I will be completely honest and say I vainly read through this entire thread looking for my name to come up (thanks for the nice words!) I don't want to mess things up by posting any comments of my own (and I value constructive criticism), but since his name hasn't come up I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed ClieOS's IEM reviews on Head Fi.

They were simple and succinct and when I was starting in the hobby I felt like they gave me a great frame of reference. I got my first pair of HiFiMan RE-0's off the back of his glowing recommendation and I remember being so happy.

Also in answer to questions about my predilection for mid-fi gear, I simply can't afford the high end gear. As you might also guess, it makes no sense from a YT revenue perspective to buy very expensive gear when I could get cheaper gear that more of my viewers are interested in, because only then can I keep buying more stuff. This is probably the biggest drawback of the 'no review units' model that I've discovered so far.

The Youtube audience is younger with less discretionary income, and I'm assuming (I may be wrong) that the people who want to buy summit-fi gear are more likely to prefer written reviews and hanging out on lovely forums like this.

I know that a lot of people think differently but I do like to buy a bunch of different gear because I find the process of comparison and collecting rewarding, and 'highest quality' is rarely my end goal. It's also a sour grapes thing on my part though.

All this said I've realised I've been slowly climbing up price brackets once I find stuff that I find physically comfortable enough to consider owning ie: Shure SRH1540.

I've definitely been interested in buying something fancier. The Geek Pulse was sort of meant to be that for me but while i think it sounds nice enough I have my own bugbears about it. I've been looking in passing at other options but nothing has really called out to me. Oddly enough I very very rarely (almost never) get requests about amps / DACs unless it's a Fiio unit.

Luckily I live right next to a headphone store now (Minidisc) and there is always new stuff to try. I should note that the ZX1 and the Z7 I bought at a very steep discount and sold both afterwards.

Honestly I've never been very confident with reviewing amps and DACs. I just don't hear much of a difference with a lot of stuff I've tried. Recently I've been trying the Apogee Groove (and formulating my review about it) and I have to say it's demonstrated to me that different gear really can sound very different, if only because it has a completely different topology. So I'm open to the idea of getting something spiffy.

It just has to look nice, not take up too much space on my desk and have on/off transient protection so I don't feel paranoid about it chewing up my headphones. If I had to get something today it would probably be a Schiit something.

I would also just love an amplifier that had two outputs with independent volume controls. That would just be heaven sent for gear comparisons.

Damn! That HPA-4x2 is priced almost as competitive as the monoprice:

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=115&cp_id=11504&cs_id=1150404&p_id=615220&seq=1&format=2

Why they look almost the same! Monoprice must try harder.

Review my reviews!