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
If, on the other hand, you put a good portable DAC/Amp in between the phone and the 4XXs (maybe an Oppo HA 2SE), you will most definitely hear a heavenly chorus or two!
Well, I am away from home a lot, mostly staying at hotels or other type of lodgings. I have been wondering from the moment I joined the drop if a portable DAC/Amp can be a good enough substitute for HE4XX. I was planning on getting the iFi Nano BL, which has marginally more power than HA2-SE, when I started hearing all these confusing remarks.
Other than the InnerFidelity measurement which shows it to be harder to drive than HD6XX, I have even seen some people commenting here saying that this needs the kind of power of Jot's balanced output which is about 25 times that of HA2-SE. That sounded obscenely inefficient even compared to the original HE400i. It could have been due to that person's source (low-output DAC, software attenuation via equalizer of some kind, etc.).
Can’t say the same about the 6xx. They are OK with the NX4, but outstanding with the X7S.
PS: We were talking about the Nano Black Label here, which has more than double the power of the previous Nano.