As I mentioned a few months ago; I’m kinda into music and accordingly I always have some nice stuff for the reproduction of it.
Now I’m not some mental-case audiophile who needs four-figure interconnects for my six-figure component setup… I prefer to do the best I can while still being able to afford things like groceries, so in that vein I tend to acquire gently used stuff like my B&W DM640 speakers or my old Denon AVC-3000. I’ll occasionally spend a couple hundred on some piece of new gear like my Bose Companion 20 computer speakers that I’ve been using for over a decade, but that tends to be once every few years.
For example, for a few years now I’ve been using Audeze LCD-1 cans and a Soundblaster X3 – which is quite respectable for the $500 I spent.
The LCD-1’s are really nice, but the leather cups aren’t big enough for my ears, so they get annoying after an hour or so and I don’t use them as often as I would like. And while the Soundblaster X3 still sounds good, Soundblaster has a real software bloat problem and I hate loading its 20-something apps on the system to make it go… So, for Christmas this year I bought myself a new set of cans and a DAC/AMP…
I tend to prefer planar headphones, but planars that fit my ears tend to be in the $600+ range and that’s just too much in this economy… So, this time around I figured I’d try some regular old speaker headphones and I’ve always liked the fit of Sennheisers – so I found some HD 660S2s on sale and picked them up for $399.
The Sennheisers will support a balanced amplifier connection, and the Soundblaster X3 won’t, so I figured I should replace that too – which is where the FiiO K7 comes in, also on sale for $199.
So, all told it’s the most I’ve spent on audio hardware in a long time – but it sounds amazing! And as a bonus the FiiO doesn’t even need drivers. It just shows up as an audio device and works.
I’ve spent the last few hours just sending random FLAC files to the FiiO / Sennheiser setup and grinning like an idiot. 😀
Merry Christmas indeed!
Listening to "Trashin' The Camp" by Tarzan (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)