[dshook]

I have owned a pair of SR225s and a pair of er6i's for a while, and have been listening to them out of my Zen Mp3 player as well as the phone jack of a 1970's vintage Sansui receiver connected to a mediocre Yamaha CD changer (old CDC-615). So not a terribly glamorous system, but both phones seem to sound reasonably good coming out of either source as well as my PC, if a little bit bright and light in the bass. I listen to mostly acoustic music (jazz, funk, classical, blues, good hip hop) and I am trying to decide where to put my money next.

I have an old Porta Corda that I bought used, with the AC input fried (would that have cooked anything else soundwise inside?) and I really can't hear much of a difference at all from any source with any phones using it vs. just the phone jack. It does amplify the signal and it doesn't sound bad, just not noticeably better. I am a musician so I would like to think I have reasonably demanding ears when it comes to faithful reproduction of acoustic instruments, and would notice if anything substantial was improving with the use of this amp.

I am considering a number of things:

1) The grado sound is a bit bright and light in the bass for me on some recordings but I love the punch and space, so I am considering whether a new amp would help this? (I have the flats as well, and I like the sound better but the space and air in the sound totally collapses when I swap them with the stock bowls)

2) Also considering selling the 225s and picking up some Senns, as I used to have a pair of 497s that I liked quite a bit (warmer sort of sound) what model would you recommed?

3) This cd player is supposed to have a pretty crappy DAC, so maybe a better source would be in order? Or a better integrated amp? (although the sound seems to be pretty consistent through my PC, mp3, and CD)

4) Sell it all and get a nicer amp and speaker setup and be done with it

I like listening to speakers better, but in a shared suite makes headphones a lot more practical for a number of reasons.