shudders Oh no… looks I’m buying more audio stuff. What ever will I do?
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Come to the dark side…we have cookies
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And RHNP amps apparently.
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To take this thread further off-topic:
When you focus a review arround “Is it the best”, a lot of products will just be ignored. The group of people just looking for something better than their $80 headset will see the “arrogant audiofools”, turn 180° and run.
Budget minded reviews do not have that problem. The verdict “it is good, but for half the price you only loose 5%” will let people figure out if it is for them.
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I personally attribute a large part of that phenomenon to experience (or more specifically, a lack thereof) rather than differences in hearing. A great many people simply “don’t know any better.”
Yes, there’s something technically impressive about maximum power output and decibels that blow your hair back, but when you’ve never experienced HiFi, “louder” is your only path to “better.” And having been at the HiFi game for close to 20 years now, almost nobody I know has any idea about HiFi unless I’ve been the one to introduce them. The normal, average experience is cheap gear that puts out “audio soup.”
I have used my Astell&Kern DAPs and Focal Utopias / Stellias to introduce more people than I can count to “good audio.” I mean dozens, if not hundreds of people: friends, family, coworkers, strangers at parties, sales people at Best Buy, etc. Out of everyone, I can count only 3 people who weren’t completely caught off-guard and blown away, and all 3 of them were so convinced they “[wouldn’t] be able to hear a difference” that they flat out refused to listen.
It’s always fun to hear reactions. One that still stands out to me was a friend hearing my loudspeaker setup; he told me my speakers “don’t even sound loud.” What he meant was that there was none of that noise and distortion–the kind of shrill sense of eardrums-under-assault that you get when you turn up a lousy system loud enough to get at all the nuance and detail that doesn’t come through at moderate listening levels.
Anyway, I’m starting to ramble, but while I accept that people have different tastes and preferences, my considered opinion is that our hearing is not so wildly different as our vocabulary is insufficient / underdeveloped to accurately relate listening experiences to one another. When you describe a shared visual scene with someone, it’s easy to talk about what you’re looking at (e.g., “the shades of red in the sunset on the horizon by that mountain”) and discuss why that’s interesting, but it’s considerably more difficult to do the same with audio.
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I had been wondering. My hands-down favorite headphones are the Stellias; for me they managed to capture the best of both worlds between Elegia and Utopia. However, my Eikons are my hands-down favorites for vocals. Love, love, love my ZMFs.
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ZMF… my first non-motorcycle season headphone.
True. i mean i understand what hes doing. But he’s kinda slagged off a lot of stuff and has not done them justice. Focal Clear and Utopia. ZMF Verite. The RNHP amp. it just bugs me somtimes
Yeah he’s not really good at reviewing anything high end imo (somewhat blunt but what I think)
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I’m really looking forward to getting mine in to do some comparisons. Review ought to be up soonish. I should be able to drive both amps out of the D90, though one (THX 887 most likely) will have to make do with RCA interconnects.
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Well said. Hi-fi is more like “you don’t need to concentrate to hear anything” (among a ton of other things obviously – including high fidelity sound – duh!) and yeah you definitely don’t need 100dB for that lol.
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I picked up a 6XX for tube amp listening pleasure.
Also got some Purple Heart wood planks. I cut, sanded, shellacked, and affixed it as side panels to my tube amp. Some flaws but good enough for not knowing how to handle my wood.
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Wow… really nice 
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Looks good. 
Ha!
I reviewed this amp a few months back and just posted it here on this site! Wonderful amp…good to see these out there! $649, 10 year warranty! Great parafeed design, pairs well with Focal Clears!
Going out later to procure some walnut for the sides…will secure with wood screws from the inside of the amp. Really easy. The side vents get covered but this is not an issue. I spoke to Jim about this.
Alex
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how did you secure the wood to the sides, FB?
Me and my good lady are gonna test some amp/dacs, iem’s or maybe even a headphone or ten…feeling excited 
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Awesome, have fun! I hope your good lady finds it interesting. I lowkey wish I had gone alone to canjam NYC cause my gf just sat uninterested and waited for me so I found myself rushing to listen to things more than I would have otherwise. It was a 4 hour trip though so would have been boring to go alone. Pros and cons I suppose lol
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Ahhhhhhh!!! My eyes!!!
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