I haven’t bought a new headphone since early 2020. I’m extremely happy with the two pair I have, my speakers which don’t cost a ton blow them out of the water, and I always find myself wanting to listen to things through the gear I have when I’m trying out other, “better” headphones. I did buy a moondrop aria snow edition for convenience this year, but it was filling a use case my headphones couldn’t fill. I don’t think I’ll be upgrading those in a long time either.

I’ve got a 650 and an Audeze El-08 closed (The third revision that has foam over the drivers.). Both do different things extremely well, the Audeze’s handle percussion incredibly have an insanely linear low-end all the way to 20, the 650‘s have amazing warm mids. I’ve got an amp with more than enough power and a transparent DAC (and an ipod with a wolfson DAC that adds some fun warmth to things). I want to enjoy the music now.

You turned off the bathys?

Weirdly, the on ear version is tuned considerably better than the XLs you have there.