choweee
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2004
- Posts
- 36
- Likes
- 10
ok so this summer i upgraded from an sr-80 to an sr-225. the difference was incredible. soundstage, articulation, all that good stuff. i was really happy with my upgrade, so lurking around on head-fi i realized that since i was listening to high-bitrate mp3's off my laptop, i should upgrade my source next.
i ordered an echo indigo off some site and plugged it in. okay, the slight hissing/hashing was gone, but the music really didn't change too much. i honestly really didn't hear that big a difference. maybe my laptop soundcard was already decent?
so anyways, i've been steadily on my way to getting a complete "home rig" together, under a college student budget at that! the headphones are quality, the source is quality.
but now i see the gilmore lite.
my question now is, just what difference am i going to get out of sticking this amp into my set-up, which involves a pair of cans that are quite low-impedance? is the difference going to be like the '80 to '225 change? i've become afraid that some of these upgrades are just not as big a deal as people on this forum make them seem. maybe it's simply a step some people do with their grados out of peace of mind/obsessive compulsive disorder?
furthermore, i've seen the circuit layout of the ra-1, for example, and it really doesn't look that complex (after all, isn't that why it's become a DIY project to some?). what is an op-amp, a couple resistors and capacitors going to do to the sound? i made a cmoy this summer but it just made music louder. no changes to the sonic signature. it didn't come to LIFE. that's why i am skeptical that an ra-1 would be as big a difference as the difference between two headphones (80 -> 225), which are constructed in different ways to provide different frequency responses.
i don't have access to any amps to test out, that's why i'm asking here. i just want to make sure this next step (which just might be the costliest) is worth it at all if i ever get the funds together to make it happen.
the gilmore's pretty, though!
thanks for all your advices
i ordered an echo indigo off some site and plugged it in. okay, the slight hissing/hashing was gone, but the music really didn't change too much. i honestly really didn't hear that big a difference. maybe my laptop soundcard was already decent?
so anyways, i've been steadily on my way to getting a complete "home rig" together, under a college student budget at that! the headphones are quality, the source is quality.
but now i see the gilmore lite.
my question now is, just what difference am i going to get out of sticking this amp into my set-up, which involves a pair of cans that are quite low-impedance? is the difference going to be like the '80 to '225 change? i've become afraid that some of these upgrades are just not as big a deal as people on this forum make them seem. maybe it's simply a step some people do with their grados out of peace of mind/obsessive compulsive disorder?
furthermore, i've seen the circuit layout of the ra-1, for example, and it really doesn't look that complex (after all, isn't that why it's become a DIY project to some?). what is an op-amp, a couple resistors and capacitors going to do to the sound? i made a cmoy this summer but it just made music louder. no changes to the sonic signature. it didn't come to LIFE. that's why i am skeptical that an ra-1 would be as big a difference as the difference between two headphones (80 -> 225), which are constructed in different ways to provide different frequency responses.
i don't have access to any amps to test out, that's why i'm asking here. i just want to make sure this next step (which just might be the costliest) is worth it at all if i ever get the funds together to make it happen.
the gilmore's pretty, though!
thanks for all your advices
