GRAMOPHONE DREAMS
T+A Solitaire P headphones and HA 200 DACheadphone amplifier
What I categorize as mainstream, dealer-based, fancy-pants streamers and big-speakers audio is actually only the gold-plated tip of a gigantic asteroid-like monolith that extends (underground) from New York to Hong Kong, from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica. This immense audio-social mass is mostly invisible to the Madison Avenue mainstream, but simple Google searches expose millions of proletarian audio-gear constructers (DIY’ers) working in shops, basements, and garages, scratch-building everything from turntables to tonearms to phono cartridges, to capacitors and vacuum tubes, to amplifiers, headphones, ribbon and electrostatic speakers.
Other Google searches turn over massive intergalactic rocks, exposing worlds teeming with triode-tube tribesmen, DAC-chip hoarders, FET collectors, ham-fest stalkers, OTL activists, irradiated flat-earthers, horn-speaker engineering societies, Klipschorn cults, Western Electric worshippers, Altec-ology converts, Harbeth clubs, PrimaLuna tuberollers, Japanese receiver restorers, and transformer-winder guilds. One really large group that was once, not long ago, invisible to the dealer-based mainstream has emerged from student dorm rooms to small gatherings in VFW halls and on to big-city Hotel CanJams and full suites at international audio shows: headphone devotees.
Today’s headphone devotees come in all types, from long-coated cyberpunk hackers to nerdy teens to retired sunbelters to remastering engineers and on to big-banking mahogany-desked CEOs. They all share a common desire for sound signals entering their brain directly, in their purest forms.
One consequence of so many headphone aficionados entering the mainstream is the increasing numbers of traditional power-amp manufacturers now selling dedicated headphone amplifiers. Pass Labs, Krell, Rogue, Bryston, Quad, Benchmark, Manley Labs, Naim, Cary, and PS Audio come easily to mind.
More recently, a
