Headphones and Amps and DACs... Oh My!

[Aywok]

Did you get the 990s from NCIX? They had them for $220 last week... If only it wasn't right before pay day

I've been looking for new cans for a while and everything I listen to just sounds better and better and I keep thinking "okay well if I wait another month I can get THESE...". I'm pretty sure this is just going to go on for another year and I'll end up with some Audeze LDC3's or something insane like that.

Currently, I'm running my Mac into the Audioengine D1 DAC/amp and from that into Audioegine A2 speakers and Sennheiser HD228 headphones. At this very moment I have The Fragile playing through the headphones as hard as this little amp can push them, just to see what they can handle, and my god does it ever sound good. I'm not sure if it's the amp or the headphones but the sweet spot seems to be around 60-70% volume. On bassier songs like Into The Void you can feel the earcups vibrating against your head even at 50% volume.

For what it's worth, I know this is super bad for my hearing. I've never done this before and I don't plan on doing it again, just wanted to see how far I could push these $30 headphones, and they held up wayyy better than I anticipated.

$220 is about the "regular" price you'll pay for the 990 250's at this current time. Sweetwater has them right now for $229.99.

You know what you really want to do is save money for years and go the Stax/electrostatic route.

I have several "portable" type DAC/amps, and 60-70% seems to be about the sweet spot. That's where I keep the volume myself for several of my Sennheisers. If you want to get a little more accurate, I use about 55-65%.

(Edit): I listen to a lot of jazz and anything higher than that, the horns become way too strident.