Ok-Change503

Ok-Change503 t1_je6ulku wrote

Besides all the reasons others have mentioned, audio hobbies have a really high barrier to entry. You have to learn all the parts of the chain, tech, nuances, etc. That's normal. What's not normal is you also have to establish yourself somewhere along the objectivity/subjectivity spectrum. Should I buy an expensive amp? Depends who you ask. Is burn in real? Depends who you ask. Do DACs make a difference? Depends who you ask. Cables? Diminishing returns? FR? Technicalities? I was so frustrated when I first got into headphones because with other tech products, tvs, smartphones, PCs, etc it's very formulaic. With audio products you HAVE to take a leap of faith, and IMO experience things for yourself in order to become experienced in the hobby and then after everything what matters is what you like, which is different for everyone.

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Anyways, what I mean to say is: I don't know anything about speakers and I'm still tired from learning about headphones lol. Maybe someday.

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Ok-Change503 t1_jaecbg5 wrote

Ah so you're using the headphone jack on a speaker amp right? The power output is very low compared to low end headphone amps or even a mobo/apple dongle. Given that the power output increases with impedance, I'm suspicious that the headphone output is coming straight from the tube preamp. This would explain why you're getting better performance on your dynamic driver cans than planars, which are low impedance, low sensitivity (generally don't do well with tubes). It's a bit of a shame because that amp looks pretty sweet otherwise. What I would do if I were you is hook up a dedicated headphone amp to the dac/preamp of the SV-500. You'll still get the tubiness of the preamp and good dac, but yeah you need more juice into Edition XS. They're 18ohm impedance so you're probably getting even less than the 24mW. You don't need anything fancy. Schiit Magni or Atom amp would do the trick. You'll probably notice a performance improvement with your 6xx and Clears as well.

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Ok-Change503 t1_ja9nl2m wrote

I used it for a while but found myself always going back to spotify. I liked the discovery a lot more and the fact that I could play from any device and use and other device as a remote. Recently started using roon/qobuz and so far I like it a lot. I didn't care for qobuz as a standalone but it's pretty good with roon. Let's see if I switch back to spotify haha. Why can't they just release the damn hifi tier

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Ok-Change503 t1_j6jvms2 wrote

I realize this is probably not true, but for some reason I always feel EQ adds some kind of haze or distortion. I've tried multiple EQ presets on multiple devices for multiple headphones but for me it just never sounds quite as good as without.

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Ok-Change503 t1_iye6qcx wrote

Here we go again! The answer is no one knows. If it exists, it's not measurable. Is our ability to measure limited? Possibly. Is it just placebo/other factors? Possibly. Humans can't deal uncertainty.

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