>I'm unsure if it's a placebo.

Could be

>Is this normal?

Yes

>do I not have a trained ear for it?

Could be

If youre not sure you hear a difference, get the cheaper one. Doesnt matter if there is a difference or not if you can't hear it, as long as you dont claim there's objectively no difference. Really goes for everything audio, especially here

lmao

daps now play at a higher file quality and are of higher audio quality at the expense of being more power hungry

battery technological advancement is far slower than most other tech in general

as others have said, screens and android eat up a lot of power

sony devices, like the zx300 and wm1a, have good battery and can be had for your budget second hand, the wm1a has auto turn off and 30h runtime

and i thought audiophile stickers were bad

though i have heard an very slight audible difference by adding a magnetic attachment to my iem cable. It cost less than 1usd though (and i didnt buy it)

the biggest issue with 0.78 2 pin connectors is it becoming loose and you losing one side of the iem

This is not helped by fake 0.78 pins that widen the connectors.

t2 ftw

strength wise there is nothign to worry about

the mest mk2 is pretty good and an easy recommendation for trying out, but far from the best, especially for classical music where it struggles massively in imaging and timbre to a lesser extent. Most other things they do quite well

Agree about the veil thing, and i think the highs sound weird, having a much lower dynamic range than the mids and bass

depends on your current laptop dac, and the setup you buy, and what you listen to. But most likely, there will be a difference

the question you should ask is not whether or not there will be a difference, but whether you like the difference and if it is worth paying extra for

I don't try cheap amps and dacs so I can't say (because I just try for fun and am not shopping), but on the higher end, the signature and quality of the dac/amp can overpower the qualities of the headphones very easily. I'm not saying amps and dacs HAVE TO make a difference, or that they make a positive difference, but they CAN make a massive impact on sound

I don't use amps, dacs, or headphones because I only use a portable setup

Technicalities exist, and technicalities are what you should be looking for

FR graphs tell you the distribution of frequencies, ie. how loud each frequency is. Nothing more, nothing less. A frequency distribution you don't like can be fixed by EQ (though some devices degrade the audio quality after applying EQ), but you can't EQ your way into detail, timbre, imaging, speed, etc. Soundstage is the one thing where you can improve through EQing, but not by much. Material doesn't tell you any reliable information about the sound either.

The most important thing really, is to try the headphones yourself.

IMO, the utopia and 800s perform quite poorly (not just for the price), as with most headphones on the market. Two i really recommend trying are the Meze Empyrean and Susvara. Below that the Arya is decent for the price compared to other headphones, but is easily beat by IEMs at the same price.

Another thing to keep in mind for headphones is the DAC and amp, which makes a massive difference in sound. So much so that I wouldn't recommend buying anything unless you can try everything together at a shop