{"id":547,"date":"2016-09-13T03:17:24","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T03:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/?p=547"},"modified":"2023-02-23T15:57:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T15:57:26","slug":"a-cheap-audiophile-headphone-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/2016\/09\/13\/a-cheap-audiophile-headphone-system\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cheap Audiophile Headphone System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Note: I wrote this over 5 years ago. Technology has changed and we have better options today. Update: <a href=\"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/2023\/02\/23\/a-cheap-audiophile-headphone-system-2\/\">http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/2023\/02\/23\/a-cheap-audiophile-headphone-system-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a cheap audiophile quality sound system:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A computer that takes standard PCI cards<\/li>\n<li>An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bhphotovideo.com\/c\/product\/404522-REG\/ESI_Ego_Sys_JULI_Juli_4_Input.html\">ESI Juli@ sound card<\/a><\/li>\n<li>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de\/jazz.htm\">Corda Jazz headphone amp<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it. Connect the Juli@ unbalanced analog outputs to the amp&#8217;s inputs. Play your CDs, DVDs, whatever on the computer. Use whatever headphones you want.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Total cost: $510<\/strong> = $170 for the card, $340 for the amp. <strong>Plus the headphones.<\/strong> You can get some vintage Sennheiser HD-580 or HD-600 on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. Or you can go all-in with a really nice set of headphones like the Audeze LCD. The Corda Jazz has a smooth sound, detailed and sweet yet neutral, with enough power to\u00a0 drive almost any headphone on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>I use this as a secondary system to drive my Audeze LCD-2F when my reference system is unavailable. It is amazing &#8211; 95% as good as the reference system. Extreme treble and large ensemble complex music is not quite as refined, but that&#8217;s just picking nits because it sounds damn good.<\/p>\n<p>Years ago when I was in college I would have climbed a mountain of broken glass for sound like this, especially at this price.<\/p>\n<p>Note: you can get an audio system like this even cheaper from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdslabs.com\/\">JDS Labs<\/a>. Get a single DAC+Amp for <strong>$300<\/strong>, so you don&#8217;t need the sound card. Just stream the bits from the USB port of any computer into the DAC. JDS Labs is the American version of Jan Meier&#8217;s Corda in Germany: a few guys in Illinois who are good electrical engineers and take a non-nonsense approach to building audiophile quality gear without audiophile prices or bullshit. That said, my ears say Meier&#8217;s gear has the advantage over JDS. Both have excellent specs but Meier&#8217;s stuff is subtly sweeter and more refined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: I wrote this over 5 years ago. Technology has changed and we have better options today. Update: http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/2023\/02\/23\/a-cheap-audiophile-headphone-system-2\/ Here&#8217;s a cheap audiophile quality sound system: A computer that takes standard PCI cards An ESI Juli@ sound card A Corda Jazz headphone amp That&#8217;s it. Connect the Juli@ unbalanced analog outputs to the amp&#8217;s inputs. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/2016\/09\/13\/a-cheap-audiophile-headphone-system\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Cheap Audiophile Headphone System<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3109,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/3109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}