Many thanks for all of your replies and suggestions. I will need to take a day or two to digest them. My weekend has been fully occupied with a family celebration for my wife’s 70th, with a wonderful dinner for three generations at Roly’s of Ballsbridge last night and a full house of children and grandchildren, not to mention a European Rugby fest!
Back to reality tomorrow……
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Totally agree with the demoing advice. I went to my dealer to buy some Focal MG clears or go further up the range if required.
Came away with some Sennheiser HD 820!
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I’ve been using Focal Clear MG’s with my HE since August 2022…always sounds sensational to me. Use the balanced XLR cable included with the Focals.
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Dublin is not very well supplied with HiFi dealers, so the opportunity to demo a range of headphones will be limited.
Ivan Cloney of Cloney audio has kindly lent me a pair of Focal Clear MG and I will start to compare these to The Sennheisers later this evening. Ivan also recommends Meze Líric, which he has on order but not in stock. They are made in Ukraine, so supply is tricky.
I’ll report on the Focals when I’ve given them a proper audition.
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Two questions. The Focal comes with a choice of a normal Jack plug cable or the alternative of a balanced connection. Any advice on how to choose between these without an interminable waste of time in comparing?
Also, I connected the Focal using the balanced cable but I found that if I then disconnected the Sennheisers from the front panel, the balanced output also stopped. So for the moment I have to leave both headphones connected in order to hear the Focal via balanced. This seems odd?
Sorry to reply to my own post but I found another topic which dealt with the problem of the balanced output when the front Jack headphones are disconnected. Just press the headphones button on the HE to activate the balanced output.
Although you can connect multiple headphones to the HE, Naim recommends no more than one. Probably best for absolute comparison purposes.
KR, J
Thanks Dr_J,
I realised later that until I had figured out how to have the Focals connected in balanced mode as the only connected headphone, I wasn’t hearing them properly at all.
I am very impressed with them so far, and from what I read, they will improve with ‘burn in’.
They are clearly in another league to the Sennheiser HD650s.
+1 for ZMF Vérité Closed. Exceptional headphones, highly recommended
It’s clear that I will have no chance to try most of the recommendations here. There just aren’t the dealers.
Has any of you ever tried the offer of a home test from Headphone.Shop website? How does that work?
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