All my pieces of gear are my favorite ...
why?
Because i am in the S.Q. / lowest price ratio scale ...
And i succeed ...😁
But the more irreplaceable piece, with my Sansui alpha in second , are my AKG K340 hybrid headphone ...
Compared to them the good AKG K701 or the sextett K240 sound like relative trash , artificial in the K701 case , or lacking in realism with the better sextett ...( i keep them because if not compared to the K340 they seems acceptable headphone for movies etc )
But dont buy the K340 though ...😁
It takes me 6 months to figure out their design and how to optimize it and modify them for the best ...😁
It was the first hybrid and the really only true one till this day ...Kennerton say to me that it is too costly to research about this design and beat it and make a profit ...
Forget most headphones amplifier to drive them, i tried to upgrade my Sansui alpha headphone out for an acclaimed Berning ZOTL headphone dedicated amplifier ... It was ,except for the quieter noise floor of supremum quality , a disaster, because i loose the "out of the head holography and the timbre naturalness) synergy matter indeed nevermind how good an amplifier could be with other headphones ...
...They are more difficult to drive than the HE 6 ( two cells dynamic and electrostat of 400 ohms each with a sensitivity of 87 Db ) ... They ask for more than raw power but some reserve power . And well driven and optimized they give an "out of the head" soundfield and a natural timbre better than any headphones i listened to ... (9 headphones)
But beware "out of the box" they aged and must be modified ( 6 modifications and optimizations )