Audio Rigs.

Oh dear. Someone is selling on Jaben his ESW10JPN for $600SGD. It should be extremely new, because the warranty starts in December 2008, it has been barely a month old. Thinks very hard.

I’m looking at getting my first pair of headphones, and a portable amp first, before upgrading the IEMS.

Hence, the current wish list looks like this:

1. ESW9/ESW10JPN

2. Graham Slee Voyager (All thanks to David’s poisoning)

3. Upgrade of IEMs to Westone 3/ IE8

Westone 3 OR

Sennheiser IE8

I’ve been doing my own calculations, and checking out the bundles Jaben has for the following products. It’s alot cheaper to ship in the IE8s from UK due to the pound dropping, and added discounts from a particular online shop David frequented. He’s getting his pair for only about 370SGD when the rrp in Singapore is 599. Hefty price for a small pair of IEMs eh. But the IEMs are not on top of the priority list.

I have been eyeing the ESW10 for a very long time, as people can see from my ramblings on my blog, even though I’ve yet to audition that droolicious pair of headphones. I’ve tried the Voyager before, and it did delight me plenty. Two combined items, should set me back by slightly more than $1000SGD. If I were to ship the Voyager from UK, that should fetch about $420SGD, while I’ll need to hunt for a separate pair of ESW10Jpn, which I could potentially get from the forums for a brand new second hand pair for approximately $600. However, Jaben does have a special bundle for these two great products – $1059SGD for ESW10Jpn, the GS Voyager, Interconnect, Idock and Ordance DAC.

That could potentially spell my start into non portables, as the Ordance DAC is an external USB DAC to be paired with computers and laptops to improve the sound quality emitting from the speakers. As a Digital Analog Converter, it bypasses the sound card in the computer, and converts the digital signal to that of an audio one, then passing it through the speakers to our ears. Then slowly, I might want to get nonportable headphones, like David’s cushy Denons. He just introduced me recently (online) to the legendary pair of Sony R10s, that is out of production, and highly sought after by audiophiles in love with headphones.

Sony R10s

Make a guess for its current market value. Hurhur.

So should I get them separately, or together as a bundle? In any case, I will audition the headphones before buying them. I’m not jumping into the deep end just like that. I figured, if I’m going to go in deep, I might as well go all the way with informed choices. Saves me the trouble of exploring the $300/$400 range of headphones before moving in. I feel like I’m going in with a bang.