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
Stock china valve. Absolute junk - does improve to garbage after about 2hrs. So warm it is unusable, mid & vocals aren't great either, sort of a nasty mucked up 50s radio.
NOS Brimar valve. Shockingly better - out of the box, and should get better over next 2hrs. Slightly warm, but not thick. Bass is deep, controlled. Vocals are airy, highs far better.
Adele's vocals on quieter tracks sound absolutely haunting. However this is an amp that does not like extremely complicated music, musical fidelity headphone DAC amp (HPA) was better in that respect - BUT could become tiring quite quickly.
There are 2 Gain jumpers. Stock is both set to HIGH not Low, so I may try setting them to Low at some point.
Might also nosey around the PSU caps as that is an easy. Not sure about this one, NOS Mullard/Brimar makes it auditionable, stock tube is a toilet.
Edit: I'm an idiot, all I had to do was open the thing up and it was pretty obvious. I measured the difference of both set to low vs both to high. At 2khz there's about a 5db difference between the two.