New to the HiFi Headphone Game

Hey All
I’ve been doing a lot of off-ears research. Sadly, living in Iowa, the options to get a lot of these headphones on my head to hear them is limited. I am willing to do some travelling to try these things out as Minneapolis/Kansas City/Chicago aren’t too far out of reach. I guess I’m going to ask the same question everyone else asks: Any guidance for a beginner who cares deeply about sound, but mostly comes from a car/boat audio background? Most of my research has lead me to believe I really need multiple sets of headphones to cover my needs and wants, but everyone has to start somewhere right? :slight_smile: Below is some detailed info on where I’m at and what my needs are. I’m open to any and all suggestions even if they may be a bit out of budget or come in well under budget.

Budget: Flexible, but am looking to get started in the $1500 range for amp/dac/cans.

Use cases:
Music - Majority of my listening is the more extreme side of metal music (Opeth, Rivers of Nihil, Slugdge, Immortal, Alkaloid have been in my recent rotations) , but also enjoy some electronic, progressive rock, and classical. I’m happy to go into further detail on my listening if it would be informative.

Gaming - I don’t really play anything competitively anymore, but I enjoy immersive sound while gaming. So something that would work for Single Player FPS games from a positional audio standpoint, but also help immerse me in the music and sounds of the world would be desirable. I also play StarCraft and some other strategy games.

Cans I’ve been lead to believe may be a decent choice for me given that I have a wide range of needs.
I understand there is a pretty wide range of prices here:
DT 1990 Pro
Ananda (worried about quality/longevity from HiFiMan based on what I’ve seen and read on them)
Sundara (same as above)
Focal Elex (I really love Focal loudspeakers for car/boat audio, and have a pair of Chorus 726 in my living room that I listen to music on and enjoy thoroughly)
HD 650/660s
LCD-2 (or Classics)
Aeon Flow
These are probably out of range, but everyone seems to rant and rave about them: Arya, LCD-X, Clear, Fostex 909.

Amps I’m considering, but figured a can selection would be required first:
THX 789
SMSL SP200
If I were to go with tubes:
DarkVoice 336
BottleHead Crack (DIY doesn’t scare me off)

DACs:
This is where I’m totally lost, and I assume it will depend on the cans and amp I go with as to which DAC would work well for me.

I look forward to some suggestions from you all, and thank you for taking the time to read all this.

-M

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I think you might want to lower your budget a bit tbh, as I think jumping into the higher end might not be the best idea without having some experience. I think. What aspects of sound do you prefer? Also are comfort and build large factors?

As long as you’re not playing competitively, I think just about any headphone on your list would be better than you’ve probably ever heard if this is all new to you.

I’d personally start small to see what you like before going deep in pocket, while making sure nothing you pick is immediately replaceable.

For amps, I’d just grab the 789 personally if its available for immediate purchase. I haven’t tried the other versions, but seemingly you can save some money without missing much/anything. That will pretty much future proof you for just about any headphone under $1k. I’m picking the 789 only because I own one. JDS Atom also seems great at $100. I’d also start simple with a tube. The Dark Voice is enough for a lot of people if you can find it $200 or less, but if I was handy I would want a BH Crack.

For Dacs, go simple like the Topping D10. It will do all you need at the start. Then I’d spend the rest on headphones.

My picks:
Dynamic: HD6xx $180-220 depending if you still can get them on sale. Great headphones, great on tubes. If you really really like them on tubes, get the 600s.

Planar: Hifiman HE4xx. Gives you a baseline for planars especially at the current price of $130

I can’t speak for Focal speakers, but if the Elex sounds similar and you like that sound, its an incredible headphone, but you may want to dip your toes before you jump at it off the bat. It’s also not on sale at the moment.

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Amp wise, I would actually instead recommend a schiit asgard 3 with the dac module and be done for amps (or get a jds labs atom with d10), as I think the 789 is somewhat overkill and also you would want to go balanced, adding more cost for cabling and the dac

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Coming in under-budget is fine as well. I will be visiting my sister in Minneapolis over the holidays, and hope to get a variety of cans on my head while there, just to get a better idea of what I like/dislike.

I prefer a balanced sound with a lot of accuracy, and maybe a slight lean into the bass (based on what I’ve been reading, I guess this would mean something that doesn’t have too steep of a roll-off in the lower frequencies). I haven’t noticed a sensitivity to highs much in past listening, but have heard set-ups that had “piercing” highs that got to me. From a mobile audio/home theater standpoint, I think a lot of people like more bass than I do, as a lot of things sound “muddy” to me at their preferred bass levels/tuning/accuracy.

I’ve heard a lot of the more common brands like bose/beats. Beats are too bass heavy for my tastes/listening preferences (by design I’m sure). I heard some HD 600s years ago, but my memory of what I liked/disliked on those is gone. All of my headphone experience has been with dynamic drivers, so I’m not sure on planars. I have some Focal Spirit Ones that came free as a promotion with some installs I did about 5 years ago. I still use and enjoy those, and they get noticeably better when played on an A/V receiver or amp.

I also have a Astro A40+MixAmp that i’ve used for gaming in the past, but since my wife is also into gaming, she will be inheriting those as she seems to like them.

I don’t really mind if i have to get balanced cables or balanced amp, was hoping on the amp/dac front that I could get something that would work with my first sets of headphones, but wouldn’t require replacement if I step up from there.

Comfort is a large factor as I can listen/game for 4-6 hours in a single session at times. Build quality would be secondary to comfort, but would like something that will last.

So the headphones that you listed, those that you would seem to prefer would be the 1990 pro, hd660s, elex, and the lcd2 imo. Something not in your list that you may like would be perhaps the edition xx. That being said, perhaps it might be worthwhile to start smaller so you can get a taste of different headphones. Something you could do would be to order an amp and 3 headphones under 150ish dollars each that would represent different sounds. I think if you picked up an hd58x, he4xx (or he400i), and a dt880 600 ohm, you could reasonably get a good sense of what you would want later on down the line. You could also either return (in some cases) or sell off the headphone(s) you didn’t enjoy. You would also pick up your amp and dac at the same time

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Would the JDS Labs Atom drive something like the 600 ohm dt880 ok?

Thanks to you both for the advice on starting smaller. I have big eyes on most things tech/audio and tend to go overboard.

Probably better to get a sampling of headphones that are decent, and then step-up from there, plus then I can have a variety of sound signatures that I can interchange based on what I’m currently listening to/doing.

I think maybe I’ll get 2-3 like you said and go from there.

Looks like the HE4xx and he400i are about $30 different right now. Would there be a significant difference in sound quality/comfort/build between these. They look pretty similar based on what I’m able to find.

From personal experience, if you’re willing to jump in with a starting budget of $1500+ you’ll end up spending it twice. I owned an Atom A40 and thought it was awesome, but literally anything you’re talking about with a dac/amp will destroy it

They are almost identical in sound, just a difference in build. I would personally get the 400i since you can return them if you like them (and you really cant for the 4xx since it’s massdrop)

The atom would do a fine job at powering all of them, no problem. I would actually suggest the monolith liquid spark and topping d10 combo as I think it would power the headphones better and add a bit of warmth that you might enjoy

Almost everyone will love their most recent purchase, but when you look at the post counts on the forums here, someone is either doing something great value wise or something really divisive. This community is really focused on value vs. price and most of the popular threads here are because something is punching way above its price

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Just my 2 cents :

Loving the SP200= 120+ cheaper than the 789
Geshelli ENOG2 DAC = super clean and 3 gain levels which eliminates the worry about the missing 3 gain level, easily allowing the SP to play sensitive IEM.

Those 2 should be under $500
Get 2 pair of headphones: He4xx $130 and maybe the 6XX or DT880 600ohm to have choices.

or grab a liquid spark and have 2 different amp choices

I think I would suggest limiting it to one amp for now lol

Hi, my name is Jules and I have a problem… lol :sweat_smile:

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Thanks for all this help!

I think if I were to go multiple amps, i’d probably want to go tubes (more because they are cool than anything else…i did love my tube heads from my guitaring days)…Also the jerks who can afford McIntosh tubes for their home theaters sound pretty sweet from the demos I’ve had…not sure how well that stuff would translate to headphones though.

My concern with the Geshelli is no USB in. I’m not sure that will matter a ton. My source is likely to be my PC more often than not. It does have SPDIF out on the board (ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390).

I’m using the Spidif on a Asus X370 Aura MB right now

I use USB pretty much exclusively. I’ve never had driver issues with Windows 10

I’m a sys-admin by day, so i’m not worried about getting things to play nicely with my windows/linux stuff :slight_smile:

I mostly agree with @M0N on this thread. I think with $1500 you’re best served by getting a solid amp and dac and getting a handful of different sounding headphones to help you determine what you like. For amps, the SP200 has been mentioned here and with your budget that’s a good place to start, I think. The THX amp tech has come as close as we have so far to the “wire with gain” ideal. The SP200 is the most budget friendly entry point to THX right now. Pairing that with something like an SMSL SU8 dac gives you a super clean, honest sound. Such a pairing has 2 benefits for someone like you with your budget just getting into this game: 1) you’ll be hearing (mostly) what the different headphones are doing and 2) the SU8 and SP200 are strong enough performers that you likely won’t need to spend additional money on electronics upgrades in the future, you can put the money you’ll have into higher performance headphones. With such a stack right vnow you’ll have the bulk of your budget to put toward multiple different sounding headphones.

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The main issue with the thx stuff though is that they tend to fall apart with higher end headphones compared to other amps

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Do you mind elaborating on that a bit? First time I hear such issue.