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
Sidenote: Those mounting brackets are so goddamn difficult to install that you’ll feel like you’re gonna break something, so if you notice the very conspicuous bottle of superglue in the image, you now know why. While others seemed not to have much trouble snapping those rings in with the pad mounting clips of the headphones themselves, I had an absolute hell of a time doing anything with them and, after a literal hour of wrestling with the first pad, I quite literally just said “f**k it” out of utter frustration and (shamefully) superglued them flush with the headphones. In essence, the rings I purchased from HiFiMan were a waste of $10… but I knew I didn’t plan on swapping the Oris out, so don’t judge me too hard for my crimes against humanity if you can help it. So all the mods I’ve mentioned so far cost me real money, right? Yet funnily enough, the one modification I actually found to be the most impactful was… EQ. Honest to god. You’ll find many individuals with their own suggested EQ profiles online, but I personally never found any of those that really changed the signature of the 4XXs in a way that I found objectively “positive.” However, this was only until I discovered the work of an acoustics engineer known as oratory1990 on Reddit, whose end goal was to tweak an extensive list of headphones as close as he could to hit Harman (as in harman/kardon) AE/OE target responses. I strongly encourage you to view his FAQ page (https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/9o2f5n/psa_oratory1990s_list_of_eq_presets/) and afterwards view the list of headphones he’s tuned thus far (https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index). You will of course need EqualizerAPO and Peace GUI if you decide to do this, but it would be interesting if you were to try EQ on both the 4XXs and 6XXs! No shame if you don't end up enjoying one or the other. Alright, now that I’m done typing all of that (phew!), I’d like to say that my adventures in mid-fi have indeed been quite fun. For me, I believe that it’s up to your own wallet as to whether or not you’d like to buy multiple cans in the mid-fi range (HD-6XXs, HD-58Xs, HE-4XXs, etc.) together—either way you shake it, all of these choices will be excellent purchases, but I’d go on to say that none of those aforementioned pairs will vary so greatly in quality that you’ll wish you’d purchased one over the other. At this point, if I were to buy another pair of headphones, I’d be venturing into the $500+ range—and even then, the improvements made over mid-fi pairs would assumedly be far more subjective over what moving from standard, consumer-grade IEMs and headsets to mid-fi options would be. Still, it’s just as much a necessity as it is a hobby for folks like us, and all purchases are good purchases when we’re simply having fun with them. I hope this answered your questions, and I’d be more than happy to answer any others you might have down the road! P.S., Funny you mention Pink Floyd w/ the HE-4XXs, because I’ve been binge listening to them on these nonstop lately, and oh my god my ears have never heard sweeter sounds! Like I’m sure you’d agree, the 4XXs truly capture the emotion, energy and weight of Pink’s songs like nothing else I've had the privilege of using. —Seqqy