[ProdigyToby]

  I've always loved music.  I listen to it during my college classes, walking around the house, driving to various places, jogging, and mostly everything I do on a daily basis.  Growing up I used typical low quality earphones and headphones, then I bought some Audio Technica ATH in earphones, ATH something I forgot, it was years ago.  One day I was browsing Amazon.com and long story short, I became interested in headphones.  I had money saved up from working during the summer.  I did a few days worth of research as to what exactly I wanted, and decided on the Hifiman-HE500.  I read that it was an extremely good set of headphones with great value and could compete with even top of the line headphones in the thousand dollar range, and if I had the money to spend I should skip the HE400 and go straight to the 500s.  I discovered on my research that certain things were necessary for headphones of this calibur, such as a high powered headphone amplifier.  I read that the schiit lyr was a good match for this headphone, it drove it nicely and was a good price.  I also purchased the bifrost DAC because my library was stored on a semi-old laptop and obviously that was a really bad source for this type of equipment.  I recieved these three components, was suprised how simple it really was to setup, and began exploring my beginings into very high quality audio.  Needless to say it was nothing like I had ever heard before, my mind was blown.  Its been about 5 days not and I cant stop listening to music.  This is where my problem is.  I cant stop listening to my new headphones.  Going back to my audio technica ATHs, its just very boring sounding, no offense they served me very well for years.  I'm looking for a good portable setup I can take with me because all I can think about is listening to music now, even during class.  I am considering the following:
 
  Sennhieser momentum on ear or over ear headphones.  I noticed that these HE500s leak ALOT of sound and obviously i need something quieter than that since this is going to be a portable setup.
 
Audio Technica ESW9A.  I read in a thread here that these headphones scored in the top 3 of a group of selected high quality portable headphones and are decently prices, and looked good to boot.  I also know that Audio Technica provides pretty good sound from my previous experience.
 
  I haven't decided on a portable amp as I have no information whatsoever to go on with that, so im kindly asking you guys for suggestions on both portable headphones and portable amplifiers, thanks alot.

 

[BillsonChang007]

Hello!

I second Sennheiser Momentum over-ear not sure about the on-ear! If you are looking something with lesser bass, PSB M4U1 will do!

Hope it helps!
Billson

 

[ProdigyToby]

  I'm noticing something strange, it could just be in my head from too much music.  It feels like the music sounds alot different now, if I had to describe it, it would be it sounds more "warm".  Anyway.
 
  Yeah Im thinking of the momentum too, any suggestions for amplifiers?

 

[BillsonChang007]

Quote:

  I'm noticing something strange, it could just be in my head from too much music.  It feels like the music sounds alot different now, if I had to describe it, it would be it sounds more "warm".  Anyway.
 
  Yeah Im thinking of the momentum too, any suggestions for amplifiers?

The Momentum are easy to drive and does not need an amp!
 
Billson

 

[ethan7000]

So you did some reading and just decided to pick up the 500's, lyr, and bifrost? Can you adopt me?

 

[ProdigyToby]

  I wouldn't call it "some".  I spent alot of hours on researching these products as thoroughly as I could.  I have actually been thinking about getting a setup for a month or so now, just decided to actually get around to it.  I wanted a decent setup to begin with, and from my newbie perception on audio quality, this sounds amazing, especially female voices, they sound really angelic and surreal.  Its kind of a problem though, since I have no idea if what I'm hearing is its full capability.  Im using Lossless audio, and im using MediaMonkey to play the files, is there a particular program that is better?
 

 

[ethan7000]

Hmmm, I've never used MediaMonkey.  You could sign up at hdtracks and get their free sampler.  That will give you some high res audio to test to see what you think.  I personally use winamp with FLAC files.  For that program, you just need to go the playback settings and enable 24 bit. And I use the Maiko WASAPI plugin for output.  It's all free.

 

[ProdigyToby]

  The quality doesn't seem that much different from the test sample and my music, I guess that's a good sign.  Too bad the website doesn't have alot of genres I enjoy, such as hardstyle, which sounds amazing on my setup right now.  Before I got this setup I used to prefer minimalistic music, but these headphones bring alot of life to intense genres like trance and hardstyle im finding, its really amazing how differen't things sound now.
 

 

[ethan7000]

Hmmm, well the thing with hardstyle and trance is that they're electronic.  When you're dealing with electronic instruments, mp3's are generally fine because you don't have large frequency ranges to deal with (think sine waves).  Now, if you were to listen to a well recorded cello you should be able to tell a fairly significant difference between an mp3 and a high-res track. Capturing the timbre of a beautiful acoustic instrument is more difficult because the notes resonate across a wide frequency range.  The more information (high-res/data) you have in that case, the more natural the instrument will sound.  For a test, you could compress one of the hdtracks to an mp3 and then A/B test between that and the high res version.  Pay attention to the tone of the instruments, how natural they sound, the presentation of soft and loud passages and see what you think.  You'll also want to make sure that your player and computer are outputting the high res tracks correctly.

 

[ProdigyToby]

  How do I go about checking if my computer is outputting high res tracks correctly?
 

 

[ethan7000]

Does your bifrost have a readout that tells you what kind of signal it's getting?

 

[ProdigyToby]

  Not as far as I can tell, it only has the single button and 3 LEDS to indicate which kind of input its getting, usb coaxial etc.

 

[ethan7000]

Ah well, then the best you can do is read up on your player and sound card/onboard sound and OS settings.

 

[ProdigyToby]

  Is the Lyr supposed to get this hot?  It gets really hot (to touch even) after several hours of use, can this damage it?

 

[ethan7000]

Amps get hot, tubes get hot, that's normal. If it seems excessive, shoot support a quick email I'm sure they'll know for sure.