I shifted to heavier music a few years back. It never crossed to consider what could have influenced my listening habits. Well, now I know what allowed me the shift. My grandma. Really. My grandma.
Now I have to make sense of that statement. I had an acceptable 5.1 nearfield speaker system for my computer. It sound pretty nice provided I cranked the volume up a bit as it isn't really that clear otherwise. So, that naturally irritated my grandma no end. I ended up looking for better speakers and that led me to see that speaker sets made for computers are obviously overpriced and underperforming. I'm better off with separate receiver, amp and speakers, which would cost about the same as the best computer speaker sets. Unfortunately, the price really put me off. If I'm to buy a mediocre setup, it would not improve my listening as my current setup sounds much better than the average priced setup.
I turned to looking at earphones. This meant sifting through the various offerings by gaming peripheral companies. I tried simple headphones and ended up not using it much, courtesy of the sound quality and clarity. Well, after some time, I went to more forums and discussion boards to see which among the brands should I get. I am not about to dump cash on a dud. Seriously, the fact that I cannot try out most of the mid tier gaming headphones really put me off buying one. In a few of the forums, some people would say that gaming headphones aren't really worth it as they're more branding than quality. These people would then suggest trying out audiophile headphones. They pointed out that quality audiophile headphones wouldn't cost a bomb. In fact, it would be much cheaper than a lesser quality gaming brand headphone.
This piqued my interest so I started reading up on the brands. After that, I tried looking for places where I can test these supposedly wonderful instruments of musical reproduction. Well, I do know a local headphone store but I was intimidated by the idea of going there since it sounds like a place where audiophiles gather. So, rather than go to an established place where I can definitely try out plenty of headphones, I wandered. Yes, I aimlessly looked around for any signs audio stores. I did find a few but most that I found focused on speakers. One place I found though, had a mix of headphones and speakers. I asked about the standard brands I've read about and found their prices rather daunting. It seems that it's not a matter of direct conversion from USD to MYR. Well, the shopkeeper noticed my hesitation and suggested Goldring. A brand that I never heard of before in my admittedly limited searchings. I did a quick Google on Goldring DR150 which he recommended and found some good feedback on them.
I had a listen to the the DR150, DR100 and DR50. Welp, DR150 was definitely better so I bought myself an early birthday present. That was the best investment I ever made. Excellent sound for a decent price. It changed my view on sounds completely as I could listen to music at a lower volume and hear everything clearly. There was one thing though. The volume was rather limited. I already had a good soundcard but it has limited drive. Some movies especially were problematic where the sound was not loud enough and I end up hearing whispers.
So, next step, I searched for amplifiers. Seems that these items carry a rather significant price tag. I couldn't get myself to plonk out the same amount of cash I did for the headphones as it seemed like a terrible investment. Logically, I would need to get a cheaper amplifier. I somehow found the Bravo Ocean in my explorations. It seemed like a safe buy as the price was acceptable and it had some decent feedback. Some were going on about the lack of finesse tubes have and whatnot but I really liked the idea of tubes. It's so retro and sexy. So I ordered directly from the Bravo website.
When I got the amplifier I was floored by the difference in sound I heard. It wasn't really that my headphones sounded completely different. It was more like things sounded more right. That was the best word I could use. I got a few tubes just for fun and found that the sound would change a bit. Not significant enough for me to continue rolling tubes though. I stuck with the best tubes I found which was a Brimar CV4034 I won for about 12USD. Decent enough I guess. I wanted to try some of the supposedly better tubes I read about on forums but they were so expensive.
So this setup gave me audio bliss for a couple of years. I never even considered upgrading as everything was perfect. That was, until an unfortunate situation came about... Well, that'll be in the next blog post. Oh, I never got around to Metal in this post. It will get there. I promise. Some day ha ha. By the way, I took really bad pictures back then.
