Subject To Change

I think I have a problem…

I’m addicted to headphones. When I get bored, I buy headphones. Or headphone amplifiers. I now have…more pairs of headphones than I care to admit to.

There’s the Alessandros. They’re lovely. Sparkly, with that great Grado fun sound. I love these headphones, they’re great for most types of music, but they can be a bit fatiguing with their sometimes over-sparkly high-end.

There’s the Equation RP-21s. Great closed pair of cans, look as daft as can be when you’re wearing them but they kick out a nice sound and have excellent immersion.

There’s the Koss Porta-Pros. They’re a fun, funky lil pair of portable headphones but they’re open, which can be an issue in the great oudoors.

There’s the MylarOne X3is. My fave IEMs, they have a nice bass kick, but they’re fragile.

So I just bought a pair of AKG K81DJs. And they’re really neat too. They were kinda bass heavy until I took out the foam pads. And they were uncomfortable until I “modified” the headband (read “bent it with a fair amount of brute force.”) And now they’re great, and destined to become my standard outdoors can. They isolate well, they sound excellent, especially for rock and metal, which is my main fix when I’m on the train to work.

You wanna know about the amplifiers? Well, I have a crappy no-name one that actually gives a decent enough sound and is rugged as heck. Then there’s the Total Airhead, which is my standard portable amp, it  gives a nice boost to the AKGs and delivers a fairly nice soundstage without eating too many batteries. And then there’s the iBasso D1, combined amp and DAC which runs from a USB port on the PC and delivers lossless music to my cans of choice at the time via ASIO4ALL and Foobar2000. You haven’t lived til you’ve heard Nine Inch Nails in FLAC through that setup with a pair of Alessandros stuck on the end…pure bliss…

So, yeah, my name’s Flossie and I’m a headphone-aholic…