The Best Audiophile Earphones headphones and Amp

The Hi-Fi Man has excellent headphones, but they require a powerful headphone amp, as they are a difficult load. The Audeze LCD-2 (Revision 2) would probably be for me my favorite. They are easier to drive than the Hi-Fi Man phones and are more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time. Of course, all great phones require great headphone amps to sound their best, but with the Audeze's you can buy from a larger range of headphone amps.

Greg

I have not had two great head-phone amps in my audio life.

My first was the legendary Melos SHA. Used to listen to them with a few different Grados. I sold it about 10 years ago. If I found one used, I would buy one again for its amazing sonic abilities.

Recently, in March I bought myself a Eddie Current Balancing Act and the Audeze LCD-2. This is definitely on the higher end of what can be achieved sonically in the headphone listening world.

If I can sit and listen to music and not feel any desire to be anywhere else than just be and listen to music, then I am having a musical moment, like being in the pocket. I have many musical moments with this setup when I just sit and let the music come over me.

But, now I also have a small tube amp and speaker setup that gives me a whole different type of musical experience. And I am tempted to expand my speaker system, but it surely is going to get quite expensive both in space and money to achieve that kind of musical experience.

One thing to consider- the 4-wire system sounds immediately better than the 3-wire system (1/4" stereo connector)- its not subtle.

If you want the best then the 4-wire system is mandatory.

By the way, if anyone gets an LCD2 headphone, the Q-Cable replacement cable really helps things out, with much more resolved and tighter bass and adding a lot of overall refinement and faigue-free sound.

In my experience you must be willing to accept the compromises of any conventional headphones which I was unable to do. Recently I was in the market, auditioned Sennheiser 850s with various headphone amps. Good sound, right timbre, but lacking depth and imaging. Then my dealer introduced me to the Smyth Realiser, a 'magic' box that measures and records any system and plays it back through a set of Stax headphones. Just a gimmick I thought until I listened and could not tell the difference between music played through the headphones and the speakers! I heard spatial imaging and 3-D sound through headphones. Check out the website for information about this system. It is costly, but if I decide to buy headphones, it will be with the Realiser.