My Lifelong Quest to Make my Expensive Rig Sound as Good as $500 Headphones

Also - for so many years, I struggled with stridency and harshness in lower end mid-if gear. And it seemed my only alternative was moving to overly warm and sluggish gear. Thankfully I now have a slightly warm leaning and meaty tonality that I adore, while at the same time having that blazing my fast detail and transparency. And unrestrained air and openness at the top end, with no trace of brightness. It’s like having my cake and eating it too. The Gryphon and it’s DAC module add a tough of “romance” to the sound to make the system “musical”, with the rest of my system focused on transparency and neutrality.  I don’t think I’d like my speakers with any other amp .

Thinking back, I don’t know if there is a full size system I truly would have been happy with when I was younger, for my budget at the time.

Great comments all. @cd318 , that is precisely what I am talking about. Maybe “detail” is the wrong word. But that professor’s description of how a $100 set of headphones had better impulse control is exactly what I am referring to. My system is very close to matching headphone performance in this area now, thanks to my speaker upgrade and my Nordost Valhalla 2 speaker cables which are known to be lighting fast.

@ghdprentice yes I know my headphones are entry level, which made the comparisons all the more frustrating, all these years. And I agree, the “detail” is better on my system than the headphones. It’s “impulse control” I should have been referring to as @cd318 noted. Blazing fast impulse control seems to improve a dimension of detail, but it’s not detail overall. I’ve not been to a live symphony lately but that would be a great comparison experience.

And yes I feel my system is far, far more realistic in reproducing music now, than my headphones ever were. As such I’ve now far exceeded my objectives that I originally had with respect to trying to recreate the performance of headphones in specific areas, by improving things immeasurably in areas I wasn’t actually focused on. I guess I was chasing “impulse control” for so long, and finally getting really close, and my rig has just far surpassed the headphone experience in so, so many other ways.

I listened to music more than most as a kid, primarily with headphones and also through this Sony ghetto blaster I had that actually sounded okay for what it was. It also had a 3 band EQ and a third bass woofer. I think when I first went to full systems as a teen, I was shocked at how bad the shrill tonality was (my first amp was a JVC receiver bought with paper route money saved up for many many months), and the system just didn’t have the speed that I was used to (I didn’t realize that was the problem at the time), which launched me on this decades long quest. Because my first system was so terrible, I quickly came to think that having an EQ was an absolutely essential feature. For me I was REALLY into music starting as a young kid, and when I got my first full scale system my connection to the music was utterly broken because my system was really, really bad. Yet I felt back then that I could still get into my music with that ghetto blaster and cheap headphones…

I tease my wife saying she can’t complain of my obsession because she know what she was getting into.  25 years ago before we were married I was dragging her around to speaker auditions and she was a great sport and weighed in on what she was hearing, even if she didn’t care!  She still weighs in, and still doesn’t actually care..

@ghdprentice I checked out the Threshold S500, I see it was designed by Nelson Pass! Looks like a serious amp with Class A goodness. You sure jumped into things in a much bigger way than me! At that age I didn’t even know how to get a loan, which is probably a good thing! But maybe I would have been able to acquire gear I would have truly appreciated if I had. My first slightly better amp when I was about 21 was an Arcam A85 integrated for about $1,500, which I still have. I fired it up for the first time in over ten years, and was reminded why I chose it over the rest - faster, satisfying sound, especially with bass. In general I recall Arcam being a sub-par brand but this particular amp stood out as an exception. But I suspect I would have liked a Threshold S500 much better.

It’s funny how we sometimes think that being an audiophile means we have refined our perceptions of audio beyond the masses. But then our wives and in my case my 15yo daughter can easily and causally in passing identify things like “air” and soundstage depth and dynamics and tonality, using different words of course. When I was testing power cords my daughter would be walking by and say “oh you changed the cord again, this one sounds more like the singer is on a stage in front of us, it’s much better than the other you were trying…”

Thanks for sharing!

@anotherbob, it's just crazy how frequently Sony updates these relatively inexpensive headphones with new models. And with each iteration I hear they keep getting better!  I find them more pleasing to listen to than a lot of much higher-end headphones.  Having said that, I've not tested higher-end headphones with higher-end headphone amps, in which case I'd expect the higher end stuff would easily win. But as inexpensive no-fuss everyday headphones the Sony's are great.

Yes, that is a suitable analogy to a degree.

I think it comes down to the way my mind connects with music. I find that if the “impulse control” of qualities of my system are not near-completely unrestrained, like music played in real life is, with details flowing naturally with a sense of ease, then it disconnects me to some degree from the music as things start to sound forced to me. I think I may place a higher degree of focus on this trait than most, but it was never something I consciously decided to focus on. Psychologically the music is nowhere near as engaging for me if it’s not free-flowing without any sense of limitation. Panel/Ribbon speakers may have these qualities but I hear there are tradeoff’s (dynamics, poor off-axis performance, it’s highly inviting as a cat scratching post, etc). I do get this sense of ease and “flow” even with low end headphones.

It’s been a long journey but I’ve also got there now with my system.