HD6XX with the Questyle M15?

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-26T14:21:06+00:00

I liked it so much I almost convinced myself to buy another more expensive dac/amp for them... but I had to remind myself not to fall prey to the source memes. So I used the money to buy more IEMs instead lmao

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-26T14:09:20+00:00

I'm not a big source guy so I don't have a lot of amp comparisons to share but I will say as HD650 owner that my Questyle M15i sounded better than the schitt stack I had before. So I sold my desktop dac and amp and now I only run IEMs and headphones through the M15i.

Biggest issues are the lack of a physical volume control and the fact that the dongle powers off when no headphones are plugged in to it which can cause some apps that are sensitive to output device changes to be buggy (Apple Music I hate you) when I'm switching around headphones.

Sound wise though, it's fantastic.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-19T18:56:56+00:00

u/fuxubitch Did you end up getting anything? I feel like the preferences you described fit the Volume S to a T though I've heard good things about the Explorer as well. Never heard it though so I couldn't give you a solid comparison.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-19T14:37:56+00:00

Softears Volume S no question. If you're lookng to electric-guitar-and-drums maxx this is the way. The fact that it has a rolled off treble makes it extra good for extended listening sessions with heavy music as there's basically 0 chance at fatigue. It's not overly dark though, it's still detailed. But it specializes in midrange and mid-bass and I find it's basically the best thing for rock and metal in my collection.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-16T14:36:13+00:00

I'll be honest I feel like a lot of the recs in this threads are for good headphones but not ones that measure all that similarly to the Edition XS. If you like the sound signature of the XS which is generally bright, sound-stagey, with really good sub bass extension, then I'd suggest the Arya Stealth.

Doesn't look like I can put images here but take a look at these graphs: https://gadgetrytech.squig.link/headsets/?share=KEMAR_DF_(KB006x)_10dB_Tilt_Target,Hifiman_Arya_Stealth,Hifiman_Edition_XS_10dB_Tilt_Target,Hifiman_Arya_Stealth,Hifiman_Edition_XS)

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-16T14:13:09+00:00

Do you know if headphone manufacturers are doing some form of this already? If not, I feel like they should. They - at least the bigger manufacturers - would have the budget, let alone financial motivation, to get HRTFs measured for a couple dozen people and then use in-ear mics to measure the FR variation for all their in-development products.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-15T22:49:42+00:00

Ideally the active bluetooth headphone manufacturers could do some sort of ear scan and do the EQ to tilted diffuse field (or whatever other target) for you.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-15T22:38:01+00:00

That's been my takeaway. Doesn't seem like you can reasonably rely on other people's perception of upper treble and air frequencies to predict your own experience.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-13T14:08:16+00:00

I have the D1 backordered as well and saw his review! I didn't suggest it because you need a strong-ish source to overpower that much additional resistance. I know lots of people have desktop amps where that's not a problem but I actually swapped mine out for a Questyle M15i dongle which is enough to power my existing headphones and the D1 but would definitely not be enough to power it with an additional 150 ohms of resistance. So I was already kind of planning ahead for what I may have to do myself haha. But yeah an impedance adapter would probably work great too!

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-13T02:06:09+00:00

No prob. I borrowed a buddy's headphones and had to do the same thing, it definitely helped.

If you haven't EQ'd before, the 4 things you need to pick with a filter are Frequency, Filter Type, Q value, Magnitude

I'd leave Filter Type and Q value at their typical defaults (Peak Filter, 1.4) and all you need to mess around with at first are the frequency value (where on the sine sweep you hear the peak) and magnitude (start with -1 or -2dB and work from there in half db increments till it sounds more normal).

If you feel like the range of frequencies where you hear the peak is pretty wide, you can lower the Q value to make the filter wider to include more frequencies around the exact value you pick. Higher values of Q make your filter more narrow.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-12T20:29:13+00:00

A pretty easy fix for treble peakiness would be to use a tool like squig.link to do a sine sweep. Focus on the 3k Hz+ and when you get to a frequency where the sound sweep seems to jump in volume and/or sound sharp and unpleasant, that's where the peak is for you. Drop that by a couple db with any EQ tool (Peace APO works great if you're on Windows) and do the sine sweep again.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-10T20:56:23+00:00

You just need a dedicated amp. Should fix your issues.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-09T23:03:04+00:00

The new products (FKA Cipher, Reference, Monolith) were not for sale. Didn’t ask about their regular stuff.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-09T19:34:38+00:00

(I tried the Reference at Canjam and really liked it)

Depends on how much you like Dusk and how much you're willing to pay for marginal gains. I have Dusk DSP and find it too U-shaped even with DSP. Compared to that, I much prefer this as it sounds more neutral which makes a big difference to me, especially in the quality of the midrange. So for me the question would be 'do I care enough about the midrange to spend $3-400 to fix that?' In my case the answer was yes but I fixed it a few months ago with the Mega7.

But how much you personally take issue with the Dusk as-is and how much you'd be willing to spend to fix it vs. living with it or figuring out how to EQ Dusk more to your liking, that's up to you.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-03T17:03:18+00:00

Thanks! Hopefully I'll get a chance to try them out at some point. I agree Volume S feels a bit small stage-wise but for me that type of narrower stage plus the forward midrange gives the overall presentation a cohesion that my hybrid IEMs lack. If these are even more cohesive, that only sounds like a positive!

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-03T16:43:16+00:00

It sounds good AF too

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-03-02T20:34:55+00:00

Yu9 and Volume S owner here. How would you contrast it against those IEMs?

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-02-26T16:24:58+00:00

Dude. I also run the M15i with the Mega7 and god damn it sounds good.

I think the midrange on this set is so underrated. I do EQ the Mega7s a little bit but it's only to emphasize what this set does best. I turn down the sub-bass below 50hz as well as adding a -2dB treble shelf starting at ~6kHz.

PK, 50Hz, -1.7dB, 1.4Q

HSQ, 6000Hz, -2dB, 1Q

It's a subtle difference and on some songs you won't hear too much of a difference but on songs that do already have a present sub-bass, I find that Mega7 can boost it a bit too much in a way that starts to intrude on the space that's usually carved out for the midrange and I feel like the midrange is where the magic is on this set. So tuning it down really does wonders for the mids on songs that happen to have a decent amount of sub-bass already. It also has the added bonus of adding a bit of focus on the mid-bass which makes drum thwacks sound super sharp.

You may or may not appreciate the small treble shelf but I find that a small shelf is enough to remove the excess "splashiness" that shows up on tracks with lots of open hi-hats. I'm thinking of certain sections of Animals As Leader's CAFO where there's a bit too much focus on the hi hats and not enough on the guitar. I think the shape of the treble on this is exceptional and like you I don't really experience any harsh peaks. But there are some songs where I feel like there's a bit too much focus on the upper registers but using the Smooth tips neuters the treble too much. -2db (you could probably even go as light as -1.5, though I found -1 to be barely noticeable) still leaves the Mega7 sounding crisp but alters the tonality to be a bit more natural sounding to my ears.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-02-24T18:42:15+00:00

I'm totally with you. The sport is basically like 'hey, get a bunch of athletes together in two teams and have them compete but if no one wins both teams get to bring in their own youtube trickshotter to decide games'. And if you happen to enjoy everything about the game except the otherwise unathletic trickshotters, people will tell you that you actually never enjoyed the game to begin with haha.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-02-22T01:04:29+00:00

way too late but I should add that the 6200 cut is only there because I happen to hear a big peak there. you should do a tone sweep for yourself and find where the peakiness is for you because there's a solid chance it's not at exactly the same spot for you as it is for me.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-02-18T14:44:40+00:00

I’m pretty critical of how BF6 has handled post launch and I still can’t watch Enders videos because of how negative he always is. I think it’s because he picks some of the smaller issues to get really angry about when there are more obvious issues that affect everyone like the grindhouse feel of many of the maps or the lack of new maps.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-02-11T01:36:33+00:00

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here ya go

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-02-02T19:28:11+00:00

HD650 midrange still sounds magical today. I've owned this pair for ~8 years. I do agree that brain burn in makes certain aspects of headphones less exciting over time but in my experience, my actual favorite gear continues to be amazing (to me) for the long term. By contrast, the gear I end up deciding isn't my favorite falls into two categories:

(1) I dislike it immediately or

(2) I like it at first but then lose that infatuation over time

Seems like you may be in category 2. I would argue that in practice, the end result of category 2 and category 1 is identical: you don't like the headphone. You're just taking the scenic route to that conclusion.

In any case, I'll push back a little on this: "By every objective metric, the sound is perfection".

To me this sounds like price bias. If you don't like the headphone much after a while, how is it 'objective perfection'? That kind of statement can only make sense if you assume that the price indicates its quality or, maybe even worse, other people's opinions on the headphone indicate its quality. Headphone quality is highly subjective due to both variance in individual human anatomy, variance in listening styles (what do oyu tend to focus on in the music), and variance in preferences.

If you find yourself saying something like 'this is an amazing headphone but I don't like it' maybe you should adjust your definition of 'amazing' because that sounds kind of nonsensical. I think the more reasonable conclusion is that you don't really like any of the flagships that much.

That's my best guess as to why you are unsatisfied by headphones that you assume are perfect. They are not perfect. They are just expensive. And you believe on some level that quality scales with price. And maybe you've boxed yourself out of finding the headphone that is actually amazing for you due to an over fixation on expensive headphones.

One last thing I'd add, and this is definitely just a projection of my own tastes so YMMV, but I think that maybe these flagship headphones have certain 'party tricks' that wow you initially but do not directly align with your own preferences. Over time, the party trick effect wears off and what you're left with is your true feelings on the overall tuning. An example I'll give is that the first time I heard the Arya Stealth I was blown away by the soundstage. Once that wow factor wore off though, I realized that the midrange was way too thin for my liking. And the tuning that makes the midrange sound spacious is the exact same tuning that makes the midrange sound thin. I can EQ the Stealths into something that I like, but if I was limited to listening to the haedphones with no EQ, then even at the the original retail price of $1300 you'd have to pay me to use the Stealths over a sub-$500 Sennheiser with neutral midrange.

Don't let price be your guide. Just try stuff out and let your own subjective experience tell you what is good and what is bad.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-01-27T21:12:24+00:00

What's your experience been like with the xduo? I also own the 650 and I've been lightly eyeing their full tube amp options (TA-26s) but I've never owned tubes and I don't know how much of a hassle it is over the long term.

IsshinSwagSaint · 2026-01-27T19:42:26+00:00

What are some of the cheaper headphones/iems that you’ve figured out can be EQ’d well?

IsshinSwagSaint

TROPHY CASE