an Ether Flow.
looks like the sub $1000 range just got some hot competition.
I have seen people spend thousands on a setup, only to end up with a detailed yet thin sound that they don't even enjoy. To be honest, some of my "only" mid-tier cans have given me more pleasure than some of my most expensive ones.
But a lot of people new to the hobby pursue holy grail levels of expensive detail retrieval and/or low distortion alone, because they haven't learned about their own tonal tastes yet, and assume that's all there is to pursue in audio.
Those folks who became lost in detail retrieval are most of the time simply one more purchase away from finding their sound. I was at that point once in 2008 where I could hear every detail but the system was not musical. Finding darker headphones helped me out.
Still though much of this hobby is going from one sound signature to the next each time self delusion sets you up for a new purchase saying it's the last that your home finally.
And manufacturers know if stuff isn't priced high it will not be looked at as worth buying as only good stuff is expensive.
The truth I've come to realise was I had my endgame system in 1982, and all these years has simply been new and different flavors.
Placebo is strong and the higher the price the more powerful the placebo, though we tell ourselves it's clarity and detail.