[jkpenrose]

Nothing that cheap can be any good. I consider these a baseline or starter pair for the economically disadvantaged:

https://highend-electronics.com/products/voxative-ampeggio-due-loudspeaker-system



Of course, they don't sound their best unless you get a set of starter speaker cables:

Or when you stand on your head?

 

[macdonjh]

Class D is pretty mainstream in mobile audio. As was said, small and efficient. It's easier to find places to hide the amps when they are small. I did a pretty big install in my current car, too. New wiring from the factory head unit to the trunk, DSP to clean up whatever shenanigans the factory system did to the source signal, eight channels of amplification and all new drivers. The factory drivers were laughably bad. The amps I used are traditional class A/B.

Bel Canto was the first to bring the ICE amplifier module to the US market, and that was Class D, wasn't it? Jeff Rowland Design Group started using them a few years later, too.

 

[Balthazar B]

I bought some Wyred4Sound Class D monoblocks when I was living in the Valley of the Sun. Didn't want to have space heaters in my living room when it was 120F outside. Have to say they sounded quite nice paired with my inefficient Gallo speakers.

 

[Rensek]

Class D aint all bad.... At the levels i listen to, I had a very difficult time picking out differences between the pre & amp sections on Ragnarok 2 and the PSA Stellar Strata when i was feeding both from Bifrost 2 via balanced... Like everything its in the implementation.... SE was a different story (Nexus is special imo).

cheap class D has a ways to go though. I have a dayton audio class d amp on permanent loan to my brother. Its not bad to 1 watt, but after that it quickly starts distorting.

that amp sounds best paired with some moderately efficient speakers (deftech 350s) and Asgard 2 or Magni 3 as a preamp, and main volume control. The dayton didnt like my elacs.

 

[Varejao17]

I am very happy with the PS Audio Stellar m700 Class D monoblocks in my system. Driving them with a Freya+ is a great combo.

 

[rfernand]

2. HD 6XX I like these but they have a higher clamping force than the DT-880. that along with the elongated shape hurts my jaw after a while. I do like the sound and use them for small scale acoustic performances and vocal recordings.

I agree with the clamping force. I’m surprised it drove you to pain (I believe you), because I use them for 4+ hours at a time sometime. One thing I will say in their defense is their design makes it impossible to put them on ”wrong”— i.e., they will *always* seat in the same position, so they are very consistent. Compare that experience to your Grados...

5. Grado PS500e. Love/Hate relation with these. Definitely the most uncomfortable. On-ear does not agree with me. One able and done because my ears are physically hurting. However I find the sound so much fun with Rock. Some have said the PS500 has the least Grado house sound and I can't speak to that as I have never heard another Grado model to compare with. Some have said they sound like horn speakers and I would agree with that. I used to have a pair of Klipsch Heresy's and remember them fondly.

...which are ergonomically tricky. I have developed some muscle memory while putting them on and I know where they sit “right” for my ears. I encourage fiddling a bit. Your discomfort may be reduced to tolerable levels. I’ve also read people switch the cups for the other Grado designs - but then it wouldn’t be the PS500e sound, would it?

I just thought it was worth reinforcing your point that there are a couple of Grados with very different sound signatures. There may be more...I haven't tried them all.

Couldn’t agree more with this.I also haven’t tried them all (but I volunteer!), but I’d say from what I’ve read and of what I have, the SR60e, SR80e, and GS1000e are in the ”classic Grado sound” category. The PS500 are something else – punchier, rockier. I would not call them neutral, yet certainly not overtly-bright. Definitely narrower soundstage than GS1000e. Setting sound quality aside, detail and imaging did seem to follow the money across the ones I’ve bought (pricier is better, if not at the same ration as the money increase).

For people about to audition PS500s: Just play Def Leppard’s Hysteria on them and your reference cans. That track, IMO, exposes everything the PS500e does well and differently. These guys are made for that late 70s rock sound to right before the Grunge days. They bring the fun parts forward and center, as you would feel them in a loud club night with beer-tuned amplification.

Question for Hemp-owners: Are they worth a try, or if I’m happy with the ones I mentioned, I’m good? (Curious, there is always room for one more...)

 

[AudioGal]

Thanks very much for the reply @AudioGal

I had never seen one of those Squeezebox 2 players.
It looks a really neat system.

A friend of mine also runs an LMS server on an R-Pi 4 and is very happy with it managing his music library. I converted him to Qobuz, when the price in the UK dropped to £14.99 pm. He loves it!

I only started using Qobuz about a year ago, having initially been very sceptical about any subscription streaming service.
Due to internet problems in my rural location, I have been without Qobuz for 2 weeks until a couple of days ago, and realised just how much I missed it.

Broadband speeds are terrible here; my 'normal' speed was about 2 Mbps, which was just enough to run the 'CD Quality' FLAC files on Qobuz without buffering ( provided my wife wasn't using the internet at the same time..)

A recent upgrade to fibre optic cable for just over half the distance from my home to the nearest Telephone Exchange has seen speeds increase to around 15 Mbps!
It might even support Hi Res streaming from Qobuz, not that I am convinced it will sound any better than 16/44.1 FLAC.

It was a shame that Logitech binned all of the old Slim Devices products shortly after acquiring the business. Sean Adams was a very talented designer and the Transporter was quite a ground-breaking product when launched around 13 years ago.

There are certainly better DACs now, which is why I use the Yggy as an external DAC, but for many years the Transporter served as the heart of my digital system, acting as streamer, DAC and preamp.

I plan to keep using it for the foreseeable future and have a spare, all boxed-up, as a back-up.

The seamless integration of Qobuz and my own files, using the Qobuz LMS plug-in and iPeng app on an iPhone or iPad, gives me all I need with the Transporter.
Most importantly, it sounds fantastic, with the Yggy A2 driving some big active loudspeakers ( ATC SCM 100 ASLs).

I know that many people love Roon and I have no doubt that it is a fantastic way to manage your music, but I really don't need the extra functionality and I also like the fact that LMS does not require much computing power.

My computer knowledge is minimal, so installing and running LMS is about the limit of my capabilities.

I notice that you are a big Pink Floyd fan. They are one of the great bands which I never got to see live, unfortunately.

When I bought my Logitech Transporter and ATC speakers, the first album I played was DSOTM..

I still listen to it now and it sounds fantastic!

That's a really great system you have. I've always had a soft spot for studio monitors. I had a pair of JBL 4412 studio monitors for many years. These days my serious listening is done on headphones. Daily (at work) driver rig is an LG V30 'phone driving Etymotic ER4XR. Company provided WiFi throughout the building.

At home, it's a different matter. I can so relate to the crappy Internet. Vermont is rather rural. If you aren't in one of the large villages or towns, you might still be on dial up. I'm lucky, a telco wire center is at the bottom of my hill, so I'm able to get DSL (in a village of ~200) - when the telco isn't having service issues. Sometimes streaming does and sometimes it doesn't. Fortunately I have about 1200 CDs, about half have been ripped into WAV files (no compression) so far using abcde + cdparanoia. Still want to hack abcde to watch for disks in the CDROM drive and rip them automagically - some issues with handling CDDB decisions that I need to figure out first though.

A couple months ago I bought a C-stock Valhalla 2. It's nice to have tubes back in the rig again. I think the surprising thing is how well it drives my Massdrop HE-4XX. The HE-4XX seem to be a very easy to drive planar, and while the bass isn't as tightly defined as with my Modi 3, the mids and the 3 dimensionality to the music more than makes up for any shortcomings in the bass. Love this Schitt!

 

[Rensek]

massdrop/sennheiser ought to include a link to this youtube video, or one like it... it turns terribly uncomfortable headphones into little pillows on your head

watch it, do it, repeat as necessary, problem solved.



@rfernand , @cggkevin1976

 

[earnmyturns]

ICE amplifier module to the US market, and that was Class D

Class D, I owned a C7R for a while.

 

[rfernand]

watch it, do it, repeat as necessary, problem solved.

OMG, my BP went up just by watching it — I thought they were going to break! :O Thanks for sharing!

 

[Rensek]

OMG, my BP went up just by watching it — I thought they were going to break! :O Thanks for sharing!

the metal is quite sturdy, dont bend the plastic. i have a large head, it took quite a bit of flexing for me.. but i took my time and flexed em 3-4 times, putting them on to see how they felt between each flexing to get them perfect.

can wear 12+ hours without complaint.

 

[barondla]

I don’t see the point of owning music anymore, even just on a hard drive. By renting access to others’ streaming libraries, I get rid of all fear that something could happen to my physical media, and all fear that my chosen format(s) might eventually be superseded. I never have that bummed out feeling of buying a whole album that I’m indifferent about because of the killer single that brought me in the first place. I listened to easily a hundred new albums last year, of which I’d say twenty or thirty are “keepers” for heavy rotation. If I had bought all those records, I’d have no gear budget. But, realistically, I’d probably never have listened to fifty of them, because I’d never have known to look for them without a recommendation from an algorithm.

The only downside to being a lifelong renter, that I can find, is that I have no reason I can find to buy a Schiit transport or turntable. But I gather they intend to make some other products, so I’ll just go for some of those.

There's a big reason to own music. Control. Many of my favorite artists have been around a long time and have multiple performances and recordings of the same song. Streaming will provide one or two of them. If a new version or remastering appears, the previous often disapears. What if that is your favorite version?

Streaming is great for exploration. What happens when record companies decide streaming is too good of a deal and jack up prices or screw it up some other way? Or Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, Amazon and all the others decide to make a profit by eliminating all the albums that aren't huge hits? How do you listen to anything but the "top 100" if all physical media and downloads are gone?

 

[rfernand]

What if that is your favorite version?

Heck yeah. I have a favorite Vinyl that was never transferred to CD. The latest available streaming version of Roger Waters’ “Amused to Death” has subtle guitar changes that throw me off every time I hear them - and the 1992 original release is nowhere to be found in the interwebs.

Is this the 99% case? No. It’s probably the 0.01% case. So @killaHz has a point for the vast majority of music. But for the unicorns you rode in your youth, well, that’s what the shelf space is for.

 

[strider1007]

OMG, my BP went up just by watching it — I thought they were going to break! :O Thanks for sharing!

I had the same reaction.. Also, if you widen it a bit too much, I doubt there is a way back..

What I do to reduce the clamping-force is that I take a stack of books, about two inches wider than my head, and use that as a headphone-stand overnight. Every morning I check, do this for a couple of days and so far it worked every time...

 

[rkw]

Also, if you widen it a bit too much, I doubt there is a way back..

Yes you can. It is just a metal band and you can bend it back the other way.