[zx10guy]

A good Hi Fi shop will loan out prospective gear you're looking to purchase for you to use in your home with your existing equipment. I've dealt with a few shops that have this policy. This is one of the extras you get when you purchase from a specialty shop and not a chain store. But it's lost on the mass market crowd. In addition, these places usually have upgrade policies for electronics and speakers. Speakers tend to have a more generous period. When you have history with a particular shop, you'll also find that they'll give you decent price breaks which bring them in the ball park of mass market stores.

On the headphone front, I've been kicking around a few models. I used to have some higher end Sony ear buds which had exotic jewel coatings on the diaphragm material. Unfortunately, the quality didn't extend to the drivers which would blow with not too much input signal. I moved on to some B&O ear buds which have lasted till this day some 2 or so decades. But I always felt there was something off where there was a hole in the mid bass to mids. I also tried some AKG K280s and eventually moved on to a set of Grado SR100s.

I currently use for serious ear bud listening a set of Sennheiser SE535s and a set of Oppo PM-3s. I also got some headphone amps to drive them. I have a Ray Samuels Predator which I some times use with the SE535s and a Lightning for the PM-3s. Because the Lightning is a fully balanced headphone amp, I spent the money to convert the audio cable going to the PM-3s to a fully balanced cable. The only thing I'm missing is to get a portable music player with balanced outs. I'm currently looking at options.