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
On the 'Plus' side, it has USB, microSD, and Bluetooth connectivity built-in. And its small profile = desk-friendly.
You know what a tiny, low-end Class D chip amp running off a power brick sounds like? Garbage. Furthermore, ALL Class D amps sound bad unless you get one of the super high-end designs that use special amp hardware -- the cheapest of which I am aware of being $3,000. Sub-$100 mass consumer shovelware from China will put you in the very bottom of the barrel.
My original comment was questioning if it was appropriate to place something like this in an "audiophile" category, because no actual audiophile would touch this thing with a 15-mile pole.
I spent $600 on a power cable: https://www.lessloss.com/dfpc-series-p-213.html I spent $240 on headphone cables: https://www.moon-audio.com/black-dragon-headphone-cable-v2.html
Those items aren't even that great in audiophilia. The LessLoss is actually the bottom model in their line. The Black Dragons are good but not the best. The height of audio quality is far, far beyond what you've been exposed to. My USB isolator (Schiit Wyrd) is twice the price of this joke "amp".
And yes, cheap class D amps can sound good. It's not about being expensive. One can put together a superb Gainclone or just put together a fantastic sounding low powered amp. It's important to have a good regulated power supply. You think you know more about audio than you actually do. Anyone who has studied acoustics, psychoacoustics, or electrical engineering would laugh at your statements. I've heard a reference system run off a $200 Pioneer receiver. Why? Because it utilized chipamps and had really low crossover distortion. Sounds amazing with efficient speakers.
There are a lot of engineers in the amateur radio community, and they like to spend lots of money. (As professional engineers, they have plenty of money to spend.) I've seen them spend tens of thousands of dollars on transceivers and antennas and and all kinds of gadgets. I've seen them do all kinds of crazy things trying to achieve more range, or clearer signals. These guys obsess over their amps and use expensive, professional diagnostic tools to measure impedance, distortion, interference, and noise.
Mechanically speaking, there is no difference between the amps that hams use and the kind used in professional audio. They both amplify power in the same way, often using the same designs and components. A power amplifier is a power amplifier. It can be profiled and measured with the same tools regardless of its marketed application.
You know what I've never seen them waste money on? A $600 power cable or $240 headphone cable.
If a HAM who is happy to spend $4,000 on a glorified walkie-talkie thinks it's a waste of money, you can be pretty sure it's snake oil.
If you want to spend $600 because you think the colorful braids are pretty, be my guest. But don't pretend for a second that it's going to have any perceivable impact on the sound coming out of your drivers. At least, not any more difference than you could achieve with some cheap ferrite beads.
This whole quote is too silly to be real. Shill gonna shill. Then tries to contradict your logic with "scientific" terms like "super high-end design" and "special amp hardware."
This is not to say that expensive gear is ALWAYS a waste, just that thinking every additional decimal point is a logarithmic increase in sound value IS IDIOTIC. I can't count the number of people who listen to my ATH-m50x cans and wonder WTF they spent so much money on their Beats.
tl;dr if a $5 pair of headphones sounds awesome to you, don't buy a $5000 pair just because that extra money means it's 5000x better.