I mean, I don't have this motherboard, I'm just extrapolating from my experience with similar ones and the concrete numbers I can find for the audio chipset they use, but I would try it before spending more money. The main problem with onboard sound tends to be noise/interference but the ATs aren't too sensitive so I doubt that will be an audible issue.

Then there's the question of power/headroom. The ALC1220 chip (some guy measured it to put out 1.3Vrms into 600ohms, which we can estimate will get the R70Xs to about 105dB peak SPL) will definitely get it loud enough for *me*, but maybe not for you, since I don't know how loud you listen and what you listen to.

It's probably fine

Well, apparently Tidal had some kind of program where among the premium tier subscribers, 10% of your subscription fee would go to your top listened artist every month, and only that artist. Which seems even dumber than the standard streaming payout model.

Yes, but the raw measurement is compensated against some target they came up with, so whether it’s “neutral” depends on how you like their target applied to your own ears.

this was years ago, but my first "high-end" headphone was an HD800, which I bought blind because I just got a job and it looked cool and audio reviewers were raving about it... and I hated it. These days I'm more cognizant of just how subjective head-fi is, so I don't spend money I'm not comfortable wasting without listening to something with my own ears or the recommendation of someone whose opinions I trust completely. Though of course, sometimes you buy something and it turns out to be unreliable or uncomfortable for long stretches and so on.

It's fine, but the main issue is Windows compatibility.

Right, now you have to go through iTunes, which is a bloated shitshow of a program and doesn't support lossless. There's a beta Windows 11 app, but it's not really built for nitpicky audiophiles - no audio output settings at all, let alone proper exclusive mode/asio support or whatever. And of course, if you're still stuck on Win10, you can get fucked. Another annoyance is that installing the Windows app prevents you from using iTunes at all. So if you still use it to manage your iPhone's library, I can guess you can get fucked too.

IMHO a Hifiman enthusiast's "veil" is another person's "appropriate amount of treble". I prefer the HD600 relative to the HD6XX but I just find the Hifiman house sound unbearable.

The Volt 2 should be fine. Its output impedance is a little high at 10ohms (according to Julian Krause's measurements on youtube) so you might get some amp-induced frequency response shift with some low-impedance headphones, but this won't really be an issue with the HD600s. It performs well otherwise, comfortably among the better audio interface HP outs.

I don't know their exact release date, but I've heard 70s Stax estats that sounded perfectly hi-fi.

Amps are fundamental to lots of electronics applications, so all of that was worked out pretty early. Hi-fi headphones are more of a niche, and I don't know how big that niche was back then - hi-fi playback at home/stereo sound/etc was all pretty nascent in the 60s. Materials/manufacturing/engineering has also come a very long way since them, especially with the rise of computers and everything that enabled.

I think the "hearing things in songs" factor is more a matter of how the headphone's tonal balance emphasizes or de-emphasizes various things in a mix. Even shit headphones can be EQ'd to emphasize the same things, assuming they can reproduce the relevant frequencies without serious distortion.

"detail" to me (and these kinds of subjective terms lack any concrete definition outside how each individual interprets them) means lack of "crud" for lack of a better word, like reverberations, resonances, "grain", etc. Stuff that doesn't lend itself to easy EQing.

Don't know much about the Shure, but I'd skip the Aria. It has very widespread problems with moisture causing channel imbalances after you wear them for a while (and the paint chipping after a while).

I'd take a look at the tangzu wan'er/truthear hola/kiwiear cadenza instead. They are all cheap, tuned pretty similarly to the Aria and each other (mildly bass-boosted warm neutral), and I haven't really heard any reliability horror stories about them.

Its just a replaceable cable. They are simple analog headphones, there are no active electronics inside.

Eh, I personally wouldn’t use open back headphones at work. They provide practically no isolation, so if it’s a noisy environment your music will be fighting to drown out the noise, if it’s a quiet environment it’ll bug coworkers who will hear whatever you’re listening to. Closed backs or in-ears are better suited, unless you need to hear your surroundings.

You’ve got it selected as the audio output device? If you can’t, is anything new showing up in the windows device manager when you plug it in?

I avoid those places to the extent that I'm able. While I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, the majority of my experiences with AV/hifi stores have been unpleasant. back when I was in my early 20s it seemed like I invariably got pegged as a poor and treated basically like a nuisance or an idiot who's just going to waste their time, now that I look like maybe I've got some midlife crisis money to spend I usually have to deal with pushy condescending sales people trying to upsell me. unpleasant vibes all around. All those places have been closing left and right over the past couple decades and I can't say I miss em. If you're in a large city there may be some existing local community of audiophiles who are happy to demo their gear and are usually much less insufferable.

Yeah they should work just fine. Only potential issue is that on the earlier Magnis without the negative gain mode you're going to have very little useful range on the volume knob with sensitive IEMs, but you can just reduce the volume a bit on your computer.

the headphone out of the M2 is supposed to be pretty well-engineered. Doubt it has anything to do with whatever you're hearing.

don't know how reliable of a rule of thumb that is - a complex amp with
plenty of feedback will likely have much less distortion than a dead-simple tube amp that does not employ feedback at all.

Tube amps have far higher harmonic/intermodulation distortion, which tends to rise steadily with output level (whereas solid state amps are typically very clean until they clip); and they usually have more frequency response distortion. And a little bit of distortion has been known to sound pleasant.

People often make claims about how tubes have more even-order harmonic distortion (which is supposedly more euphonic to the ear) than transistors, but that seems to be BS, tube amps are all over the place here. In the end I'm not sure how useful verbal descriptions of sound will be without actually listening to them.

Could also be some DSP effects turned on by default on the PC. MacOS doesn’t have anything like that, but some windows PCs do. Try disabling audio enhancements and seeing if that makes a difference.

"PNC"? what on earth are you talking about...

the buzz is probably coming from whatever you're driving them with.

Is there a reason you picked it out? Seems like jumping in on the deep end - not really great idea if you don’t know what kind of sound signatures you like/dislike.

If you’re very used to a certain headphone, it might take time to acclimate to different tunings. Listen to it for a few days and get used to its sound before reaching too many conclusions.

If you have a multimeter and a removable headphone cable/aux cable/something you can use to probe the output of your headphone jack, you could estimate it from the voltage.

Sure, as long as you’re not trying to make the driver do something it’s just not capable of doing (like flat subbass to 20hz on a Koss KSC75 or something) junky stuff can often be dramatically improved. It’s even kind of a fun thing to do, if you’re a weirdo like me.

If you participate in these communities and have the disposable income for it, you're probably going to get caught up in the hype/FOMO/upgraditis cycle.

I've been at a place I could happily stop for like 15 years and go through many-year stretches where I don't touch my setup but then I break one of my headphones or something and start researching the market and go down the "maybe there's something I'd like better" rabbit hole for a while.

(shout out to the Qudelix 5K - best headphone-related gadget I've bought in a long time)