I do not unfortunately.

Shortcomings of a smartwatch? Can you explain? I thought smartwatches had all kinds of utility.

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Truth in advertising with the name I guess

If you call the 6XX mid, is that a good thing or a bad thing?🤔

Oof. I’ve been mostly laying off my Heresy since all these reports have started coming out. I can survive damaging a pair of cans but I really do not want to damage my hearing.

> I'd never besmirch its good name.

You called them "cheap studio cans" when they are widely considered very good headphones. You did besmirch them. What do you think is really better in this price range?

yea.. I agree, it shouldn't be that low. BL03 have a great value for its price range, it's popular for that. but with that popularity and sales, I wonder why they still can't (or won't) change those weird gibberish typo on their packaging.

"Belief, Letmusicburn, Oppoty, Nevergiveup, Annotation Music and Driams"

I swear, it's a gateway drug.

My buddy: "Aww, I was missing out this whole time. What's the price?"

Sennheiser rep: "$59,000. You can customise the colour of the marble and the logo"

My buddy: "Gosh darn it, gotta start somewhere"

Me: "Fancy headphones or a decent car..."

Hifiman: " Lemme intoduce you to our cheaper tonally similar $6,000 headphone..."

I wouldn't sleep on old DAPs or even phones. I'd get flammed here saying it, so I'm not going to name brands and eras, but there's some stuff outt here that can be had for $20 and sound better than the TOTL DAPs for lower Z headphones.

With proper stuff it's almost never 'good' or 'bad'. But if you know the reviewer tends to favor a slightly more bassy FR than you, or generally downplays the comfort. Then you can look at their review and have a good idea of how your opinion on said headphone would be.

Indeed the noble MDR-7506 are very decent, I'd never besmirch its good name.

Honestly not sure how he'd react to the HE-1, or myself for that matter.

I'd look into a Hifiman 4XX or other huge open-backed planar. One thing the 7506 does not have is soundstage.

Edit: Why the downvotes? My 4XX sounds amazing.

Get him something cheaper. Make him realise first that his mdr 7506 are pretty decent and are not just "cheap studio cans".

Then, book a listening session for the he-1.

It could be worse. There's some people that buy very expensive "audiophile grade" ethernet cables. I've also seen discussions about hard drives and SSDs that supposedly can change the sound quality of stored files.

Wanna see the new headphone tests, not iems.

$200? Not much is gonna sound much better than an MDR-7506 at that price point, and anything that does sound better doesn't sound good enough to the point where it would blow your friend's mind. You'd probably have to go into the $300-$500 price range to get something that will surprise them. They already have some pretty decent headphones imo

Try some HD 660s sometime. I’m like addicted to them. Never going back to AirPods ever again.

Integrated audio quality can be a crapshoot, but being blown away by a gaming headset just because you switched to a transparent DAC does make me think placebo might be involved.

Phantom improvements in audio quality resulting from expectation/confirmation bias are embarrassingly rampant in audiophile land, and no one is fully immune. Unless you put in the time to do your critical listening reps, you will struggle to distinguish between real and imagined differences in sound quality, and you will still have to actively concentrate to discover them if you do. When I started out, it took me 15 minutes of A/B testing just to realize that S and T vocal consonants were completely inaudible on a pair of $5 chi-fi shitbuds.

My advice for people new to this stuff would be not to buy anything more expensive than the basics (e.g. the Apple dongle) if you don't understand the underlying principles behind how they work. (Reading Head-Fi reviews and manufacturer marketing copy doesn't count)

The old blog of NwAvGuy, the designer of the classic O2 amp, has a lot of info about the DAC/amp side:

https://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html
https://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-impedance-explained.html
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/gain-and-headphone-ampsdacs.html
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/noise-dynamic-range.html

Crinacle, the final boss of IEM reviewers, has written his own set of articles on the transducer side on the "Important Articles" section of his website:

https://crinacle.com/

Precogvision, the midgame boss, also made an intro video with accompanying article:

https://youtu.be/jQrKDDBDJII
https://headphones.com/blogs/buying-guides/everything-i-wish-i-knew-before-getting-into-audio

Oratory1990 is this sub's resident person who gets paid to do this stuff, and you can find info and ask questions on his own sub, /r/oratory1990.

If you want to go full nerd, you can pick up Floyd Toole's Audio Reproduction, but the content there mostly relates to loudspeaker acoustics.

> max budget $200

It's a lost cause.

I remember the WiFi syncing was really slow as well. It was cool but it failed often lol.

Welcome! As someone who is also new to the hobby, you can see my post history and I hope you do not fall into the same rabbit hole that I have fallen into haha. Upgradeitis is very real, and I pray you do not fall for it.

I'll drink to this

Android chooses the best codec available by default. LDAC is nothing special if you have an Apple device because AAC there sounds very good.

I can't compare to the HD800s but I'd say the OG Clears just are HD6XX but better. I wouldn't call it different in really any way either. No trade offs in any way except price. Bass was the most noticeable improvement.