How to spend $2000 on a headphone setup (the saga continues)

My audiophile headphone setup has blossomed into quite a beast lately! Here I'm going to lay out every piece from source to my ears to show you what's possible with high end audio. All the prices I list are retail, but I must say that since I scour the net for deals so I have managed to save loads of cash. I highly recommend anyone who gets into this hobby to do the same as it will make it much more affordable.

You might remember my post a few months ago, How to Spend Over $1000 on Headphones. I've since tweaked that out even more, added a few more components, and have settled on what I think is darn near perfect sound.

It all starts at the source, i.e. what you use to play your music. Since I use my computer as a source, I need to be sure I'm playing high quality files. I start by ripping my CDs with Exact Audio Copy to a bit-perfect lossless compression format, FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio Codec. FLAC makes for huge files, so I mainly use that with Jazz or other acoustic music. For hip hop or electronica FLAC is overkill, so I use use specially formulated JTHZ Variable Bit Rate (VBR) LAME encoded MP3s that are 99% as good as FLAC. The great news about these formats is they are all 100% free! If you rip your CD's to these formats you can instantly get way better sound from your system.

Since I use an outboard DAC and amplifier I need a great transport to get this digital data to the DAC. I opted for a pro-sumer recording card, the EMU0404. It outputs a bit-perfect digital signal in a variety of bitrates, but I opt for the non-oversampled 44.1KHz output. This will run you about $100.

To get the bit-perfect data from the EMU0404 to my DAC I need a good cable. The Acoustic Research Master Series MS281 Optical Cable fit the bill. This will run $50+.

But a DAC or amp will only produce sound as clean as the power that goes into it. To make sure it's clean, I use a small and portable Monster Power AV200 power conditioner. It's not top of the line but it does well for my purposes by cleaning the power with Monster Stage 1 v2.0 filtering (and the small size means it travels well with my setup). When at home I plug this conditioner into an Acoustic Research RF line filter for a little added benefit. The AV200 will run you around $40, and its two plugs are used for my amp and DAC.

Now that I have clean power and a bit-perfect digital signal, I need to turn that digital data into analogue sound. For this I use the Deltec Precision Audio (DPA) Little Bit DAC (read more in my Deltec Furl archive). This is a vintage bitstream DAC from the mid 90's that set the benchmark in its price category. A bitstream DAC processes single bits of information rapidly one after another to create a smooth flowing audio signal with no buffering, upsampling, or anything like that (also known as a 1-bit DAC). The DAC is powered with a Volex 17604 14 awg, fully shielded power cord (read more about it here). If bought new, this thing would have run over $800+ in its day.

Now that we have a reference quality analogue signal it has to get to my amp. For that I have custom built, fully shielded, 4x18 awg litz-braided silver plated copper interconnects with teflon dielectric insulation terminated to locking 24k gold plated RCAs (2x18awg lines for signal and ground). These just straight fade anything you'd find at Best Buy, and I'd estimate their value at a very conservative $50.

Now we need to amplify that reference quality line level signal. While your average headphone would be fine with line, audiophile headphones often have very high impedences of 300 ohms. Also an amp provides strong current to handly heavy dynamic shifts in the sound. The solution is a high quality headphone amplifier. Mine is a MisterX Gilmore Lite, based on the Dynalo design by headphone guru Kevin Gilmore. Since purchasing the amp, I've modified it with a variable Linkwitz crossfeed, a circuit that blends the left and right channels with a slight delay to simulate speaker listening. The amp is powered with an Elpac WM071, and with the crossfeed modification it would run about $350.

From the amp you need to get the signal to your headphones, but the stock cables, even on high end headphones, are very so-so. So I went ahead and developed my own line of cables dubbed the Yellowjacket Sennheiser Upgrade Cables. These are premium cables that will run up to $150 or more depending on length.

Finally you need the headphone itself, and I use Sennheiser's top of the line HD-650 Audiophile headphone. It's an incredible sounding headphone and runs around $350 new despite the $550 MSRP shown on the Sennheiser site.

Lastly, all the metal contacts in the audio path, i.e. power, RCA jacks, RCA cables, etc, have been cleaned and treated with Caig DeoxIt and ProGold metal cleaner and conductivity enhancer. This kit is about $40 shipped, and if you have grimey gear it can help get that last 1% out of the system. Also I use those fancy Volex 17604 shielded power cords on my computer and monitor as well, not so much because it improves the sound directly, but it helps prevent power noise from getting out of those lines and into my audio stream.

So add it all up and you've got almost $2000 worth of gear ($1940 to be exact, but $2000 is a nice round number). There's a saying that says every dollar spent on a headphone setup is worth $10 in speakers, so that would put this system on par with a $20,000 home stereo setup. Who knows if that really holds true, but I assure you that the sound of this setup will absolutely blow you away!

--Sean