Curious_Swordfish_36

Curious_Swordfish_36 t1_je8oir5 wrote

I use tidal master files, though any decent quality will work. Spotify is fine. MP3s work too. The biggest issue with these is that they play exactly what the sound engineer produced. If it is a bad track, you won’t like listening. If it is a well put together track, your ears will be rewarded. Crap in crap out. Quality in, quality out. It will not make a bad track sound good. The tube amp will do that though…

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Curious_Swordfish_36 t1_je2omnb wrote

I am sure I will get crap for having any opinion at all, considering that this is a meme and your question belongs in a serious thread, but yes, it is considered by some to be one of the best sounding headphones that they have ever heard, save for the Abyss Phi TC, which is arguably better. Lots of people diss this brand and the costs, and the cables and whatever they like to pontificate about, but I have owned both the Phi and the Diana and if you drive it with the right headphone amp (again, lots of extra money for this), you will touch your soul with how good it sounds. I would argue that those who hate this headphone have never heard it (very expensive and hard to audition), or have not used a high quality amp to drive it (it is notoriously hard to drive). There is tons of bad press on this headphone, mostly because of the cost, but I currently have 6xxs, with a fostex dac/amp, Focal Stellia with a custom Tube amp, Focal Utopia with the Focal Arche Dac/amp and the Abyss Phi with Formula XI audio amp (recommended to drive the Phi, but not the only one that will do it well) and a primaluna tube dac or a chord quest DAC. The Abyss look stupid and can be heavy on my head, but they are incredible and blow everything I have ever heard away. The bass is otherworldly…period. I have let about 50 people test all of these setups side by side using a Manley Skipjack (look it up) and not a single one has ever disagreed. In long, yes they are so much better you should never listen to them, because then you will always know what it is that you could be listening to. You are also correct, they are not 2x better. There is no scale for how much better they are. I don’t know how to quantify a comparison, as my life of listening is so much better having the Abyss in it. Now back to our regularly scheduled program…

Holy crap, 20 buck for those in a bin store is robbery! I would not pay that much unless they throw in a free puppy and 100 dollars in Canadian loonies.

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