Hey! Here's the deal: we are all going to ignore the fact that the last iteration of this column was months and months ago and just get to the point. OK? Ready, set, go! Welcome to Gears of Eden, a column where I tell you about all of the ways I've developed to keep up with the metric ton of music that I listen to. This time around, I want to talk about actual gear. No, not steroids but the actual instruments that I use to listen to all of said music. So far, we've only discussed digital tools: processes, lists, players, etc. But the end game of these digital flows is to play music and so, you need to something to play music through. But I don't just want to give you a list of the stuff I use and why I use it (though you will find such a list at the bottom of this post). Rather, I want to give you a principle through which to form your own opinions about gear and then go out and buy the stuff that works for you.
Now, here's the important bit first: we are, give or take a few decades, three hundred years after Emmanuel Kant told us about the thing-in-itself and how we can't ever know it. If you don't know what that means, here's a crash course in the work of probably the most important philosopher of the Enlightenment who was also a really shitty guy: you have categories of thought. Space, time, cause and effect, size, etc. These are not details but rather the building blocks from which you build details. As such, all of the details you think are "real" are actually completely unverifiable. How can you know whether time "actually" exists? What would it mean if the answer was no? It's not something you can conceptualize and, therefore, you must do with your perceptions of the world as you find them, filtered through your mental categories. The "real", the thing-in-itself, is forever beyond your reach. Well, not actually because Kant thought there was a way to reach to the things-in-themselves. Maybe. Anyway, everything I just wrote is kind of wrong so let's just move on.
The point (and yes, there is one) is that audio and our perceptions of it is one of the best examples of the above point or, rather, of the resulting post-modern discourse that followed it. Please don't make me explain why post-modernism is Kantian, it will get me stoned by most philosophy departments (but I'm right). On one hand, audio is an "actual thing"; you can measure sound. It's a wave, arranged along frequencies (which is just the material manifestation of math) that are pleasing to our brain. On the other, play one of these supposedly fancy and "objective" waves to a human (which, currently, are the only standard for perception of music as such that we are aware of) and you will get as many opinions and you have test subjects. I mean, listeners. It gets much worse when you try to then ask those humans to compare different replications of these waves (through, say, different kinds of speakers) and ask them which sound better, which is such a massively complicated and unclear question that it's really unfair to even ask.
In order to not go insane (by which I mean, spend inordinate amounts of money on equipment for which you probably have no need) you must embrace these limitations. When you are shopping for audio gear there are two questions: does it sound good to you and does it sound good to you over time? Nothing else matters. This is the only one to inure yourself to the sheer fuck-ton of misinformation, hype, marketing, and awful sales tactics that infect the cesspool called the "audiophile community". If you let them, these absolute demons who feed off of insecurity and a pursuit of the appreciation of art will sell you all kinds of bullshit: cables made of rare metal, headphones that are made of materials that sound like starship engines, and speakers that are powerful enough to tear down your house. And for what? So you can play lossy files on them and nod to yourself as you smell your own farts and say things like "ah yes, the attack on the twitters on these speakers is really crisp". I love you too much to let you become someone like that.
And so, to resist these evil forces and their machinations, and deriving from the two fundamental questions outlined above, we can outline our one, clear principal for action: the priciest most people ever want to buy is the top of the middle tier. This is where the question "does it sound good to you over time" becomes impossible to answer. You see, somewhere above 1,000 USD line (which is where I am arbitrarily drawing the top line of the middle tier), the hype, marketing, and sheer bullshit around audio gear becomes so powerful and so omni-present that it is impossible to accurately discern whether the gear actually sounds better, to you. Are there absolutely amazing headphones and speakers and DACs and receivers above that price range? Without a doubt. I once listened to a pair of Focal Utopias at a store and cursed God for having created me with ears that could appreciate how good they sound but not enough money to afford them.
But can you tell the one model that's actually good from the dozens of overhyped, somewhat but not really better items? It's extremely hard. You walk into a store, you hold some sleek headphone or sit down in front of a space-age designed speaker, and you want that shit to sound amazing. Will it, once you give it a few weeks at home? More importantly, will it ever, ever justify the price tag and make you feel that it was worth it? For 99% of people, the answer is no. Add into this that the more expensive the piece of gear, the more it probably comes with additional gear around it. Above a certain price point, speakers can no longer be self-powered because that leaves less space for other, audible enhancements and also just creates internal noise. So those speakers need a fancy receiver to power them and power them well (a completely arbitrary idea). Headphones suddenly need a DAC and a fancy cable made from a god's nerve endings or some arcane file format that takes up five hard-drives to store (and we know how fucking expensive those are now).
Plus, that last point (which we've already mentioned) hits especially hard: the majority of us are maybe going to use FLAC and that's about it. I know some weirdos (and nearly became one myself) who exclusively use shit like DSD, MQA, 16-bit files, and all that stuff. It's such a fucking nightmare and the entire ecosystem is designed to give you MP3 320 kbps or AAC as a default that you have to constantly fight it. And you know what, that's fine because if we did a blind test through decent headphones, I would bet you that 9/10 people couldn't. Most of us just don't have the sensitivity for these differences. The reality is that "loss", as in "signal loss", happens at many stages after pressing play but the major one we can't do nothing about - it's between our ears and our brain. Play the best quality files on the best quality gear and still a massive amount (for most of us people listening) would be lost to flesh and electric signal and the lack of "efficiency" thereof.
So, my advice to you is to let it go beyond a certain point. Find what you like in your gear in terms you understand. I like warmth and a broad soundstage. Can I quantify that? Can I necessarily compare two pieces of gear and tell you which one is more that than the others? Fuck no and also, when would I ever have the need to do so? Instead, all I need to do is find a few reviews online that mention the keywords I look for ("depth", "warmth", "broadness", "dynamics" are some of the ones I look out for), test the gear out and see if it feels good. I've spent close to 1,000 USD on headphones once (and I have not regretted it for one second) but that's the most I've ever spent on gear. Everything else I take from the middle of the middle tier and I have for two decades. It just works.
OK, here's that list. One more piece of advice: different kinds of listening benefit from different types of gear. This is more of a comfort thing for outdoor vs. indoor listening but it can also be true for moods and styles of music. Decide how much you want to specialize but don't go overboard - it's very easy to exaggerate how important this is. OK, list:
At home, I use Focal Chorus 706 speakers powered by a basic Denon Receiver. The speakers are old at this point and have better successors but I love them so why switch? The receiver really is very basic - it's Denon's most basic receiver and I don't need anything more. One thing I did invest in is a good sub-woofer: I use the SVS SB-1000 Pro Subwoofer. It's not too fancy but it's very good and has the distinction of being wildly configurable. It can go really loud and it can be really subtle.
For headphones at home, I use the Focal Clear MGs (which are the ones that cost me almost 1,000 USD) connected to the iFi Gryphon DAC. The Focal Clear MGs are the best way for you to get close to the higher level Focal sound (which is truly heaven on Earth) for a somewhat affordable price point. The other cool thing about these headphones is that their resistance is low (briefly, this is a measure of how much power you need to power the headphones properly). So you don't need to go crazy with your DAC (which stands for Digital to Analog Converter, it basically takes your digital music and translates it to signal that your headphones can recreate) because it doesn't need to very powerful. The iFi Gryphon is actually more powerful than you need; I used iFi's hip-DAC (which is a really cool product at its price range) for years and it worked just fine. But the Gryphon gives the MGs an extra kick and a deeper soundstage I've found plus, it looks sleek as hell.
On the go, I am a massive Sennheiser fan and have been for years. I used the Focal Bathys for a long time and they are phenomenal headphones if you're willing to pay their price point. Like, I can't exaggerate how good they sound, bluetooth or no. But I had some issues with how they sat on my head and covered (or didn't) my ears and their software is ass. So when Sennheiser announced the HDB 630, it was an immediate buy for me. They sound just slightly less deep and pronounced than the Bathys but are cheaper and much, much more comfortable. I absolutely adore them, they are one of my best purchases. Lastly, and perhaps most needlessly, I use a DAP (Digital Audio Player), namely the Walkman NW-WM1AM2. Do I need it? No, I listen to it via Bluetooth, so its onboard DACs aren't doing anything music wise. But it has this new-fangled, lost technology called "an SD Card" that phones no longer seem to have for some fucking reason, which is great if you want a big chunk of your music library available to you on the go (which I do because I fly a lot). I should probably just use something cheaper with a big SD card but here we are. Hopefully Google will bring back SD Cards to the Pixel but I am not holding my breath.
And there you go! That's all the gear I use. It's nothing fancy but it serves me very well and is probably more than the average person uses. Which is fine. Again, the principle is "what works for you" because "objective" sound does not exist. I think that if you don't overspend but insist on quality and stick to around a few hundred dollars, you can get great gear today. The audio gear industry, when the absurd high end of it is redacted, is actually in a great place the last 10 years or so. New models from flagship companies are actually good? Consumers seem to be getting heard overall. There's a lot of bullshit but also a lot of actually good gear out there. Use my guiding principles and I believe you can find the right stuff for you. Feel free to email me at eden[at]heavyblogisheavy[dot]com if you're debating and want some help deciding. I've been doing this for a while.
Oh, one last thing: here's my go to song for testing out new gear. The production on it is just so good and warm that it lets me know if something is right for me. In fact I am listening to it on the Focal Chorus right now and man, it is so sweet.