[bonkon]

This is purely subjective, quantify according to your own ears and reference gear you have.

Hi I am new here although I have been lurking for some time and do have some experience with Hi-fi, owning a decent entry-fi speaker system (Nad cd player, amp and tannoy speakers) for some years now. But going to college and the lack of space made me give up the speaker system focusing to a portable/computer based headphone system instead.

I realised that many members here myself included entered the Hi-fi headphone realm by joining headfi owning previously simple systems such as onboard, creative (non-emu) soundcards, portable players, stock buds/entry level headphones (koss ksc 35, sennheiser PX100 etc..).

Now list the gear you owned before joining headfi and your current reference system by mentioning the gear that brought you the biggest improvement. Grade it 100 and grade the other current reference gears a certain number in reference according to the gear that made the biggest change, 100 being the maximum. These grades don't have to be objective or highly accurate you can just grade it approximatively and by memory. The grades only really serve to rank and quantify the improvement each gear has brought you in reference to the highest (100). I am sure somebody has allready made a thread similar to this but i couldn't find it. Thanks.

Before:
AC 97 onboard soundcard/Sony pcdp D-E555, MD MZ-N707 -> Sony Mdr-ex 71

Now:
Biggest improvement HD600 (100)

Laptop/Sony D-E555 ->usb,optical-> Super pro USB DAC (60) -> fancy iBasso ic (10) -> iBasso P1 (35) -> HD600 (100)

You are free to grade all your sources, headphonese, ICs etc.. instead of one system but always taking the gear graded 100 as reference.

 

[Elephas]

I didn't know when I joined this site that we were going to be tested! I better start studying.

Before:
MP3 256 kbps -> 1st Gen iPod 10GB -> Bose Triport

Now:
Accuphase DP-500 (95) or ALAC > foobar ASIO (90) > RME HDSP 9632 (90, digital output only) > AES/EBU > Chord DAC64 (95) -> HeadAmp KGSS (70) > SR-007 (100) / 4070 (80) or RSA Raptor (50) > R10 (100) or AT-HA5000 (50) > W5000 (70)

Aargh, what a mess, this is getting too difficult! Shouldn't it be the system's performance and overall sound quality as a whole? What about the effects of power conditioning? Resampling with foobar? Cables (uh oh)?

 

[bonkon]

Yeah I know it can be rather confusing if you take account synergy etc.. but think of it more as a ranking of each gear in your system in reference to the one that brings the most improvement.

Which one has the most weight presenting the overall sound quality and quantify the importance of others in reference to that.

 

[Elephas]

For me, the difficulty in assigning weight to an individual piece of gear is that its performance might be different depending on its associated gear.

For example, the HD600 might be a 60 driven by a Raptor and a 55 driven by a Lehmann BCL, but it wouldn't score so high if the source wasn't very good. In order to assess that accurately, one would have to use the HD600+Raptor and HD600+Lehmann with a variety sources.

 

[bonkon]

Exactly for that reason it is advisable to grade one system: your reference. As said before don't be too technical about grading them, just take it easy and enjoy the music.

I have a feeling this is going to get pretty messy lol.