Headphones!!!

[PITTM]

I just thought I should post all of the gear I use for my home headphone setup and explain what it all does.

Here is my signature on head-fi:

Home: Chaintech AV710(Foobar2k!)--->Headroom Micro DAC--->Canare Mini to Mini--->RAY SAMUELS "THE HORNET"---> AKG K701 and Sennheiser HD580(modded)

I use a Chaintech AV710 sound card. They cost about 20 bucks but have a true digital optical out. This is good because my crappy sound card does NO decoding of the audio. The original signal of the MP3 is retained until it arrives in my Headroom MicroDAC(below).



The microdac is a portable DAC that runs on either 2 9 volt batteries or through a heavy duty wallwart. It decodes the digital signal into a listenable audio signal with astounding precision. I would recommend that anyone using their computer for their main stereo get a nice DAC. While I use it with an optical cable, it can also be plugged right into your computer via USB, eliminating the need for any sound card at all. From here, I use a Canare custom 90 degree interconnect. A head-fi member who's name escapes me made it for me, but it looks great and doesnt mess with the rest of my awesome sounding gear. The canare runs into my amp, which is the Ray Samuels Hornet (below)OHHH CHECK OUT THE POWER CAPACITOR ON THAT BABY!.



The Hornet provides all the power your headphones may need. For normal headphones an amp is generally not necessary, but these headphones have such low impedance that they need a lot of power to drive them. The Hornet provides the needed power. after that, they feed the sound into my headphones, which is where the audio nirvana happens. The headphones are at the top of the thread and the sound I get out of this rig is A++++++. The microDAC was $299, the Hornet was $299, the AKG 701s were $244, the interconnect was $10, the Sound Card was $20 and the Optical Cable was $22. All together that comes to $894. So yeah, be ready to spend if you want to experience audio ecstasy.