I have the HD600s. I also use the Shure SE535 IEMs when I can’t use open back. I use them both off my iPad with a Dragon Fly Red as a Roon endpoint. They are both quite good.
my system is roon nucleus plus, light harmonic lightspeed 10g usb cable, cambridge audio azur 851n, tellurium q ultra black 2 interconnect, eufonika h22m headphone amplifier feeding a set of zmf verite openback headphones. incredibly hi-end sound!!! worth every penny ive paid with upgrades still to come too such as tellurium q black diamonds interconnects and will also be getting tellurium q silver diamond usb cable as soon as ive saved the money. ive never had such a good sounding system. on the headphone side im in heaven with the prospect of things getting even better. im also slowly building a speaker set up too. ill be adding 2 c a azur 851w power amps and i just managed to get a very very nice proac tablette reference 8 signature speakers off ebay in top condition at a bargain price. just need xlr and speaker cables. if the speaker set up is anywhere as near to the quality of the headphone set up so far then ill be in music heaven!!! cant wait!
I listen to Yamaha NS 1000 loudspeakers, but they have to be set up well with good acoustics. They have beryllium mids and mine have AMT tweeters, so I don’t experience a problem with missing details. Most speakers have 7” drivers that have to produce bass or mid-bass and also the mids. Then the difference between headphones and speakers is huge.
I would hardly call that a starter system.
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Seems like your cable cost to equipment cost ratio is a bit out of sync.
not at all. on paper yes id agree but performance wise, everything in my system punches well above its weight. another thing to look at too is my headphone amplifier cost £800 yet my headphones cost £2500 but yet pair together very very nicely. i dont look at cost ratio`s i look at works well together regardless
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Interestingly, headphones usually come with normal copper wires, as are the hundred meters rolled up in series coils in loudspeakers. Why are high-end folks spending so much money on speaker cables? If not needed on headphones, why on speakers?
There is a huge market for after-market headphone and IEM cables, with many cables costing more than the headphones and IEMs themselves.
Cardas Cable
OMG I missed that, they have discovered that market area too. Hope people are willing to ask for A-B-X testing, since that might be even easier than with loudspeakers. A simple switch box with a nice selektor and neutrik plugs should not cost much to fabricate.
A switch box won’t do the trick. The cables themselves have to be switched and doing a double blind test is basically impossible since one can just look at the cables while wearing the headphones. I only use different cables for the type of connection: one cable for a single ended connection and another cable for a balanced connection.
A bit impractical, but a shop could try something. If a different cable could make a real difference, cable companies would already offer such switches to shops to demonstrate the effect they claim.
Still, some headphones are even 600 Ohms so what can an ordinary cable actually do wrong?
Questioning the effect of cables on an audiophile oriented community board is only going to start a long discussion which either go nowhere or turn into a flame war. Best to just let it go, after all it’s not your money. Not quite censorship more like just trying to avoid a pointless fight.
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It’s a pity that “audiophile” and “high-end” are nowadays words related to people spending loads of money on snake-oil-like products, basically accessories to “pimp” sound equipment. There is so little consumer-awareness. There now is a pro (PA and studio) world and a high-end world. The pro’s, the ones that studied the subject, record artists amd orchestra’s and/or make music for money themselves, make fun off audiophiles. In my country (The Netherlands) the hifi business is almost entirely gone out of business.
I spend almost my whole life building speakers and messing around with radios and amplifiers,had a job in room acoustics and speech intelligibility, studied electro-acoustics, love music, have a large collection of records, a Technics sp-10 player but I now don’t call myself an audiophile anymore because I don’t buy this cable + stuff.
We should bring back common sense into the consumer audio world.
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If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Perhaps in this case when pigs fly is more appropriate.