What do you have for headphones and amps? Curious about what sort of headphone sound and style you've gone for. I've read lots about what you've had to say about digital, but I have no idea what you use to listen and what sort of sound style you like.
This is mostly opinion and highly subjective.
For amps I use a Scarlett 2i2, which isn't an amp but is really quite a competent piece of equipment overall, a Headroom portable desktop amp (which I dislike because it tends to pick up AM radio), a Fiio E10K that I just recently acquired, and an ODAC/O2, again a recent addition. I expect amps to sound the same. If an amp has a 'sound', it's flawed for my use.
I collect headphones, mostly vintage specializing in old quad cans, but I don't listen to most of them. They're a curiosity. And no, none of the quad cans actually provide usable surround, just a ton of comb filtering.
My favorite sounding headphones of all time are the Koss ESP/950, but they have some serious production flaws. The squealing and crackling discharge noises are a dealbreaker, and the lifetime warranty isn't worth anything when the replacement drivers have the same problem. The ESP/10s didn't have the same issues and also sound pretty good, but are considerably less comfortable to wear. I've been thiking about spiffing up some old ET-1000s to see if they might make comfy, reliable cans, but there's no carrying that driver box anywhere. It would have to be mounted to a cart.
Until recently my daily drivers were Denon AH-D2000s, but I want something with more mids. I have a few vintage planars I actually like quite a bit and intend to try out some LCD-X[C]s very soon (Bought some HiFIMan 5LE cans a few years ago, was really unpleasantly surprised at the poor build quality). Before the Denons, my daily drivers were DT880s, which I liked very much overall, but were occasionally aggressively sibilant when a voice hit them just wrong. I ran a de-esser in line with them for a little while before deciding to move on. This was an older version, perhaps it's different now.
I like the HD800 and HD650 quite a bit, but don't currently own either. I owned more than one pair of HD600 long ago, but the drivers kept dying so I stopped buying them. Those were a move from HD580 (also due to a dead driver) and before that I owned Grados. I dislike both the overly bright Grado sound and [lack of] comfort, but back then I had no money and there's no denying the SR60/80 were (are?) a great deal.
[edit: Currawong/mods, I just saw the gentle topic reminder. Feel free to delete this if you think it's too far off topic]
