My Meier Cantate.2 is out of commission until my BUF634Ts arrive (jeez nobody stocks them locally, unbelievable) but I snagged this Rega Ear (v2) for a really low price (literally what was left of my spendable cash after I ordered the parts and arranged for shipping). The verdict so far: as long as I have ReplayGain running on Neutron Music Player at -12dB, it's good: tonally only a touch warmer than but also slightly lacking bite to some of the midrange percussion vs the Cantate. Otherwise, the volume knob is usable only until 9:00 (and even then that's like for a few songs, and then I'll get a headache).
The pot is actually quite good despite the gain, so a lot of people would miss how bad the imbalance really is. I couldn't detect it with music but felt something was off but can't quite put a finger on it; checked the specs, found it had +28dB gain (what the hell was Rega thinking?!); ran a test track and "LEFT CHANNEL!!!" was shouting vs "right channel."
The rack arrived. Still a work-in-progress. Not wired up yet. Still need to get two new shelves. And something like the McIntosh MHA100 Headphone Amplifier.
I appreciate how the rear rack that I don't actually need (tho if I get the Mc amp or other comparable top of the heap amp it'll be very heavy and I'll want to hook-up to the back rack ... but anyway ...), it can serve excellent duty as a headphone stand. Like that a lot.
FWIW, as a point of interest, in the full-range, dedicated room world we refer to mass produced, Best Buy type of gear as mid-fi. High-End is always defined as high-performance, price irrelevant. For example, we see HD600/650 as High-End, meaning high-performance, while this site defines the cans as mid-fi (I'm guessing) due to their cost. Quite superficial, and very telling about this market and its participants.
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