now i hate to write the same thing over and over again but a few entries back i said that, regardless of what you can afford, your at home personal listening experience is going to be shaped by a combination of three things. it doesn’t bother your relatives, and, even though the haul i got on black friday is sort of like bragging, you’re not going to experience sound fidelity like this anywhere else. the landscape of the musical composition has thankfully switched paradigms from the do it all 2000$ phone and data plan plus apple has removed it’s drm restrictions on its music. its a good time to be a music fan. so, explained more succinctly, you’re going to need to worry about…
- the quality of the digital music player that you decide to purchase… i mean you can get recommendations from chatGPT and microsoft copilot but ultimately you’re still trying to navigate your way through the darkness with the simplicity or complexity of the operating system in the audio player, fact being… coming up from using chinese, grey area video game theft devices i like my devices dead simple with little to no tethered internal operating system for me to muck up. but should you be justifiably a passionate, gifted musician with a proper right to purchase one… i’m not naming names because most of those heifers are probably, iregardless of skill as tone deaf as i am, no offense. but you can find these things in various qualities suited to various people with the noticeable quality premium features starting at about 140$ like the F20 and the F28 that i have to upwards of a few thousand dollars and most likely a gimmick disappointment if you are that special listener whose music is his life. i don’t know where you would find the people but if the blind sample decides that paired with the under 200$ surfans F20 the sennheisers are their “big phones” go to for a budget comparative critical listening session that its game… but if its game that people are attaching their names to then its not game. i’m not the critical listener i like that warm sound that doesn’t induce tinnitus with those big drums, i like discernable mids and highs, i like unique drums, and now me and my 50$ oneolio studio pro 10 dj monitors with my F28 now that i’ve figured it out have become fast friends, i was listening to some afro beats, you hear that? that’s what i’m talking about, where do i get a recommendation for that consistently?… read the specs. see the F20 with its inferior single internal dap is described as having a neutral sound even with an fairly expensive pair of headphones that is meant to appeal to the premium market and that it has little to no trouble driving. it’s probably not your first choice but its saying something there. the new audio players also come with internal dacs, which i’m guessing are scaled down microdevices to facilitate the interpolation of sound and the F20 has one while the F28 has two, sychronized i believe.
- a good pair of headphones. now seriously, God knows what dr. dre has been through in the deception which probably was his life when he became popular in the music business but they did one poll where there were blind sample sound tests between my oneolio studio pro 10 dj monitors for 40$ and his 150$ beats solos and my oneolios were preferred to his product. i wanted more out of my personal listening sessions though so in that weird fashion that my moms ( yes i live with my moms.) in that strange way that she occasionally does, she bought me a pair of sennheisser 599 SE’s and they are sweet for that sweet but they sit down when the olio’s walk in the room. i’m pretty sure my F28 has something to do with this but if you like your music big you can buy those oneolio studio pro 10’s for 40$ with those huge 50mm drivers and let the F28 do all the work with the mids and highs and have a little fetti left over. if neutral sound on your device is what you want and you already are tooled with multiple pairs of conservative critical phones and just really have a little disposable cash in this economy and are curious as to what an aluminum, ipad clone with a semi- capable dac in it horribly drives your high impedance phones. the surfans F20 might justify a purchase for you.
- the fidelity of the track. especially with these small dacs that china has most likely diversified its manufacturing in to counteract the not particularly illucidated plan of our current administration to tax our nation out of debt with the collective wallets of the civilized world most of these players pretty much handle the gamut of popular musical file formats and there’s nothing like that feeling of a small, relatively inexpensive set up that is for you to enjoy and you only, my 20$ sony MDR’s have been relegated to the F20 and trips to walmart. like i say too often, if you got it like that you could probably drop a few thousand on a 5.1 dolby setup with speakers and sound dampening foam placed strategically around your living room by an expert for optimal effect, but who are you doing that for? exactly… and this, my brother, is not the time for it.
now i probably will, but you probably won’t walk the streets like a fool dividing your attentions with the outside world with these isolationist headphones… the 599 admittedly suitable for rediscovering the music that your pops loved without bothering your loved ones in the home, on the beach, in the hotel, and maybe even, God bless, in the doctor’s office in the best of health. much luck to you.
one love,
ummi
