i have had both, the 595 are miles ahead in terms of sound and are still very comfortable.

My 2 cents: I got the Shure E2C's back in January. Given the loud NYC subways I use them in, getting the most hi-fi models didn't make any sense. I've had experience with high-end studio reference headphones through my music but have been more than happy with the sound of the E2C's for iPod use. Anyway, after getting the cord caught on various doorknobs/furniture/etc. and having the earphones yanked out of my ears or my iPod a few too many times, the cord next to the output jack is now intermittent/crackling. I'm not a clumsy guy. Moral of the story is I don't recommend spending a lot of money on earphones that are going to see a lot of mobile use.

Please rate my planned purchases;

Musiland MD10 24bit/192kHz DAC $350 w/shipping


Little Dot MK III Headphone Tube Amplifier $250 w/shipping


I already have some beyer dt250's, but are looking at senns 650's or beyer dt990. Anyone have better alternatives in the price range of the mentioned products? Thanks

That looks nice, but couldn't you find one that goes to 110?

AKG K 701

The K701s are miles ahead of any non-electrostatic headphone that isnt called the orpheus.

As for the little dot. meh, ive heard there stuff and it sounds meh to me.

as for the musiland, i dont know much about it besides an article i just read. Musiland used to be a company called diyeden. They sold some nice amps. I am actually quite intrigued by this product and it seems like something i could tradein my microdac for, although they both use the same DAC Chip. CS4398. My microdac sounds awesome, so i assume the fact that this uses the same chip and enables 192 bit decoding is kinda rad. check out this thread for some reviews.

PITTM,
do you have any alternatives (in the same range) to the ld mkIII that I can look into? With my limited research the amp seems to give alot for you money, $250 shipped is really cheap. Many people here seem to like it.

As for the headphones I'll try to get to listen to the K701 and the HD650 before I order.

oh weird, for some reason, the first time i saw your question the pictures didnt load. i was thinking of the old versions of the little dot that looked like a ******ed child made them and they didnt have tubs. that thing looks very nice and i would def trust head-fi'ers on that. I need to give that thing a listen.

i have hd600s and k701s and i never listen to the 600s anymore as a result. while the 650s are obviously better thsn the 600s, i dont think theyre in the same league as the k701s.

never understand the point of a stand alone d-a converter, even most crappy motherboard sound will do 24 bit at 96kHz, and any of the reasonably priced sound cards will do 192kHz, not like anyone would be able to hear the difference though.

Can anyone recommend a good set of wireless headphones? Price range under $200. I really don't care if they are rf or ir, so long as they have good sound quality and are comfortable to wear for hours.

Sure, and even the most crappy motherboard sound wont have any sort of optical out so your point is entirely irrelevant. If you have a decent DAC and force the user to use that DAC signal after it is amplified in a horrible way by super noisy and dirty power sources, you dont have a usable DAC. Buying a 1k stereo system or a 1k headphone system and hooking it into your computer audio is just mindbogglingly insane. As is the motto of many "Source first". Meaning the source of the music (the DAC) is the most important.

PITTM,

i've read through this thread and I feel like a huge headphones ******.

can you please give a suggestion for a good pair of headphones budgeting a few hundred dollars? i'm just coming off a pair of bose headphones and i'm getting the impression that my next purchase should not be something like the QC3's.

thanks in advance.

edit - plan on using the headphones for playing online poker and playing live events

I agree hooking your computer up to high end stereo equipment is a waste.. if I was going to do that I'd at least have something like a soundblaster audigy, which has optical output. When I was big into car audio, I had a soundstream DAC in my car.. and tbh I nor anyone else could ever tell the difference between that, and the DAC's in my Denon head unit. Just seems like a waste of $ on "quality" that you can't hear. Sure stand alone DAC's are most likely better quality and such, but the human ear just can't hear the difference.

Clayton,

If you want phones for playing live poker your decision would really be between if you want in ear monitors or full sized sealed headphones.

these are my favorite sealed headphones

New in ear monitors that ive heard great things about

The in ear monitor i usually recommend(you can downgrade to the ultimate ears 3 if you think those will work).

Donkey,

I disagree completely. I ave A/B'd a ton of DACs and you can definitly tell the depth of bass, how low the noise floor is and how bright the highs are from one to another. Just because some cant hear it does not mean that all cant. I ave always had really good hearing though, so im not sure what % of the population can tell the difference. But the reason i was drawn to the whole headphone thing was because i heard a good amp and a good DAC and realized what i was missing. fwiw, i had previously been hooking my headphones to a soundblaster audigy as you had recommended. Comparatively, this sounds horrible.

And you would connect this optical out to an outboard DAC right? I dont get how you could think those are worthless if you think this is the case. I hook my computer up to my marantz speaker amp and i use an outboard DAC, it sounds about 100x better than using the analog plugs on my mobo soundboard. Btw, the audigy is a waste of money. The chaintech AV710 does bit perfect streaming to DACs, has an optical out and only costs like ~$20 bucks iirc.

Upgraditis caught me before I could even order the LD MKIII, because I just bought a LD MKIV SE from someone on the headfi forum. Here is a review, and here is the for sale thread. Now lets hope I didn't get scammed

Also noticed you are parting with your Micro DAC PITTM, what are you upgrading to?

I guess I'd have to hear the difference to believe it. I'm big on the whole price/performance thing. I'm never going to spend 1k on a set of headphones, I don't think platinum plated (insert whatever) $50/ft rca cables make any difference in sound. I am picky about how my stuff sounds, as I still have about 4k invested in my current car stereo but I guess there is 99% and then there is 99.9% quality.

I've probably gone a little deaf listening to rock/rap and being at car stereo competitions, riding my motorcycle and going to concerts.

Wireless headphones?? anyone?

Uhh, did we just lose the threadstarter to the banhammer? Crap.

I have mine hooked up to my H/K receiver that has 2 optical inputs, while it's going to be using the DAC, I always thought of it more as a convenience option than using the D/A converter. I will have to get some RCA cables and check out the difference.

All,

PITTM wanted to pass along the word that he is not ignoring your questions, but he has recently been banned and so, at least for the time being, he won't be able to respond.

No PITTM ban discussion in this thread, please. See ATF abusive mod thread for details/discussion.

I had Shure E4c's and they broke and I sent them in.

They replaced them with SCL4- is this the latest same model?

i love my sennheiser 565HDs that i've had for 7 years now

have had other users abuse the cord to where it shorted out, but the cord just pulls out so u can replace that if it happens for <$20 without having to buy a whole new set of cans

very comfortable muffs; open-air design; very true sound, but not the best sensitivity, so i may eventually get a small headphone amp (prolly just an altoid amp), tho it's plenty loud on my desktop computer right now

of course, not as stylish as many smaller cans, but i don't care about that much when sitting in front of my computer

They really are flimsy. I bought a pair and the headband broke. I fixed it with superglue and tape. Then they went dead in one ear. This was all after about a year. I am a heavy user though wearing them about 8 hours per day.

I didn't even think about contacting them and just bought another pair. Within a year (about a week ago) the left earpiece snapped off. Upset I contacted Bose and they are replacing both pairs. Once those two sets break I'll probably buy something different/sturdier

I broke my damn shures, and as a lot of this thread is nearly 6 mo. old, I'm curious if any new earbuds have trumped the shures, or if I should just get another pair of the same. Looking in the $75-$125 range; thanks.

I just happened to be looking for some shures a few weeks ago. I bought these. theyre awesome.

Wow, thanks for that comparison. I was trying to decide between those two.

I've always had problems with ear buds not staying in my ears. I don't know if I have huge ear canals or what but anytime I get a new set of ear buds that come with interchangeable earplugs none of them ever fit properly so I end up constantly having to push them back in my ear.

Can anyone recommend a set that has more size variations or foam material instead of rubber plugs? Alternatively I'd be willing to go with standard headphones. I have the crappy bose triports currently but the sound is crappy and they are too big to wear walking around outside.