First of all I hate the term audiophile. It evokes so much negative imagery, like spending $10k on cables — CABLES!! Or marking the outside edge of your CDs with a blue marker (look it up, people did this). But hi-fi doesn’t really cut it either. I have had many headphones I consider hi-fi.
I could even argue that my first pair of headphones, Sony V6, were audiophile. But I don’t think they qualify anymore and by the end of this email you may agree. I really enjoyed them for many years but eventually sold them because I was hooked on speakers at the time.
More recently I’ve owned many Sony earphones (aka in ear monitors or IEMs) for both air travel and to gain isolation from nearby coworkers. I thought they sounded wonderful. I tried a few other highly rated earphones from other well respected brands, but always returned them for another Sony. Over time the price range went up from about $50 to $100 per pair. Each new pair I subjectively considered an upgrade in sound.
But when I started at my current job 5 years ago, I realized that headphones might solve a problem I’d had for years: coworkers coming up and talking to me when I was listening to music without waiting for me to remove my earphones. People just don’t really see them. So I started researching headphones.
What I ended up with was a pair of Sennheiser Momentums, which were on a good discount because the Momentum 2’s had recently been released as a minor upgrade. Even with the discount, these were by far the most expensive headphones I had ever owned at around $300. But I justified the expense because they did sound noticeably more neutral and I was going to be using them every day for hours each day. And I did just that.
BUT after a couple of months they were driving me crazy. Even the reviews had noted that the ear cups were fairly small for around-ear (circumaural) headphones and that listeners with large ears might not find them comfortable. Apparently I have large ears. Who knew?
So I decided to up my game a bit. I’d read many favorable reviews of the Oppo PM-3 headphones. Some even said that were the best sounding for under $1000. They were also different than anything I’d listened to before because they use planar magnetic drivers. For an understanding of how this works I’ll defer to Wikipedia on various headphone driver (aka transducer) technologies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphones#Transducer_technology
About $400 later I was very excited to try planar magnetic headphones for the first time. I was… not impressed. The bass was pretty weak and they weren’t very comfortable to wear. I have read many audiophiles recommend breaking in new equipment before evaluating. I’d always been skeptical of this, especially for solid state electronics like amps. But now I’m not so sure it doesn’t help headphones because I’ll swear the bass got better and better over the first few days of listening. I also managed to greatly increase the comfort by keeping them stretched around a row of books. This reduced the clamping force on my fat head and should obviously be done gradually over extended periods to be effective without breaking anything.
Once I had them broken in I did some A/B listening against my Momentums. I was honestly a little shocked at what I heard. Frequency response was very similar with the PM-3’s having a bit deeper low end. But what really impressed me was the increased clarity without any perceptible bump in high frequencies. I was hearing details in my music that I’d never heard before. Little studio tricks used to fatten vocals like harmonizing tracks and pre-echo effects were easily heard. When many sounds played together, they were easy to discern from each other instead of hearing more of a blend. Without any preparation from me, I had my wife try them out. She recognized the same effects. She said that comparitively the Momentums sounded like she was listening to them through a diaper.
I was extremely pleased. At least I was while listening to them through my iPhone. But I’d much rather use my computer at work and that was a different story. Flat, boring, devoid of dynamics would describe them connected to my laptop’s headphone port. I’d always thought that headphones were so easy to drive that just about any decent headphone jack was as good as another. I was wrong.
I decided to buy the matching Oppo HA-2SE portable headphone amp. It was a minor upgrade in sound over my iPhone, but helped my computer tremendously. I had learned another lesson: headphone amps can make a difference.
That was about 4 years ago. I still have the Oppo PM-3 and HA-2SE amp but Oppo stopped making any electronics except for high end Android phones. I’ve been very satisfied with the sound, but I also have to admit that over longer listening sessions the fit of the headphones does wear on me. The cups are small enough that they contact my ear a bit and over time kinda rub on the top and back of my ears. Also I’ve always wanted to try open back headphones and since I work at home now, I have the perfect excuse to do so.
But open back headphones actually weren’t the audio equipment I bought first. 😈
