Drop + Grell OAE1 Headphones

Thanks for this insightful review! I also enoyed your earlier discussion of the HD 6XX (which I had just learned of vis-a-vi the HD 650 and ordered here on drop yesterday). This 'OAE1' appears to be a real innovation - the forward positioning of the drivers totally makes sense. Exciting! Given where I'm at in my journey (transitioning from a life-long music lover to a 'music-loving-amateur-audiophile-with-62-year-old-ears'), I'll spend some quality time with the HD 6XX as I keep an eye on this OAE1. I've just stepped into the 'audiophile headphone hobby' while upgrading the stereo system in my 20-year-old Lexus es330, and sharing some details on a Lexus owner's forum thread about Head units/stereos with audiophile grade components (mostly defined by the OP as the presence of a decent 24-bit DAC). I was told by the OP that the amp I bought was useless 'because it's class d, blah, blah'. By then I had decided I needed a better appreciation, a reference, of what an audiophile is listening for and had bought some Sennheiser HD 599 headphones on sale via Amazon (continually upgrading a car audio system would be a very tedious and expensive path to audiophilism). Of course, then I wondered what makes an audiophile happier with a more expensive set of headphones... and here I am wondering about spending another few hundred on some OAE1s having just purchased the HD 6XX:-). I've been listening to the 50 ohm HD 599s with my late model M2 Macbook Air, and I gather the macbook's port will automatically kick into the higher-gain 3V mode when it sees the 300 ohm HD 6XXs. Reports are that newer Macs do pretty well without an external DAC/AMP - have you experienced this? Anyway, thanks again for your contributions out here!