Headphone system for the bedroom
 

I've been thinking lately of building a small headphone system that I can have on my nightstand for some late night listening sessions. :music:

I've never owned a true pair of headphones so i don't really know where to begin and how crazy to get.

The headphones would need to be fairly quiet from the outside so as to not wake up my wife but the quality needs to be at critical listening levels. I've always heard of Stax but never heard them, now it seems that Audeze and Focal are highly rated as well.

For the rest of the system, I'd be looking at something compact and it would need to have wifi and roon. I have a Roon ROCK so it would need to take the music out of there. I haven't seen any system that is a all-in-one. It seems that I would need a separate headphone amp, dac and streamer.

I'm thinking of a budget around $5k but I can increase that if there is a real SQ jump beyond that.

This is what I use as my bedside system

- Focal Stellia - which I’ll describe as a closed version of the Utopia utilizing Beryllium drivers. It’s closed but doesn’t sound closed. I still prefer my Utopia but the Stellia is good in its own way

- Chord MojoPoly which works as a Roon endpoint.

(You could swap the MojoPoly for the new 2Go and Hugo2 combo.

Selecting a headphone is probably the most personal choice to be made as an audiophile. After all, it fits on your head, so physical comfort is at least as important as SQ. But there's more to it than that, because headphones don't really produce "accurate" sound, except perhaps when using a binaural recording. Most recordings are designed to be heard using loudspeakers, so the whole "sound in your head" phenomenon that we get from a headphone is unnatural, even if it might be pleasant.

For those reasons, I suggest you begin your effort at a dealer with an assortment of cans that you can demo at your leisure. I think you'll find that they often sound very different from each other - perhaps even more so than speakers.

That's a fairly large budget for something you've not tried. You can get an excellent intro with something like a pair of Sennheiser HD650 or HD600 or Grado 325 for well under $500 and a similarly priced headphone amp (either solid-state or tube). That will get you 80%+ of the way to the 'high-end' of $2-4K heaphones and amps.

As cleeds wisely states above, headphones are definitely not for everyone (as you can see, no headphone 'stuph' in my sig line) and you may find you are happy with some good ear-buds and something like a PDA (small, portable headphone amp/DAC with music in FLAC files on a micro-SD chip - will hold a few thousand CDs or connect thru various means to stream). Check the classifieds here. There was a nice Woo WA6 headphone amp available not long ago.

Good advice.

The Senn HDs may not be the best bet as they are open-backed, maybe think about picking up a pair of Oppo PM-3's and a Schiit Asgard headphone amp with a true multibit DAC module in it for $399. My advice is to not dismiss Schiit gear because of the low price.

Stephen... Schiit in the house is one thing, but Schiit on your head? :D

Hey, that's now they got their start! :D

Some good advice here.
In-ear monitors (IEMs) will provide the best isolation and lowest leakage to the person next to you, but not everyone can tolerate the fit for extended listening. For full-sized
over-ear, MrSpeakers Aeon closed-back are another very good option, and most find them comfortable.

The Schiit amps are great for the price for SS. If you like tubes, the Woo amps are excellent. The WA7 and WA8 both have good DACs and small size for a bedside setup, but you would need to add a streamer, perhaps something like a Bluesound. Also re Cleed’s suggestion for a portable, Astell & Kern devices can also stream from a local server, which doesn’t just limit you to what you can load into memory, but you need to chose headphones that are easily driven.
As Glenn pointed out, the best situation would be to find a dealer who has a variety of headgear you can try out. Barring that, find an online shop that allows trials and returns so you can test drive some options.

I just go for a complete Sony system. Might give the h/phones a spin tonight. Me R5 sounds much better with the improved living room, but then again, I remain your mid fi king. Advice here is not in my regal domain perchance.

I found a dealer that has the cans I want to try so I’ll check them out and decide which one I prefer.

For the rest of the system, I’m still very confused. Schiit was the first brand I checked out though they don’t seem to have exactly what I’m looking for.