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A new year, an old ask: I'm looking to update my home office audio and could use some help narrowing the field. I currently have: (1) Sennheiser HD580 headphones that I bought in 1998 (  ) and have kept up with factory replacement foam/pads/cords. I love these.(2) a HeadRoom "The Little Version" headphone amp from 2001 that was gifted to me by a friend in the depths of his audiophile binging. (3) ...and a dogshit no-name $20 2.1 speaker setup I would like: (1) desktop speakers/monitors/earhair movers/whatever that don't suck too hard but cost, ideally, $250 or less. I use my computer mostly for work and occaisionally for gaming; I watch media in the living room which has a full 5.1 audio system. My office is a short corridor hop to my wife's, which means sometimes I am asked to make music happen, and some times I need to shut the gently caress up. Result: I probably run 65/35 headphones/speakers. From reading the previous 18-20 pages of the thread, I know that the JBL 3X series get a lot of love. I also know that at least one or two posters liked the Edifier R1280Ts. I'm currently seeing the JBLs listed at just shy of $300 for a pair pre-tax-and-shipping. So, my question here is: are the JBL 3X series worth paying 3x the price of the 1280s (or whatever delta from an alternative to the 1280s you might recommend), given my use case? (2) to know whether it is worth it to also replace the old-enough-to-drink HeadRoom with a new headphone amp when I get the new speakers. The JDS Atom or Schiit Magni seem like they might have upgraded hard/software over the HeadRoom without making me puke at the pricetag, but I'm willing to go higher than $100 - but no more than $300 - if there's a compelling reason. If headphone amp technology has laid stagnant for twenty years and the HeadRoom is as good as anything in that price range then hooray for me and you audio types should be ashamed of yourselves, etc. Any and all help, consideration, flaming, etc. much appreciated.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:47
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Ok Comboomer posted:So your total budget is $550? You’ve got lots of options, including the aforementioned SMSL and Yamaha/Sony receivers. First: thanks for the answers! Re: $550 budget - not exactly, no. The upper limits for dac/amp vs. speakers are co-determined; if I spend up on one I'd ideally want to spend less on the other. That's part of what I am curious about : how to think about balancing costs given that when I am using audio in my home office it's slightly more likely to be through my HD580s than speakers. But from a performance-floor perspective, I still want speakers that are better than creative/logitech type semi-disposables. Ok Comboomer posted:These could be paired with Micca RB42s (~$140), Klipsch RP400 or 500 ($200-$350 depending), vintage Realistic Minimus 7 ($40-60 on eBay), JBL Stage 120 or 130, or lots of other 4-5.5” speakers. I hadn't seen the Micca RB42s in the thread before, not sure if I missed it or not. From checking them out it looks like they're passive; would I have to pay attention to the power output of different pre-amps (e.g. magni vs atom) in order to drive them or is there enough standardization across brands that it'll Just Work [tm]? In particular I think the RB42s need an amp that can reliably do 4-Ohm impedance; I don't know if that's normal or not. Ok Comboomer posted:You could also look at monitor speakers like JBL LSR 305 Mk2 or Adam Audio T5V (you could pair these with a Magni or Atom and have the total package for $500, LSRs are $100 cheaper which gives you more wiggle room to get something like a Modius in order to use balanced cables if that matters to you). I guess at its core the tl;dr of my original post is whether it makes sense to shell out for 305-level sound quality in my use case, or if a pair of passives that are, say, around $200 an acceptable way to save $100+.
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Jan 8, 2021 19:04
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Fair points, for sure. I decided to go for a new dac/headphone-slash-pre-amp stack to start. Absent the ability to try anything out firsthand because we live in PlagueWorld, it doesn't seem like there's any appreciable distinction between models at the $99/unit price point so I went with the modi / magni stack. The change in price over time for the JBL 305s (and some of the other repeatedly-recommended speakers/monitors) as I went back again through this thread into 2016/7 is amazing. I don't see any reason to expect that they'll get as cheap as they were before anytime soon, though.
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Jan 8, 2021 23:34
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