Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
The intent was to build an amazing dac / amp primarily made for music and then apply our tech on TOP of that. Without having the solid foundation of stellar audio playback it really would defeat the purpose of the push and move we were making to enter the external dac / amp space.
I can tell you that time after time and show after show people have come and seen the X7 (and E5) and asked us "Why do you guys sell this for so cheap?". OR they've been surprised when we told them the price point after they thought it was easily going to be $999 or higher, especially with all the features that we've added to the product. I'm sure you could ask this to users on Headfi and they'd back it up. I wouldn't make the claim if it wasn't true.
The answer has always been we wanted to make a product that was approachable to a large audience yet delivered with products easily twice as expensive. I think the reviews from users on Headfi and press speak for themselves. The X7 is a pretty amazing piece of kit for the price point and performers well above the price paid. Maybe we missed an opportunity to charge more for it...but at the end of the day it falls in line with what we set out to do. Create a piece of gear that would deliver above and beyond the price paid for it.
As an aside: I use the X7 with a pair of Mr.Speakers Ether C's and it drives them sublimely (in fact we partnered up with them at this years CES in our booth!).
The M9XX is strictly about sound quality, It does only one thing, but it does that one thing extremely well. 32 bit audio appears to be the key selling point.
The X7 is about a lot of good quality functions. It has a DAC, bluetooth pairing, the ability to connect to speakers, 1/4inch headphone and 3/8 inch headphone jacks, built in dual microphones and a headphone stand (might have missed a few extras,) It has 24 bit audio.
So It's a matter of taste. I personally will be going for the X7 Limited Edition as it has a bit more to its audio from the standard and will probably be a compromise between the two, and I can use my current 3/8 headphones and optical cable sound bar with it until my order of Fostex Purplehearts arrives. I can use it to make bluetooth phone calls on or use VOIP with hilarious modulation results. Plus I can see myself being able to re-purpose the X7 for other sound setups if I decide to buy a M9XX in the future. (Like managing cables out of a DJ booth, home theater, out door speaker system or something to that effect)
So the decision, in my opinion, is High Sound quality vs Gaming Sound Quality + Features
Do you know whether Creative Labs will release a 32-bit DSD-decoding DAC/amp in the next year or so? I'd hate to pick up the X7 LE only to watch you release a DSD version two months later.