Quote:
Originally Posted by zx10guy
A good Hi Fi shop will loan out prospective gear you're looking to purchase for you to use in your home....
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Yeah, for headphones, headphones.com will let you return up to 1 year later! And crutchfield has 60 day returns, Drop has 30 day returns (usually), and most reputable online dealers do as well (e.g., Schiit has 2-4 weeks, but you pay 5%). Handmade stuff like ZMFs ... well I think Zach has a fairly steep restocking fee such that you'd be better off reselling them which is very easy to do. (i should point out Zach is fantastic with customer service as in like the best you've ever had, and a lifetime guarantee)
Anyway, on IEMs, if you have tried campfire, those are about the best to my ear; Polaris if you like a V-shaped dance club scene, which I do, and which works great for me for my IEM uses. Up from there are the Ara, the IEM gold standard Andromedas (too neutral for me), and the Solaris which are fantastic.
For DAPs, never seemed worth it for me since I always have a phone with both tidal and a memory card so I just bitstream into whatever portable dac/amp I'm using. Has the downside of being a few components, but the upside of super flexible because a portable dac/amp can be used with laptops or elsewhere and by using the phone I'm actually saving a device anyway (the DAP would be another device to charge and keep track of), but that's just for my uses of course. iFi xDSD is nice since it has bluetooth just in case you ever need it, and I've tried monolith sticks versus audioquest dragonfly and I can't tell the difference (both worse than the xDSD though, so $80 wins on the monolith for an external portable dac/amp for my phone)