[olieshmade]

Good afternoon folks, I can't believe that I've never found this forum before - what an absolute treasure trove of information! It has however, left me feeling a tad confused - and I am admittedly inexperienced in the world of audio.

Sorry in advance for the long post, hopefully some of you make it through it..

Currently, I own a pair of Sennheiser Momentem In-Ear 2's which I pair with my OnePlus 6 - I'm not sure I get anything close to the best from them, they don't sound bad - but they don't really sound great either - I tend to listen to Spotify with everything set as high as possible quality wise. Don't get me wrong, they are good IEM's, I just don't feel like I am getting the same excellent reviews worth of quality out of them that I have read.

At home, I have a pair of AKG K712 Pro's which I absolutely love the aesthetics of, but have not used them a huge amount just yet - whilst they sound good, they don't sound a huge amount better than the other headphones I have tried (The AKG's are likely _far_ better, but this will likely come down to source and so on), these were usually plugged in to a Xonar Phoebus soundcard, but to be honest the drivers for it are pretty terrible and I'm not sure how close it comes to an Amp/DAC stack.

My prior experiences have been with higher end headsets that I have used for gaming, mostly Sennheiser including the PC350, PC360 and more recently the GSP600's (I bought these at the same time as the AKG's after my PC360's died, side note - are the cables hard to replace on those?). The GSP600's sound great for games, but they are uncomfortable for me to wear for any extended period as even on the widest setting they clamp a bit too hard and don't fit perfectly.

Music I listen to - Quite an eclectic selection, but bands I listen to (random selection) Muse, Foo Fighters, Royal Blood, Imagine Dragons, Iron Maiden, AC/DC

Onto my budget, and what I have considered so far from what I have read

I tend to use my Macbook Pro more than anything these days, so I was considering a Schiit Magni/Modi combo which would hopefully help me adore my AKG's - but would leave me perhaps wanting 'more' from my portable audio solution - I've looked at so many reviews and blogs that my head hurts now, its really hard to compare IEM A and IEM B when IEM A scores 9/10 in most reviews and costs £100 and IEM B scores 8/10 and costs £250 - I know IEM B in most cases is likely to be better than IEM A, but it clouds my judgement.

I was looking at Vsonic GR07BE, GR07 Anniversary as potential upgrades to my Sennheisers, but given what I have said - would it even be worth it? I can't find many pages that compare the Sennheisers to other IEM's, it tends to only be the over-ears or the IE80's or IE800's. Would I be better buying a portable amp instead? I am happy to invest or save up if needed, I was salivating over the idea of some Massdrop Plus' yesterday, but I'm almost certain my money can improve my setup far more than it would with £300 IEM's

Thanks to those of you who read all of this, do you have any recommendations? What would you do in my situation?

 

[buke9]

Being confused here is not to hard. First off with Sennheiser have a pair of HD-1’s that I bought for the wife and someone asked a question about them and found out that the HD-1 comes in on ear , over ear and in ear and and I knew that the HD-1 was the same as the Momentum 2 but didn’t know that they called them all the same go figure.
As for your other headphones don’t know haven’t heard them other than the 712’s. Looked up the GSP600’s and seems like everyone agree’s squishes your head like a grape. My HD-280’s are like that also but the HD-650’s have a metal band that can be bent to help with that as they also have a tight clamp force out of the box. Not for sure who Sennheiser has testing these headphones but they need to find someone with a slightly bigger melon as mine is not huge and the clamp is. Now my HD-700 and 800’s are as comfortable as they come again go figure.
Sorry for the rant.
If you are looking for iem take look at the iBasso IT01 goes for about a Hundred bucks US and are solidly built with a nice cable. They have a slight V shape but the mids are still there and good. The ZS10 are another that are cheaper and very good like the the mmcx connectors on the iBasso much better but the KZ’s are also very good for the price.
Would agree a amp will probably help the 712’s.

 

[olieshmade]

Considering you mentioned HD800 I'm sure you likely have higher end amps or dacs - are shciit as good as the hype I've read for entry level stuff? Do you think I'd appreciate the difference between a Magni/Modi vs a Fulla 2 for exmaple?

I've been looking at the ZS10's, AS10 and TinAudio T2's for the upcoming AliExpress sale, they are less than £30 each which seems crazy, but again I don't know if they'd be any better than my Sennheisers, or whether I should go for the Vsonics at closer to £100... ahh

 

[buke9]

Yes I have higher end amps and dacs. My dac is a Schiit Yggdrasil. I’m not a big fan of their amps though. I’m a tube guy and like a warmer sound from my amps as I like brighter headphones like the 800’s but that is me. I think all of their stuff is good though solidly built and the amps have lots of power. I don’t find a whole bunch of difference in lower cost dacs myself so you would be fine with just about any quality ones.

 

[serman005]

I also like the IT01 and the ZS10, but if I were in your shoes, I would probably get something like the Schiit stack or an O2/ODAC to bring out the best in your K712 Pro (needs power). I would also be interested to see whether your Momentum sound better to you with better amplification and a possibly superior DAC. It's possible they could benefit from the upgraded power. Just a thought.

 

[olieshmade]

The Schiit stuff was out of stock unfortuntately - after some more research it turns out the DAC in a MacBook Pro (whilst not perfect) is at least capable of up to 96khz - and a few areas suggest a DAC isn't a massive upgrade for that - so in place of the Schiit stack I have ordered a FiiO A5, seems to be an exellent point in the market compared to its competitors, and as you say serman005, it may be that the FiiO (portable, unlike the Schiit) - may completely revolutionise my Sennheisers.

So for now I've spent about £100, will see how I get on before I look at any other upgrades, but I think this hobby could get expensive..