A Geek Goes Flying

On a whim I added the Meze 99 Classics to my Amazon cart, ‘cause they were “only” like $200. Then they reset to $309 and I forgot about them, moved them to “save for later.” A quick peak at camelcamelcamel showed they basically never went on sale, so I’d either imagined it or I wasn’t fast enough. Until... Burning the midnight oil the next day or so, I saw the pop-up that the price had gone down - to $219. There’d been some recent discussion on r/headphones that intrigued me, so I grabbed a pair. A couple of hours later they were back up to $309 and I haven’t seen them drop lower since. (An alternative: The Meze 99 Neo , specific for drop.com, are apparently indistinguishable from the Classics aside from the colorway, and are currently $179, down from $199.) (As of this writing, they’re $219 again; it’s 1:53 a.m., maybe there’s a pattern here?) I don’t have any closed back headphones I listen to regularly. (I use the Ultrasone Pro 580i for video editing etc., but they’re a little too ...

(With apologies to Thanos. Cute idea for a headphone stand !) Thanos bust headphone holder I recently picked up the Drop 2.5mm to Sennheiser headphone cable (for $19, I wouldn’t have at $50) (the 3.5mm single-ended cable that comes with the Sennheiser HD58x Jubilee headphones is hilariously long; the balanced cable is only slightly awkward in comparison). I’m using it with my EarStudio ES100 MK2 portable Bluetooth DAC/Amp, and it does seem to make a difference - the headphones seem “punchier” with the balanced connection, and can be set at a lower volume for an equivalent sonic experience. Liking it. So of course that set me down the rabbit hole of DAPs with balanced outputs. The least expensive seems to be the $130 SHANLING M0 Pro , but to use a 2.5mm connection with that you’ll need their $14 3.5mm to 4.4mm adapter , plus another $10+ 4.4mm to 2.5mm adapter like this , and now you’re at like $160 for the audio player, and you have something akin to a Rube Goldberg machine sticking...