creative aurvana live are also around 50$ and sound great for the price. they use baby bio fostex drivers. ie trickle down tech made cheaper for the masses.
Tbh I’m not sure how popular they are where I live, I never paid attention but I know the Beats have a bad reputation online lol. And they may not be much improvement to the xm3 I already own. But yeah I could consider them along with the Meze and the t60rp without mods.
Well, I’m wondering what the third headphone should be, I wanted one in the 500-800 price range. Just to see the differences and if I’m really into spending more. If I don’t think it’s worth it, I will just never buy a headphone again, no harm done lol.
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Yes, then it might be better to do without headphones and buy a halfway decent Dac that can drive both your headphones properly.
That makes more sense than having 3-5 headphones and no dac/amp that can drive the whole thing as it should.
An Aragon Mk 3 or Planar headphone needs juice if you want to have fun with it.
Even the Sennheiser you’re aiming for. 
I didn’t mention dacs/amps because I didn’t want to make my post too broad, I was considering the labs atom amp that is 100 and a similarly priced dac. Idk, considering that the hd 6xx is 210, it really hurts to buy something like the thx aaa 789 that is 300.
If I bought the Argon mk3 i’d go with the a-100 instead just for the power but yeah maybe it isn’t the best idea and I should go for something like the Meze Noir instead. I also wanted some bookshelf speakers so the A-100 didn’t seem that unreasonable.
TBH, I set myself a $200 limit for headphones. Yeah, you can get better headphones for more, but the oldest term in audiophilia is diminished returns. A $100 headphone might sound twice as good as a $50 headphone, but a $600 headphone won’t be 6 times a $100 headphone.
And as you get higher and higher, your DACs and amps should follow. I’ve been around for a while and a Xduoo Basic and T50RP does it for me. But then I mostly listen to IEMs (which I suggest looking into as well).
Kinda isn’t, tbh. Yeah, it’ll do the job for Fostex and speakers, but what about less thirsty headphones? IEMs and such? The A-100 is good if you want a dedicated amp for a small selection of headphones, otherwise… not a all-round.
I say, get a decent DAC/amp setup, and if you LOVE TxxRPs, then consider the A-100 but don’t be surprised you’re not blown away.
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What’s a decent amp/dac for you? From what I’ve researched the labs atom amp and the Liquid spark are pretty good even for expensive headphones right?
I run a Xduoo Basic. Great dac and good enough power for what I use it for, runs my T50RPs to screaming. But, I’m more of a special case who needs power in a portable size.
Zen DAC would be good so long as you’re willing to run higher-demanding headphones balanced.
btw, these two do audio out. My Xduoo basic is run to my speaker amp, SA300. Zen Dac is a bit more flexible as you can control the audio-out output in variable mode.
But these are good for headphones priced up to like $400–anything past that and I think you need to upgrade to really help those cans out. I don’t care for above that, so I don’t have many recommendations. The normal stacks are popular, tho.
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