Audio Cans for Home/Office use

sarang

sarang

Skilled
I've finally settled into my new office and its a fabulous environment. Now I can think about getting a much needed personal audio overhaul.

So far the places I worked for were typical MNC/Indian IT orgs with a strict taboos for anything except intex/iball headphone with mics. :bleh:

So only way to audio nirvana was my IEMs with my iPhone (EP630, PL30, PL50, M2, S4i), that is history now. I can now freely carry my cans to the workplace

Enough of OT and coming to the point:

The cans will only be used in two places. (Home/Office) Everywhere else the S4i will serve the duty.

Budget: 10K (Lower the better)

Source:

1. At home on my primary rig with a Xonar DX.

Foobar->ASIO/KS -> Xonar DX

2. At office the 2011 Dell XPS 15 SNB (L502X i7/8Gig/GT540/FHD shamelss plug and one of the reasons I love my new workplace) with stock audio.

Foobar->ASIO4ALL -> Onboard

3. 80% FLAC/ALAC/APE 10% MP3 10% FPS Games

2. Both the home and office environments are noisy and I mean seriously noisy since its a "Open Office" that we work in with no cubicles/cabins etc. So the tighter isolation the better.

4. I will be using the cans close to 4-6 hours a day at the very least so a lighter set might be helpful.

5. I have a small brain resulting in a small skulls so our old SHP 8900 used to fall off my head :(

6. The content I listen to is mostly New Age (Enigma/Enya/Era/Govi/Delerium/Klaus Schulze/Schiller), Rock (Pink Floyd/ColdPlay/GreenDay/APsP/REM), Ghazals and Hindi/Marathi movies.

In other words decent Mids and Highs are welcome at the expense of some bass "Quantity".

PS: I love my AE2s and Paradigm Monitor audio signatures if that is a helpful addition.

7. As might be apparent from the "Source" point, I don't own a HP amp. A total noob when it comes to personal audio in spite of owning quite a few IEMs (all driven by apple PMPs/ iPhones) So a HP AMP/DAC if the gurus (damn you buggers :p) deem fit might well be in order, just don't make me rob a bank and the smaller the better here too.

Over to you masters.
 
stalker said:
[OT]

Why the ASIO/KS??

Don't you use Win7 with it's WASAPI?

[/OT]
Click to expand...

A just question my lord! For some unknown reason the WASAPI with my Xonar DX stutters, and Skype flatout fails to operate with WASAPI in operation. For some reason this also happens with KS at 24 bit. Only KS 16 and ASIO 16 and 24 work well.
 
Hrt Ms2 -> AT-m35(closed back) / Grado sr60i.

The Hrt ms2 is an amazing Dac which you can use with you desktop and
Laptop. It is portable too. Since ur moving to headphones, a good Dac makes a lot of difference. The Dac and HP both should be around ur 10k budget, slightly more or less. The Hrt ms2 can be taken forward with even the most expensive and detailed headphones so it's also a great investment. You can also look at other dac + amp like the audinst mx1 being sold on the forum by pristinenote whIch from what I've read is excellent in terms of sq and vfm.
 
Thanks Benny,

A friend has an MS2 and its fabulous with Speakers, unfortunately it does not have an amp stage and I guess (I might be wrong so n00bism be pardoned) might struggle to cope-up with higher end cans. So i guess the audinst and the likes are the way to go. The budget of 10K is for now, and if I spend about 7 on the cans right now and use them for a month or so with the Xonar and the laptop's stock codec would i risk causing them any harm? If not, then I guess we can think of some better cans than the M35/or the SR60i. What say?
 
Crap, I had typed a long reply but it did not go through.

MS1's are really good headphones. But I don't think you can use them at office since they are open back. The sound will leak in and out of the headphones at all times.

And yes, you can add the dac later as well. For now both the headphones do well without a dac or an amp. There would be significant improvements with an amp added more to a M50 rather than a MS1 but both would improve in soundstaging and overall sound resolution after moving from an onboard sound card/xonar dx to something like an Audinst Mx1 or a HRT MS2.

And the HRT MS2 can drive most entry level headphones, you can control the volume from your pc, so you don't need an amp. Well initially atleast. Later you can always add an amp like PC- > HRT MS2 -> Amp -> High end cans. This way you can get some flexibility in the chain that you can switch one component when you feel like upgrading. But this kinda setup doesn't come without its drawbacks. ;)
 
bennysachdev said:
Crap, I had typed a long reply but it did not go through.

MS1's are really good headphones. But I don't think you can use them at office since they are open back. The sound will leak in and out of the headphones at all times.

And yes, you can add the dac later as well. For now both the headphones do well without a dac or an amp. There would be significant improvements with an amp added more to a M50 rather than a MS1 but both would improve in soundstaging and overall sound resolution after moving from an onboard sound card/xonar dx to something like an Audinst Mx1 or a HRT MS2.

And the HRT MS2 can drive most entry level headphones, you can control the volume from your pc, so you don't need an amp. Well initially atleast. Later you can always add an amp like PC- > HRT MS2 -> Amp -> High end cans. This way you can get some flexibility in the chain that you can switch one component when you feel like upgrading. But this kinda setup doesn't come without its drawbacks. ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks a ton sire!

Had a detailed discussion with Gautam and then Gannu. And considering these are my first "serious" cans intended at some "non-serious" :p usage I've decided to with M35. Will definitely think of stealing/buying/robbing the HRT in the office in the near future:) till then lets see how these babies play.

PS: I see, that even you have an MBP, I can actually use my MBP(2011) on BootCamp instead of the dell. Would do a A/B with the snb dell and post in this thread.
 
I have a 3 yo 15" mbp. I don't know about the SQ of the newer unibody ones but mine has a pretty decent SQ compared to other laptops like hp and dell. I remember faheem was using his denon d2000's with his xonar dx and when he had tried it with my mbp he found it better than the Xonar.

Also mac os(vlc player) gives a better SQ than windows, it could be the windows drivers. Guess this is completely OT and I don't have any evidence to support my theory and it is just my opinion, so i'll stop ;)

Try it out and let us know.
 
Try this out, don't eat food for 200+ hours and only listen to iball headphones with the worst EQ possible on Winamp. That should burn in the M35's perfectly ;)
 
Back
Top