Really? £100 is entry level as far as I'm concerned. I'm not trolling you here - I'm genuinely surprised that someone who buys B&W speakers (which can be phenomenally expensive) thinks £100 is a lot to spend on cans.

As much as I like B&W (I have their speakers for my home cinema) no part of me can justify £100 for a pair of headphones. :stuck_out_tongue:

coming out at £169.99 for me. Is there a promo code or something you need for that price?

Oh it looks like the black are full price.

I'll amend

This price was posted with JL prior to Christmas

Blue ones are 99.95 on amazon

Got a second hand set of DM601 S1 speakers from a friend for £30. They sound absolutely *beautiful*. I love them and my partner loves them... and the tweeter in one died a couple of days ago. NOOOOOOOOO! ....

.... With much anxiety + my being very short sighted + a fine soldering iron + a steady hand, I managed to repair the broken wire in the tweeter - I don't know how long the repair will last though, but I guess anything we get from them now will be a bonus.

Back to headphones, just before the first major dot com bust my partner of the time (a guy) bought us each a pair of very posh headphones that were on sale at half price for £100/each (Sony, can't remember the model, but full ear, 3Hz-30KHz very-well-behaved flat response.) The sound from them is genuinely absolutely amazing. I've still got my pair, although I had to do a "repair" on them too a few weeks ago, the balance and sound was off - turned out some of the padding material over time had gone mangy and dropped inside the "speaker" bits and was causing the distortion - cleaned it out, and it sounds mint again. :smiley: I do so love being able to repair things. :smile:

The biggest problem with audio these days is finding suitable quality source material given the compression wars, fortunately I mainly like older stuff.

Have been using the P5's (original model) for the last couple of months, they're nicely built and comfortable commuter headphones.
Still prefer open cans for home use though, the Fidelio X2 slaughters them.

I couldn't make my mind up between p3 and p5's and went for the latter.

Although the P3 fold up and come with a hard case, so for travel etc maybe much better - you get what you pay for and these are worth the hundred quid

Plenty of FLAC out there (Tidal for streaming), rip your own discs, 320kbps on Spotify (95% of folks cannot discern difference between 320kbps and FLAC in blind tests). Plenty of 24/88.2 and 24/96 and indeed 24/192 material available too. PBTHAL vinyl rips out there too if you must have analogue sound...

My favourites are my PSB M4U2 for commuting and closed back, AKG 701 for home and jazz / classical listening, and I'm very lucky to have 1964 Ears V-Quads which are a custom made IEM. Best £500 I ever spent (apart from my dog...).

P3's have been consistently rated top cans for several years now. And I have a pair!

I didn't mean mp3 type compression, I meant the Loudness Wars that ruin the sound before it gets to a CD etc. :disappointed:

Ah, gotcha - yes you're quite right, there's not as much dynamic range in recordings as they're used to be. There's a plugin for Foobar which measures the dynamic range of a track. Some are REALLY bad. Rick Rubin destroyed Metallica's Death Magnetic to the extent that amateurs remixed it (Moderus, Deceifer) and it was sooo much better..

You can get the tweeters easily, I believe last one I purchased was around £50, they unscrew and then you clip wires on. Brand new and boxed, don't buy secondhand or if it doesn't look genuine, plenty of originals about

Brilliant headphones (I got mine for £129 mid last year). I have tons of vinyl lps (2500+) which I listen to on these but the sound on high quality MP3, FLAC and WAVs is a significant increase from the dreadful Beats offerings.

I have the P7s after returning the P5s I had (faulty left ear). Both sets sound fantastic (well, when the P5s worked!) and have a good heft about them. Can imagine the P3s to be great too. At £99 they are quite the bargain.

I bought a Chordette Qute EX DAC a few months back, haven't had much time to use it, in fact I auditioned it on my friend's audiophile separates system, by using the DAC bypass on his Krell CD player, it sounded pretty good. I'm currently looking for an amp to go with it and I'll be getting some decent headphones later this year. I'm thinking Beyerdyanamic T90 Tesla headphones currently. Anyway I change my mind so many times, it took me ages to just get the Chordette DAC.

Crikey, just viewing the gallery and the cross section picture of the headphone can looks a bit crude. Like something knocked together in the shed using a Stanley knife. :confused:

Ahh ok. That's a good idea. If the cable gets damaged it's an easy plumbing job with a new cable.

I trust you used audiophile grade solder?

could only have them in black and there's better out there for £160.

decent deal though. I'd love the P5.

Does it sound better if you do?

Ha! Lol. No, but decent enough for the job (25yr old 94% tin 5.5% silver and 0.5% "other" flux solder.) :wink: In seriousness, after scraping the coating of the wire, I twisted the end of one of the wires into a hook, and clamped them shut with the other wire in the hook, before soldering, so it would make a half decent connection, but only time will tell.

Proof of the pudding is in the eating: they sound lovely (again) and we only paid £30 for them in the first place, so we win. :smiley:

For what it's worth, I did a joint computing and electronics engineering degree, plus did a few years in student radio as various roles including a bit of engineering, so I acquired some relevant knowledge and experience in the subject and am very wary of audiophile woo. :wink:

PS For context, this was the hair-thin stuff from the coil in the tweeter, not normal thick cables, so making a decent connection isn't totally easy there and would make a difference!

Only if you know you used it. :wink:

Christ on a bicycle, such stuff exists too! I didn't realise. Hahahahaha!

There is no end to the madness lol

If you don't mind taking a bit of a punt amazon.de have the red P3 for €69 plus €5 or so postage, the blue is €71 with the same postage. Roughly £52 if using credit card rather than Amazon's currency conversion.