lmao I thought so.

What exactly does this thing change?

Depends on the person, for me it doesn't work and they're surprisingly sharp in treble.. Must be great to like them, I can see why these are popular and liked by many

Eh, to me these don't have bass.. They have haptic rumble that creates an illusion of way more bass than there actually is.

My gf loves her pair, to me they're absolutely weird.

Be careful with them though. While they truly offer great products, they also have some cash grabs that underperform or straight up lie in the specs.

I appreciate your shitpost comment more than the image lmao.. It's just so accurate

Completely different topic, but I saw your flair and I'm wondering, how is the Geshelli 2 and is it worth it or does it make any significant difference in comparison to other DACs?

Nice! For me it was the Sylvania that has absolutely no humming. But I had great luck with Tung-Sol and EH too (after an actual burn in period of 24-48 hours on the EH).

But some tubes crackle when I move my potentiometer, which I find super weird. The Sylvania is the only one not doing that.

>stock tubes are utter trash

Amp comes with a full set of JJ tubes lol.

I always wonder why vintage tubes are held in such high regard. I recently got a very old Sylvania 6SN7GTB, the one with a chrome top and yellow font, and to be honest, with the grain of salt that my amp is on the budget side of things, JJ 6SN7, Tung-Sol 6SN7 and EH 6SN7 Gold are all just as good from my testing.

Maybe all of this is very circuitory dependant, but my vintage tube experience has been a letdown so far. Most of the tubes hummed and some sounded very flat. The Sylvania tube sounds great, but it's not a huge change from all the newer stuff I've mentioned.

Just did a quick test with the Sylvania against the JJ6SN7: vocals are a little richer on the NOS tube, but only ever so slightly, like a 5% difference imo

For tubes especially it's so much more expensive for idk, a negligible change in overall audio performance. Of course I can only speak for the Xduoo TA-26 (and the Fosi Audio T3, not a good amp) and well, I do not know how good something like the Bottlehead Crack would perform (and I won't ever find out, because importing things to Europe is such a pain).

I do have heard that tube amps like the Eufonika H5 perform very nicely and I 100% trust that this is true, though I won't try it out. Sure, better capacitors, probably better circuitory too that operates at the tube's limits and such, but I highly doubt this will make a significant difference.

But all that said, reviewers and audiophiles like their beautiful words and fancy descriptions, but in reality everything is a little bit less awesome that most reviews say.

Don't let yourself get hyped up by tubes. Some tube amps really sound super close to solid state. Imho it can be a real waste of money, but everyone on here just blindly recommends tubes all the time.

Source: I have an Xduoo TA-26. A well received tube amp, swapped a ton of different tubes in and can confidently say that there's maybe a 5% difference at best.

Always try a tube amp next to your solid state amp before buying anything, if you can, because some of them sound so clean that you wouldn't be able to spot the differences. I love my setup, but I could live without tubes if I'm honest with myself.

Galaxy Buds pro pro are relatively fine, but if you want sonplete silence: IEMs and some wireless adapter, forgot which one exactly, but there's one from FiiO that's very good.

The catch: you need to buy new IEMs and the adapter and that stuff is pricey as hell.

Exactly. You might hear stuff like piano pedals or a singer taking a breath and such, but it's not like a super high end headphone is the only thing that enables you to hear these sounds. If it's in the recording, well, then it's in there. That's it. I highly doubt that there's more to hear once you get whatever is described as "summit-fi".

get a pair of good IEMs or one nice closed back headphone. Though, good IEMs with proper sound and a good seal will cost much less than a closed back headphone that does a similiar job.

You won't be able to enjoy anything open back. You will hear things from the outside and making your headphones louder will basically make everyone else hear everything. A lose - lose situation.

Imo they don't even have bass.. They just vibrate lol

Ear piercing treble though

as u/ThatGuyFromSweden said, the Clears are known to have this issue. I would try to send him a screenshot of a reliable source confirming exactly that. some elderly people love listening very loudly. My gf's dad basically blows his earsdrums out to mask his tinnitus when using his HD800. It's absolutely nuts. When I gave him my Hexa to try IEMs he literally maxed out my phones volume. I listen at half volume.

If that person continues to be super annoying I would say go there and simply take them back to spare yourself from the annoyance and sell them to someone else. Clears are popular, I think it's not too difficult to get rid of them and it would make yours and the dude's life much easier I guess.

What mic are you using? If it's the modmic then I guess it's the terrible mute slider of it, it's basically broken.

Can recommend to simply set a hotkey for muting yourself inside of whatever software you're using instead of using mute buttons. Worked for me and transitioning over to these settings just takes a bit to get used to.

I personally love the 6XX/650 but I can't speak for these amps. If you can, try before you buy. I wouldn't even see the 6XX/650 as a startingpoint, because, depending on your needs, it might as well be endgame already. Having heard the HD800 I still have no desire to move on. I plan on getting something from ZMF one day, but the 6XX will be at my side until it stops working and once that happens I will buy a 650 or 6XX again.

I would say go for it if you like non fatiguing, laid back sound. 500ish € would be about the same price I had to pay to import my 6XX and purchase the FiiO K5 pro. Probably on par with what is listed for you, so definitely more than worth it.

If the pads of the 650's are flat, I can definitely recommend that you replace them with either stock pads or ZMF suede pads.

Oh my.. guess you need to have golden ears to hear these differences.

I love my Xduoo TA-26, but it also taught me the lesson that many reviewers are full of shit. Being completely honest, to me the difference is neither good or bad, but it's very slim, like 5-10% different in comparison to the FiiO at best (using the FiiO's DAC on both devices).

Welcome to tube amps lmao.. I too can almost not tell the difference. But it glows, feels and looks nice.

But it was quite a tough pill to swallow once I realized that I feel for audiophile overexaggeration.

The biggest issue on here is that many people recommend these without ever having tried them or without knowing what they are talking about. From my understanding tube amps, just like solid state amps, can be very different from each other, from super clean to very warm sounding, depending on the circuitry or the way the tubes operate.

My Xduoo TA-26 is absolutely on the same level, if not better than my FiiO K5 pro and both sound very clean (I've also rolled a ton of tubes). The only difference could be a tad more bass and more midrange presence on tubes, but this is so minimal and also genre dependant that it's almost negligible.

I'm almost 100% sure that I could blindly make out a littledot from the TA-26 because it's supposedly smoother and less detailed, but I am not sure if I could spot a TA-26 in a blind test against a few solid state amps in a similiar price range.

Thinking back to what the closed back sundara does I'm pretty sure they can't lol. ZMF, especially with their life long driver warranty, seems like the best option for endgame cans.

It depends. I would say it's only worth it if you remove the stock foam, then you can truly tweak these headphones to different sound profiles, from very flat to super bassy, probably even more than EQ could (but I'm not 100% sure about that, maybe EQ won't distort if you tweak it in the same way how some foams affect these headphones).

I personally like it without foam, but because I'm worried of getting dust into my 6XX I added stretched pieces of nylon between the housing and the copper rings, basically a dust protector that doesn't influence sound.

With some inserts you get a close to stock 6XX, with others you get a very different experience. Dense foams give you super flat and analytical sound, really not what I prefer. Anything with holes in it or lower density is pretty nice.

So if it's worth it is up to you. It's fun to mess around with it, but a stock 6XX is just blissful so it's not like you're missing out. If you like bass, it's worth it. Watch the YouTube video from custom cans to get the measurements I'd say and then decide.

The nickel plated one, looks cooler lol

I still wonder how this compares to my 6XX with the coppermod and ZMF pads.