Hello HappymaN!
Thank you for your prompt reply. My problem really, is more geographical than anything. I live in Brazil, a country that has just recently started opening its borders to better quality imports. The federal government is very protective of the country's trade balance, so it's very difficult to find anything here and once you find it the price is stratospheric due to immoral import taxation. I could import one directly, but the time, financial cost, and the headache of getting anything electronic out of the International Airport's customs wherehouse really discourages anyone. Import taxes can be as high as 60%, the local merchandise 'circulation' tax is 18%, other fees amount to about 40%, and, to make matters worse, one needs to hire a specialised customs 'agent' to get through the bureaucracy and that will cost you about seven hundred dollars. That done it still takes about a month to actually get one's hands on the product. Stores and distributors import whole containers, which helps dilute the cost of the customs 'agent'.
Etymotic Headphones are nowhere to be found here, and Creek is the ONLY headphone amp manufacturer with a local distributor. Getting those items would require me to travel abroad and travel back in the country with them discreetely hidden in my dirty underwear, and pray for green lights when pushing the 'nothing to declare' button.
My ears are not very well trained as far as critical Audiophile listening goes, but as far as the Philips headphones are concerned, I currently own the SBC HP-800. I've tested them in SACD players playing SACDs and they sounded much better there than in my home stereo, albeit Redbook sounded fantastic in that player too! I've compared my Philips cans to the Senn HD 580 which cost 700% more. Sennheiser does have local distributors here but their prices are very high. I found the HD 580 to be smoother and silkier than the Philips, but the level of detail seemed similar to that of the Philips. The Senns were plugged into a Nakamichi Soundspace 8. Like I said, my ears are not very well trained as far as critical Audiophile listening goes, so my judgement may not be very accurate here. I currently cannot afford to buy the Sennheisers.
One more observation, I've read in another post that amps are not only about volume but are also about quality. I've read anyone is better off with a dedicated headphone amp "unless you've got a very high-end receiver, but even then...". If this is so, I would probably benefit from an amp even with the easily driven Philips, but this is all theoretical here as I haven't tested any headphone amps myself.
Again, thank you HappymaN for your reply and I am looking forward to reading more from you. Cheers!
Alex Altorfer
