Buying and auditioning

[Jonathan Cox]

Have recently got an Epiphany Acoustics O2 amp, some improvement but looking to upgrade from my Goldring DR150s next as these are apparently low resistance and easy to drive. Have been recommended Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic by guys at Epiphany. Wondering how people have demoed a number of phones to come to their decisions? Would it be best to just buy half a dozen, having agreed with retailer beforehand that the favourite would be kept and the rest returned? Or is this asking too much of a shop? <!--break-->I really would love to demo as many brands as possible, I'm looking to spend up to £300 to get the best from my Epiphany amp. Any experiences of this would be great please. (As an aside, still have a nagging doubt that I should have got the Epiphany amp with DAC, source is ipod touch or Marantz CD6004. Opinions please?). Thank you.

 

[JoelSim]

I'd check the retailer's Ts & Cs first as pretty much no-one will allow that for hygiene reasons. A retailer can't sell on a used pair of headphones. Your best bet is to take some music to a shop who have lots of demo sets to try.

 

[steve_1979]

Sennheiser HD700 headphones can occasionally be found secondhand in the £300-350 price range. Fantastic clarity. They're the best headphones that I've tried for under £1000.

Alternatively the Beyerdynamic T1 are almost as good and can be found for under £300 secondhand.