Which headphones sound good with the Solo ULDE?

I'm a bit of an opportunist here but I intend to sell my last AKG K1000 soon. I would ask £1700 for it, due to the excellent condition and it is complete with box and manual. So that is close to your starting point. It beats the HD800 in my opinion and if you take care of it, it will maintain its value, unlike the HD800. Just an idea; I would like to do a few more listening comparisons with it against MySphere 3.1 before I finally part with it.

I support Mick's suggestion about buying good quality second-hand headphones to learn and progress. That is exactly what I did and I managed to experience products that would have otherwise been unobtainable. If you do wish to use the K1000 with the Solo ULDE, it will give you an insight into what MySphere can do. The Solo doesn't have enough gain to use the K1000 drivers completely fully opened out at high volume; you would need the Proprius for that. I used Majestic DAC into Solo UL with fully-opened K1000 about 6 years ago and both gain dials were being almost maxed out. If I recall correctly, I set Majestic to maximum but Solo could not go past 3 o'clock without pushing the signal into severe distortion; it had reached its very limit. So you will have to use the drivers closer to the ears to reduce the required amplification. Half-open drivers will allow you to provide plenty of volume while maintaining signal fidelity. A very musical experience that led me to sell all of my "chambered" headphones as the difference of listening in completely open-air was VERY significant compared to having the ears enclosed. The bass; oh my god! I never understand people who say K1000 lacks bass, WTF?? Amp them properly and position them on the head with some care and the bass quality slays the competition, assuming you don't want a highly elevated dB SPL response. Although you could apply EQ to tweak it if you want. The mid-bass to low midrange is actually slightly elevated by a couple of dB SPL so I would personally use an EQ to attenuate this slight emphasis. But it can be fun with some music and barely affects the tonal accuracy of the whole.

Edited by Ash - 26 Jun 2021 at 7:53am