T+A Solitaire P headphones and HA 200 DACheadphone amplifier

What I categorize as mainstream, dealer-based, fancy-pants stream-ers and big-speakers audio is actually only the gold-plated tip of a gigantic asteroid-like monolith that extends (underground) from New York to Hong Kong, from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica. This immense audio-social mass is mostly invisible to the Madison Avenue mainstream, but simple Google searches expose millions of proletarian audio-gear constructers (DIY’ers) working in shops, basements, and garages, scratch-building everything from turntables to tonearms to phono cartridges, to capacitors and vacuum tubes, to amplifiers, headphones, ribbon and electrostatic speakers.

- HERB REICHERT

Other Google searches turn over massive intergalactic rocks, exposing worlds teeming with triode-tube tribesmen, DAC-chip hoarders, FET collectors, ham-fest stalkers, OTL activists, irradiated flat-earthers, horn-speaker engineering societies, Klipschorn cults, Western Electric worshippers, Altec-ology converts, Harbeth clubs, PrimaLuna tube rollers, Japanese receiver restorers, and transformer-winder guilds. One really large group that was once, not long ago, invisible to the dealer-based mainstream has emerged from student dorm rooms to small gatherings in VFW halls and on to big-city Hotel CanJams and full suites at international audio shows: headphone devotees.

Today’s headphone devotees come in all types, from long-coated cyberpunk hackers to nerdy teens to retired sunbelters to remastering engineers and on to big-banking mahogany-desked CEOs. They all share a common desire for sound signals entering their brain directly, in their purest forms.

One consequence of so many headphone aficionados entering the mainstream is the increasing numbers of traditional power-amp manufacturers now selling dedicated headphone amplifiers. Pass Labs, Krell, Rogue, Bryston, Quad, Benchmark, Manley Labs, Naim, Cary, and PS Audio come easily to mind.