indiefan

Ah, thanks. Yeah, Pace, Rhythm, and timing would also be important. I thought about going with the gilmore lite and an external sound card until i can afford a decent DAC. That way i could spend $350 on the amp, maybe pull together like $100 for the sound card and then if i wanted to upgrade to the dedicated power supply on the amp, that would be available. And when i did eventually save enough for a good DAC, I wouldn't necessary have to upgrade the amp right away. But i don't know if that logic makes any sense, plus i don't know enough about the equipment, like does the gilmore pair well with grados? What are some decent external sound cards and how much do they generally run? Will i hear more of a difference if i just start by getting a decent cd player? I'm not crazy about that option because a lot of my music i don't even know where the original discs are to begin with. The pico looks great as far as having a dac and an amp in one, but if i want to upgrade from there i'm basically left where i am now and that worries me a little.

thanks for the reply. The important stuff is lossless (flac, some apple lossless), a lot of stuff is VBR (i didn't really know any better...). It's being driven from my macbook as i said (from an external drive). If it's worthwhile to start with a decent cd player, let me know. I have ~$400 left to spend right now, then i could probably save/spend ~$200 a month towards it after that. What do you mean by "that", the pico? Sorry, i don't really know what "prat" means. Smoothness would be nice for the jazz, headstage would be great (but i realize the sr225s are limited when it comes to that) and i'm not obsessive about bass. I do care about vocals a lot if that matters.

Hi, I'm new. I'm looking into incrementally putting together an affordable setup and was hoping to get some advice from you guys on what I should get and in what order. Background: I listen to mostly indie rock and jazz off of a macbook (external hard drive). I just recently got a pair of sr225s and i'd like to put them to a little better use. My next purchase will be in the $300-$400 range and then it'll be about month or so between purchases, so I'd like to buy things in an order that will make the most difference. I know it's not a lot of money (and i don't have the greatest cans in the world) but you gotta start somewhere. Thanks in advance for the help...