I have never really had any experience with high end audio, I have had some friends who had aftermarket speakers in their cars but in hindsight it was just a bass cannon. I thought it was cool, like any teenager would, and started to develope a horrible mindset that good audio = bass. This is a terrible way to visualize high quality audio but thats what happened. This was around the time when the awful Beats by Dre were beginning to becoming a thing. I almost fell for it a few times, I would listen to them in stores or from friends who owned them and began to even more develope the thought that bass meant high quality. I think this mostly spawned from me only ever using cheapo earbuds which could never output lows. I started to want a pair of decent headphones, my first purchase was some Bose AE2’s. Now, yes they were over priced and pretty awful but at the time I had not heard anything better, but I was a still a bit disappointed. After maybe 8 months of having them I wanted something else. I ended up getting some, yes Bose again, QC15’s. These were better but still not quite what I was looking for. They were great for traveling but outside of that were average at best. I ended up using these for a while, they were expensive and I wanted to give them a fair shake. Which brings me to about when Logan started to do his videos on Audiofile myths and Beyerdynamic reviews. This helped me tremendously, it really helped me separate the fact from BS that floats around the “”Audiophile” community. I went back and forth for a long time between some Beyer. 770 Pro’s and 990 Pros both 250 ohm flavor. I knew I needed an amp/dac to go along with them but still had no idea what I was looking for. After weeks and weeks of searching Head-fi.org and some forum posts on Tek Syndicate I thought I had found what I wanted. My final choice was some DT990 Pros and a Schiit stack. I knew I wanted it, but was hesitant because of all my previous purchases being just okay. It was a lot of money and after a few weeks of having it in my Amazon cart I made the plunge.
I have to say, when I initially set them up and started listening to music I was a bit disappointed. I still kind of had the mindset that bass meant high quality and these had bass but nothing too insane. The highs were quite clear which bothered me a bit but eventually I became used to it. I played games with these and was blown away. The open soundstage was incredible, it felt like I was really there. Some of the games I tried were; Wolfenstein: The New Order, Skyrim, Fallout 3 & NV, 7 Days to Die. In all of these games I could hear detail that I never even knew was even in the game. I didn’t want to take them off. After games I went back to testing music (maybe a week or so later). I started to try all sorts of music, electronic, metal, rock, classical. I was disappointed again, until I really started to pay attention to what I was listening to. I started to experience the clarity that I felt in the games. I was getting drawn in more and more. I would spent hours really listening to songs in depth, songs that I had heard many many times before and began to catch the details more frequently. The more I listened, the more I fell in love with these headphones. I began to pick out the low bit rate songs and replace them with higher quality.
In a strange way these headphones enlightened me to what high quality sound should feel like. Its not all about hitting those low bass lines, its about keeping a balance, catching all the small details without overproducing them. I can now say that I have found my perfect pair of headphones. I love every part of them.
Thank you to the Tek Syndicate team and Community.
