I'm considering the PMx2 and appreciate any comments.
Sorry if this is a bit long but there's a lot of info that may be useful.
My tastes are for acoustic music of many types; classical, jazz (accessible), folk, some better pop. In particular I love good female vocals including classical, and in particular singers such as Sophie Milman, Tierney Sutton, Karrin Allyson, Loreena McKennitt. I also like the unusual and quirky.
Tonality is most important to me, but I appreciate musicality and dynamics (essential for things like the Rite of Spring etc).
My headphone system uses the excellent Gryphon Scorpio CD player as the only source; a peach of a player.
I have two good valve headphone amps; a heavily reworked Elekit TU882 which is very good (I must post about it); and a Nobsound NS-06E which uses 6SN7's paralleled. This was OK, but with a change of driver valve, reconfig of the driver stage, removal of NFB and caps upgrades it became really good, somewhat better than the Elekit.
I'm also making a valve headphone amp of my own design with some similarity to the Nobsound with 6SN7's.
I use AKG K812 phones in this system and they sound really good; I've tried them in other systems and the sound was poor with solid state amp. In my system I'm almost satisfied. So why change?
My main system is a good sounding SET valve system. My own DIY, and I'd say it's not quite the usual SET sound as it has speed, attack, dynamics as well as valve SET sweetness; anyway it sounds gorgeous for the music I like, from LP or CD. I attend several concerts (not rock or pop!) and the system compares very well. Tonality is excellent, vocals just superb, a very natural sound.
The headphone system (with a slightly better CD player than the main system) does not quite match the main system or live music in terms of tonality or vocals, being a touch cold and perhaps slightly thin sounding. I'm being picky here, as the K812's are much better than anything else I've tried including HD580, some good Audio Technica, K712.
So I'm hoping to find something that's close to the good points of the K812 while adding better tonality, better presentation of vocals, a more 'persuasive' effect, if possible a bit more natural, and perhaps better sound quality generally. I don't feel happy spending the cost of Utopias but I won't totally rule this out.
Looking around, it seemed the Ether Flows might fit the bill so I did a lot of reading up; in doing do I found ray-dude's excellent post 'Adventures of 2 Channel Guy Diving Head First into the Head-Fi Deep End', and that's where I first found out about the PMX2. Ray's choices of music look great, his appreciation of music seems a lot like mine.
Above all, the conclusion 'If you focus on tonal balance .... get the PMx2' made me look into these very carefully. I have naturally read a lot about them here and elsewhere.
I tend to think that I'd love either the Ether Flow or the PMx2; as Ray suggests, I'm sure they are both fantastic products.
As I'm in the UK it's not easy to audition these though I think I could get to try the Ethers when supply is better; but I'm not good at evaluating hifi by a short audition in the shop (actually I'm *lousy* at doing so, there are good reasons for this).
I have noted the odd adverse comment (there's always something said), eg Tyll I think didn't like the lack of extreme top end compared to the HD800; but friends with very similar tastes to me have heard the HD800 and definitely disliked them, Tyll loves them .... so it's a matter of taste here and it seems my taste may be for the PMx2.
One good thing is that I don't need a phone to massage the sound - the source and amp are good enough not to need this.
I'm close to placing an order for the PMx2.
Any comments welcomed, thanks!
Mike in the UK
... with the superb 'Embraceable Lisa' playing as I type.