Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
A: Start with Philips Fidelio X2/27. If you’re just getting into headphone audiophilia, this is the easiest thing in my mind to recommend. It will give you a good baseline reference on what to listen for since it exaggerates everything in a very pleasing way. Soundstage width, 360 location, stereo separation, bass response/extension/speed, high clarity/air/sparkle, mid presence, and overall frequency response is present, accounted for, and emphasized. It’s a nice transition into audiophile headphones, that’s easier for new-comers to appreciate than super flat response, hi-fidelity headphones. You wont’ even need an amp.
B. Once you have a baseline comparison of lower consumer headphone performance to the entry level, audiophile headphones, you can start to determine what aspects of the sound profile are important to you. This will inform your purchase decision rest of the way down the rabbit hole when looking for new headphones and eventually, amps to pair them with. To be honest, asking for recommendations is never satisfying even when you get plenty of responses. The enjoyment comes from exploration of options and trying different headphones out with your favourite music.
But we’re here to hopefully keep you from investing money on something you’ll regret. So yeah... please refer to answer A.