Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
btw, any feedback on smsl m3 or sd793ii?
I plan on using one for these cans :)
Trust me for cans like these get an iFi micro iDSD, or an iFi micro iDSD Black Label, or better yet a Chord Mojo and an iFi iCan SE. Hard to beat the new iFi amps the iDSD micros are dacs and amps, the nano is inferior to the micro, transportable/portable super high power cheap so bang for the buck kings, iDSD is the feature god(superior in features but not pcm audio quality the chords win here but the iDSD is said to sound better with DSD content than the mojo and hugo(the hugo is more clear than the mojo but costs 600-1000 more and its said the mojo has better bass and weight but slightly less clear) and DSD bang for the buck god and the chord mojo is the bang for the buck portable pcm god(most music you listen to is pcm anything computer file related mp3 to flac wav that is all pcm dsd is dff files and these are super huge often very expensive, niche market, and most popular music does not get mastered in dsd also music rap and edm it would probably be detrimental to release it in that format because the sound quality is so high its much easier to hear that its a mishmash of samples and it doesnt sound right dance and rap need the audio to be a little blurred otherwise the clips dont match up right with different air sound in the individual samples and 3d positioning missmatch will also be heard and it kills that rapid fire punch effect of these genres when you hear all the sample missmatch distraction).
I have tested a few ifi amp with a k712 and they do really sound awesome. Price wise though, not that attractive. I am looking to pair the amp with my PC thus I do not need any portability. I can secure a schiit stack(magni/modi)for 150 pre-owned, are they good?
Yeah the iDSD is back up to 499 but last year around January they had a sale again on the iDSD and the iFi iCan SE they have gone on deal like 3 or 4 times in the last year(4th of July, once in the spring, pre black friday(this one lasted for weeks sorry you missed it), and January 2016, now that I think about it I think it went on deal probably 2 more times I dont remember the specifics of I could search SlickDeals(if you are a computer badass you should check this site twice a day with google chrome or srware iron using linkclump and hotkeys until you know the entire market of everything(and all the low prices(this takes time(been checking deals like 13 years now) but I am beginning to graduate beyond SlickDeals on many markets of goods) and find all the deals but I think this post as enough research already)). Start checking deal sites and follow the audiophile deal thread on Head-Fi. I expect either right before Christmas or right after Christmas possibly a few weeks later after Christmas the iDSD will hit 375 or 350 again. If you have the attention span of a gnat or cant wait or cant check deals religiously I have no respect for that kind of impatience. You really dont have a choice but to check deals or you can have a substandard of living. I sound elitist but if you had to wait had to have a little pain when you finally got it you would see then after you tweak and play with the gear you will get more out of it and then when you go to a meet later or hear a friends schiit stack then you would know. O2 and schiit stack are ultra entry level but I am a Deal Research God and if I had to do it over again I'm telling you the moves I would make if I were you.
You wanna use an iDSD as a desktop amp? Check out the iRack sure its pricey(150 but its pretty would fit right in with the old plex(its not plex whatever it is) mac cubes or soundsticks) but I wouldnt say its too overpriced. You can also clean up the power with the iUSB 3.0(dont get the old one but its pricey like 399 haven't seen it on deal yet, yes the power supply matters allot in audio gear many already know that a power cable can make more difference on gear than interconnects given you already have decent interconnects more bass more clarity more speed depends from piece to piece, people say the iUSB 3.0 is better than the UpTone Audio Regen which is well regarded on computer audiophile forums it not only supplies better usb power but cleaner and filtered it supposedly also has its own internal usb hub which some claim improves quality), but I just made a custom usb cable and connected it to a usb charger(dont do this unless your a soldering diy audio nut iFi has a cheaper power supply option using an orico usb charger you can find this info in the FAQ of their site that way you dont have do to the cable fabrication or risk your pc or expensive dac yeah they should have just put a wall part barrel power port but they didnt so you gotta do what you gotta do) that puts out 2.1A per port cause my motherboard I think only puts out 1A(yes this connects the motherboard and usb charger circuitry and some of that power probably powers the motherboard as well). Yeah its kind of a ghetto hack but it works and keeps the iDSD fully charged when I play my pc through my speakers all day long(on the lowest amp setting). You only need the high amp settings on extremely demanding headphones(i bet the HD6XX only needs the middle setting which gets a little warm but not hot(it obviously can take allot of heat)) and the iDSD will get hot cause its so much power in such a small amp but you should only be listening to headphones this power hungry for a couple hours at a time(on the highest amp setting this setting is also a big step up from the low and medum settings this setting will also be too high to run into a receiver or input to other equipment for line out, you can use the dedicated line out, or just use the low amp setting). I don't think the HD6XX even get close to the max power handling of the iDSD that is the truly great thing about it at the highest amp settings this thing is beast it can drive the entire headphone market even the Hifiman HE-6 widely known as the most power hungry mass produced end-game level headphone on the market that people often drive off receiver or speaker amps(it wont drive them fully like a speaker amp will but people say it drives them well enough for a critical listening session).
The iFi iCan SE(its pretty much the same amp in the iDSD minus the dac and the battery with slightly better overall amp quality probably from newer components on the market in the last couple years much like the micro iDSD Black Label(i would just get the iDSD now and buy the Black Label later when the price comes down some cause its newly introduced and sitting at like $576 probably no deals for some time as its the premium iFi flagship really at that price your probably better going for an iFi iCan SE on deal for 250 to 230 and a Chord Mojo which can be had for 600 chances are if you can afford 600 you can probably afford 800 usually in that price bracket people have more leeway) has a wall wart power brick and has no internal battery so its tied to the desktop but iems are the only truely portable headphones anyway and the Chord Mojo can power iems just fine so the Chord Mojo + iFi iCan SE combo has most of the portability features, doesnt do the higher bitrate dsd formats or dsd as well as the iDSD, but its good enough, and THE SOUND QUALITY IS SUPERIOR IN PCM because its based on an FPGA(Field Programmable Gate Array) on a newer low power(so it can be used in portable lower cost gear and not require a large board with power supply circuitry) modern Xilinx Virtex FPGA which is a bigger chip that has more precision because of the longer tap filter(no I dont know the nitty gritty other than the marketing talking points but the consensus on the sound seems to agree with the claims) than what they term "off the shelf" dac chip solutions(because they are the only ones using FPGA they are the only ones who could use this phrase). The bass is also said to be better on the Chords compared to the Burr Brown Dual(2 chips) dsd dacs on the iDSD, but the Dual Dac solution plays dsd512 I think the Chords only go to dsd128(dsd64 and dsd128 comprize probably 95% of the file formats out there). The Chord tho sounds better on the most used formats which are all translated to pcm before fed to the dac and dsd files are often niche old man opus music, classical(because classical was the main genre in the sacd market), or older albums from decades ago.