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Being An Audiophile Is Cheap, The Desire Make It Expensive

The reason to enjoy the music we love is hear every note as the way as artist intended. Every breath and every instrument of the music reveal to the ears of the listeners. The equipment to accommodate those purpose are basically simple and affordable. Your extra mileage and desire to make the music more lively that's makes this hobby expensive.


To introduce the basic audio equipment especially for a new comers in audiophile world, all you need is a good headphone and a good player. It will sound just like a studio monitor when playback their records, it is clean and natural.

I am using Audio Technica ATH-M40x headphones which is the cheap way to get the audiophile experience. I also using the M50x long time ago and already sold it because of dominant sound at high and low frequency.

The player in this blog is my trustworthy and mighty CD player from Victor (now is JVC) XL-V90. I bought it second hand on 1992 and surprisingly, until today, it still play music very well. You can choose whatever player from the portable up to the desktop like this one.

This CD player build quality are astonishing. The front panel is all aluminium and the case is thick steel material. They focus on simple looking and great audio performance.

Inside this CD player is the Burr-brown DAC PCM53JP-V for DAC.

This CD Player also been upgrade in the capacitor. I think about 2 years ago I doing some recap in the power supply section as you can see on the photo bellow.

By today era, perhaps the CD player isn't for you, then maybe you also need a DAP like my iPod video 5th gen here. The sound from this iPod is good but can't compare to the quality of the CD Player.

Cost for headphone is US$99 and good second hand CDP is about US$50. So in total this audiophile devices is only US$149. Add more US$100 for an used iPod if you want the portability. Congratulation! you are now have a good audiophile equipment for cheap:)


Disclaimer: Any statement and photos in this article are not allowed to copy or publish without written permission from the writer. Any injury or loss from following tips in this article is not under writer responsibility.

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