2021-03-12
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of time in my parent’s home. For most of that time, whenever I’m working, I listen to music over headphones connected directly to the mini-jack output from my laptop.
This setup is in of itself fine, and has worked well for me for many years, with one key difference: the amount of time I have the headphones on. In the office I also use headphones (Fostex T-X0, ODAC, and Topping NX5 amp) which I really enjoy using and wearing them for extended periods is mostly OK. Maybe 3 hours at the longest. At home I found I was wearing my B&O headphones for over 6 hours at a time, by the end both my head and ears would hurt horribly.
I decided this couldn’t continue, so I decided to buy a new headphone (travelling to my office to get my Fostex headphones was not an option). I picked up the Monolith M1060c on offer from Monoprice. They fit into my need for a more comfortable headphone (with plush cushions 😁) while also having a more flat frequency response (as per X). I will talk more about these headphones another time. Of course, amping from my laptop just doesn’t cut it any more and when using the mini-jack output, I did notice noise coming from my laptop charger (oops, Dell).
One criterion I initially had (and which of late has become less important, as I will mention later… foreshadowing, muhaha) is not to spend too much money on this. When buying audio equipment it is really really easy to get pulled in by all the smoke and snake oil about sonic perfection. Audiophilia is a fetish of sorts, its practitioners can’t help themselves whenever one of the great gods of audio equipment drops another piece of divinity on to this earth of ours. If you frequent forums, Reddit, and even YouTube, there are countless people out there trying to get their hands onto anything that brings them closer to sonic divinity. I certainly know that I am at risk of getting pulled into this, so on the outset I set my self it constraint — it must be inexpensive.
Well, when it comes to headphone amps inexpensive exists of course, but really is it any good? I for one don’t think so, you pay for what you get, so we must pragmatically say that it will cost something to have a quality piece of kit. In search for it, I had a quick look at JDLabs, the manufactures of the ODAC, which I absolutely love for my on the go setup, to checkout their headphone amp the Objective2.
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