Ya know Flasken, with that said, I hope the rest of these guys voted with that in their brain, and not with "It's a frickin' Orpheus and Sondek!!!" in their brains.
It is a pretty fun question, and I thought up of the situation after reading a thread where a person refused to acknowledge even considering or trying a superior headphone, just because of its price and the fact that he could probably never get it.
I personally voted Yes myself because I've already been in such situations before, where I did not know what in the world the equipment was other than the pricetag, and I'm surrounded by people that have much more exposure to high end audio than me. A simple trip to find a pair of interconnects ended up with me getting to listen to a Sondek for a good half an hour, being compared back to a cheaper CDP, and a trip to find my CDP ended up with me getting to hear the Sony SCD-1. I had no idea what the hell the $20k CDP was at that time, had no reason to even think about buying it (I thought $1000 sources were insane enough already at that time) and given I was in a room with other older guys who knew their stuff, I could have just taken the interconns and left. Thank god I decided to sit back down and settle in, but I still noticed the occasional wierd glances those older guys gave me and did feel out of place in the crowd. But I still left feeling pretty good that day and feeling pretty blown away, and that the Sondek is amazingly, worth it's pricetag. I think if I ever got that much spare money in life I'd actually get one.
I learned a lot just from that little sit in too, beyond pricetags. It pretty much rocked my whole foundation and opened my mind up about speakers vs. headphones.
Same goes with the SCD-1 situation...I was in the store to primarily demo the 9000ES, and leave. Now it was already quite a mess to hook things up to the 9000 to demo it, and I was pretty much done and packing my R10s when the saleman asked "You want to listen to the SCD-1 over there?" and I took a moment before saying Yes.
The things I learned just from these two situations is enough to keep me saying Yes to any other similar situations for the rest of my life. As someone mentioned earlier, it helps me to stack my own system up against something much more expensive to see where I'm at. Then I can pace how far ahead something that costs more really is...a whole lot, or just a little. The SCD-1 was just a little. The Sondek just kicked my 9000ES and the SCD-1 to the curb and then some.
The other thing that's even more important to keep in mind is the simple fact that life is full of opportunities. You never know, you just might end up with this kinda stuff someday. Just a year or two ago the R10s were absolutely ludicrous to me, and what the hell were these overpriced things called headphone amps. The shoes on the other foot now.
