Quote:
Originally Posted by GrussGott
Yeah, for headphones, headphones.com will let you return up to 1 year later! And crutchfield has 60 day returns, Drop has 30 day returns (usually), and most reputable online dealers do as well (e.g., Schiit has 2-4 weeks, but you pay 5%). Handmade stuff like ZMFs ... well I think Zach has a fairly steep restocking fee such that you'd be better off reselling them which is very easy to do. (i should point out Zach is fantastic with customer service as in like the best you've ever had, and a lifetime guarantee)
Anyway, on IEMs, if you have tried campfire, those are about the best to my ear; Polaris if you like a V-shaped dance club scene, which I do, and which works great for me for my IEM uses. Up from there are the Ara, the IEM gold standard Andromedas (too neutral for me), and the Solaris which are fantastic.
For DAPs, never seemed worth it for me since I always have a phone with both tidal and a memory card so I just bitstream into whatever portable dac/amp I'm using. Has the downside of being a few components, but the upside of super flexible because a portable dac/amp can be used with laptops or elsewhere and by using the phone I'm actually saving a device anyway (the DAP would be another device to charge and keep track of), but that's just for my uses of course. iFi xDSD is nice since it has bluetooth just in case you ever need it, and I've tried monolith sticks versus audioquest dragonfly and I can't tell the difference (both worse than the xDSD though, so $80 wins on the monolith for an external portable dac/amp for my phone)
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It's too bad the guys over at Headphones.com got out of making their headphone amps. They had a bunch of different ones that spanned from budget to reference.
I haven't tried any other IEMs other than the Shures I have. At this point, I don't see myself getting anything new as I got the PM3s when Oppo announced they were getting out of the hardware business. So not recent but not that long ago either. The one set of headphones I would have liked to experience are the Stax's. I've heard electrostatic speakers such as the Apogee Stages and was blown away. Can't imagine what it's like to have electrostatics as headphones.
Thanks for the points and suggestion on a DAP. I've been looking at the FiiO M11 as a possible purchase.