Tgtr0660
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2014
- Posts
- 33
- Likes
- 11
Hi! This is my first post in this forum which I have visited for advice many many times!
I'm relatively new to the head-fi world and I wouldn't consider myself anything close to a golden-ear music fan. I mostly listen to classical music and have a gigantic cd collection but I also like rock, especially some progressive rock and metal. I sometimes explore other genres from jazz to new age to blatant pop but this is like 1% of the time. 90% of the time is devoted to classical music and the rest to some forms of rock. And is this interest in music first and foremost which eventually turned into interest in audio and especially in headphones.
I've always preferred headphones as I like to hear things by myself and want to focus on details. I have decent loudspeakers and a good setup but my main listening system is a headphone one. Now, by head-fi standards my setup in the pre-headphone side is quite miserable: a Marantz Cd player CD-5004 and a V-Can Musical Fidelity headphone amp. I barely use portable devices for music (except sometimes in my car) since I have always been a music collector and don't like music stored in a hard drive (dinosaur they could call me). I will need advice with this side of the head-fi world: I need to improve my player and my amplifier but I'm not sure what is a good option that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
As far as headphones, I started long ago with some cheap Sony ones, moved on to a Bose OE (Bose products are usually bad in sound quality but their headphones are quite decent I would say), then I decided to delve deeper into real good quality audio and bought a pair of very flat-sounding Sennheiser's HD380 which was like opening a new dimension. It took a while to get over my years of "colored" listening and adapting to flatter, more real sound. My next move was to get Sennheisers' HD650s, awesome headphones but with two problems: at that moment I wasn't ready to invest in a really great headphone amp so I got the V-Can instead (which is surprisingly good I should say in my view) but still didn't extract all the best from the cans; and two, their open design, good as it is for sound, kills my chances of hearing them at night in bed next to my wife. So I got a pair of ATH-W5000 and I have lived with them for a while but I still wasn't floored with their presentation and clarity. My recent purchase of the Beyerdynamic's T5p have finally given me what I think are the perfect closed (I need them like that) headphones for me but now I need help with amps and transports.
Eventually, I plan on going back to open headphones to either a Audeze LCD-something (price will tell enxt year or two) or a Stax, but first I have to get accustomed to understand that an amp is very very important and I will need some help.
So, what are some good amps that are flexible enough to work well with closed cans like the T5P and eventually open (not Stax) ones? What about good cd players that are not extremely expensive? (which means that cost less and far less than the headphones they have to power). Thanks!
I'm relatively new to the head-fi world and I wouldn't consider myself anything close to a golden-ear music fan. I mostly listen to classical music and have a gigantic cd collection but I also like rock, especially some progressive rock and metal. I sometimes explore other genres from jazz to new age to blatant pop but this is like 1% of the time. 90% of the time is devoted to classical music and the rest to some forms of rock. And is this interest in music first and foremost which eventually turned into interest in audio and especially in headphones.
I've always preferred headphones as I like to hear things by myself and want to focus on details. I have decent loudspeakers and a good setup but my main listening system is a headphone one. Now, by head-fi standards my setup in the pre-headphone side is quite miserable: a Marantz Cd player CD-5004 and a V-Can Musical Fidelity headphone amp. I barely use portable devices for music (except sometimes in my car) since I have always been a music collector and don't like music stored in a hard drive (dinosaur they could call me). I will need advice with this side of the head-fi world: I need to improve my player and my amplifier but I'm not sure what is a good option that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
As far as headphones, I started long ago with some cheap Sony ones, moved on to a Bose OE (Bose products are usually bad in sound quality but their headphones are quite decent I would say), then I decided to delve deeper into real good quality audio and bought a pair of very flat-sounding Sennheiser's HD380 which was like opening a new dimension. It took a while to get over my years of "colored" listening and adapting to flatter, more real sound. My next move was to get Sennheisers' HD650s, awesome headphones but with two problems: at that moment I wasn't ready to invest in a really great headphone amp so I got the V-Can instead (which is surprisingly good I should say in my view) but still didn't extract all the best from the cans; and two, their open design, good as it is for sound, kills my chances of hearing them at night in bed next to my wife. So I got a pair of ATH-W5000 and I have lived with them for a while but I still wasn't floored with their presentation and clarity. My recent purchase of the Beyerdynamic's T5p have finally given me what I think are the perfect closed (I need them like that) headphones for me but now I need help with amps and transports.
Eventually, I plan on going back to open headphones to either a Audeze LCD-something (price will tell enxt year or two) or a Stax, but first I have to get accustomed to understand that an amp is very very important and I will need some help.
So, what are some good amps that are flexible enough to work well with closed cans like the T5P and eventually open (not Stax) ones? What about good cd players that are not extremely expensive? (which means that cost less and far less than the headphones they have to power). Thanks!
