How to spend over $1000 dollars on headphones
Here's how I managed to get an audiophile quality setup for a relatively reasonable price. If you want REALLY great sounding music, read on. Please note that all prices are estimated at retail value.
It all starts at the source, i.e. what you use to play your music. Since I use my computer as a source, I opted for a pro-sumer recording card, the EMU0404. This will run you about $100.
See that cheap breakout cable with the 1/4" jacks? No good. So I created my own. A similar quality cable bought retail would run you at least $100, if not more. To save some money, learn how to build your own EMU-0404 Analog Breakout Cable, or feel free to contact me for a quote.
Now any good sound card will output at a line level. While that might drive your average headphone, it won't drive any audiophile grade cans. The solution is a high quality headphone amplifier. Mine is a MisterX Gilmore Lite, which would put you back about $300.
But an amp only produces sound as clean as the power that goes into it. To make sure it's clean, I use a small and portable Monster Power AV200 power conditioner. It's not top of the line but it does well for my purposes by cleaning the power with Monster Stage 1 v2.0 filtering (and the small size means it travels well with my setup). When at home I plug this conditioner into an Acoustic Research RF line filter for a little added benefit. The AV200 will run you around $40.
From the amp you need to get the signal to your headphones, and the stock cables on your average headphone are very so-so. So I built my own line of cables dubbed Yellowjacket Sennheiser Upgrade Cables. These are premium cables that will run up to $150 or more depending on length.
Finally you need the headphone itself, and I use Sennheiser's top of the line HD-650 Audiophile headphone. It's an incredible sounding headphone and runs around $350-$400 new despite the $550 MSRP shown on the Sennheiser site.
So add it all up and you've got a little over $1000 worth of audio gear. There's a saying that says every dollar spent on a headphone setup is worth $10 in speakers, so that would put this system on par with a $10,000 home stereo setup. Who knows if that really holds true, but I assure you that the sound of this setup will absolutely blow you away!
--Sean
posted on 08.30.05
comments
Just FYI, my headphone setup has changed so much that I though it needed a whole new post! Check out the updated setup here:
http://www.seanmulholland.com/arc/120405-how-to-spend-2000-on-a-headphone-setup-the-saga-.php
Thanks,
--Sean
posted by Sean Mulholland on 12.08.05