[LobsterSan]

My brother was bragging about how he had heard the beauty of good-quality headphones, and how he could never go back to crap headphones again. He was listening to the Grado SR-60. He was moving at the time, and his SR-60 were packed away, so I didn't get a chance to listen to them just then. My mind fluttered with thoughts of what he meant by his veiled and inspiring comments.

Having an early interest in headphones, I bought some "high-end" $30 headphones in the early 90's. However, after my brother's comments, I decided that perhaps the Sony MDR-v100 that I was using might not be the end-all, be-all of hi-fidelity headphone units.

Thus began my quest to find out what I was missing. Google led me to numerous reviews of the Sennheiser HD-600, which appeared to be the king. Not to be outdone by my brother, I snatched them up in a delirious spending frenzy inspired by a rather nice Ebay deal.

After receiving the "king", I was a bit disappointed with the sound. Not understanding at that point that my amplifiers and sources were a crappy match for the "king", and that sound quality is a highly subjective and personal opinion, I asked myself why I didn't instantly orgasm when music was played through them. They sounded good, but not cream-my-pants good. So I delved further and found Headwize. And upon further delving, I found Head-Fi. And the good people of Head-Fi are my new junkie friends, providing me tips and introducing accounts of their latest high, provoking and prodding me towards satsifying my itch.

 

[Spent&Bent]

I had my sennheiser HD 410 for a present from my grandparents.
This thing blew away anything I had ever heard from speakers at home or in the stores I went to at the time, so when I was ready to get a walkman I immediately bought a replacement headphone for it, leading up to buying a lot of fontopia's after they were introduced by sony.
Maybe I was one of the first in this country to wear sony fontopia earbuds, I cannot remember when they first appeared...

P.S. I remember getting irritated on the HF rolloff of the senn compared to my earbuds.... something I'd surely notice less these days unfortunately....

 

[Lisa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spent&Bent I had my sennheiser HD 410 for a present from my grandparents. This thing blew away anything I had ever heard from speakers at home or in the stores I went to at the time, so when I was ready to get a walkman I immediately bought a replacement headphone for it, leading up to buying a lot of fontopia's after they were introduced by sony. Maybe I was one of the first in this country to wear sony fontopia earbuds, I cannot remember when they first appeared...

Somewhere late eighties I guess. They started to be the must have with walkmans. Couldn't show your head with regular phones anymore. At least, if you were young and under peer pressure.

I can remember what it was like before the fontopia earbuds reared their heads.
At first you there were the walkmans with headphones with orange pads. These were usually the cheapest ones but as a 10 year old you could not show yourself with them in school. Because the headphones had to have black pads. I remember one boy at school who obviously didn't have enough pocketmoney to upgrade to black pads headphones, so he just removed the pads all toghether showing just the black plastic drivers. He sweared they were very comfy and he didn't mind at all. His pads were supossed to have torn and this solution was the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

. I had a walkman with orange pad headphones and a batterylife of 45 min running from 3 AA's. Not having the money to replace batteries made me leave the walkman at home in a drawer. A few years later one of my friends introduces me to the rechargeables. But I didn't buy them since I was perfectly happy to go to school without music.
She was such a cool girl in retrospect. Into all these cool audio gadgets long before I was. In art classes when it didn't have to be quiet, she hooked a pair of what must have been the first portable speakers to her walkman so the whole class could enjoy the music. The only problem was that you couldn't hear the music playing for further than 4 feet away.

Nothing of this had anything to do with soundquality though. Spent&Bent story just pushed my sentimental button.

The person responsible for me getting into hi-fi was the person who decided to put senn mx300 earbuds with the iriver players. What I heard from those ten dollar earbuds was so much better than the sony minisystem I used to listen to music to that I realised that there must be so much more out there. I decided to upgrade my music collection by upgrading the gear I use to listen to it. A link on the iRiver forum lead to head-fi.