I've been a keen music love for a long time but recently got into lossless portable audio.

Here is my current portable setup:

*Pioneer XDP- 300R 

*Sennheiser IE80's with custom moulded tips

*Self made pure silver multi strand braided cable with Viablue jack and splitter.

 

I have a 2.5mm TTRS jack to turn them into a balanced when I have a bit of time.

How do the custom tips feel after a while? I've thought about getting them but even normal in-ears feel a bit painful after a few hours for me.

I've seen that cables can affect frequency response (by accidentally putting analog video down a nasty composite cable designed maybe only for audio). But... do you reckon you could tell if you were using simpler but well-designed headphone cables in a blind test?

The tips are the single best thing I've done. They are made by puretone and cost £95 including moulding. I figured I could spend that buying various tips and hoping for the best. The audiologist said your ears don't start changing until late 50s or 50s so 30+ years in them. I plan on modifying the IEM moulding with sugru for my next IEM'S. 

They're fine for long periods, I've done about 6 hours and they were still good. The isolation and resulting soundstage is improved a lot though.

As for the cable, in all honesty I'm not sure. I done it at the same time as the tips so hard to tell. I still have the original so once it's burned in a bit more I'll compare. 

I've a pair of 80's, brilliant buds. Mine are pretty standard though, except aftermarket tips. I listen to FLAC files via an iPad, using 8Player. Great sound. Reviews suggest not much more to be gained for a portable system through using dearer buds.

The pioneer is a step up from my galaxy s7 via poweramp. Mainly due to the dedicated DAC and amp. The balanced output will utilise the twin DAC/amp with one per channel, which should be a decent upgrade. As I say the tips have given the single biggest improvement. I plan on getting a pair if Shure SE 846'S in the near future, just need to find a good priced pair. 

I'm trying to get out of spending time & money on music....

 

Currently have a Denon & Monitor Audio set up, just a digital amp, cd player & network player. However the network player will cope with 24bit 192kHz FLAC files....basically studio masters!

 

I made my own terminations, just bought the cable by the "M" & created fully braided covers into gold jacks for the speakers (bi-wired), which was fun!! But way cheaper than bought. Also made my own surge/filter block using an older MK unit.

SWMBO has saved me a fortune over the last 25 years by chucking my speaker stands away, binning my ugly monster cables, storing all the rest of my real Hi-Fi equipment in the loft (then selling it), selling my vinyl, selling my cassettes, CD's next no doubt.

I spent a bit on an AV amp with room correction (Anthem ARC; generally thought to be good) a few years ago and some AE speakers from ebay. I've been pretty happy with the sound since then. The amp doesn't do 4k etc., but so far any 4k source I've got will output the sound separately so I can send sound to the amp and video straight to the tv.

Does this count???

 

Michell Hydraulic Reference Turntable  with Fluid Arm and Ortofon VMS20E MkII

Teac CD-P1260 CD player

Tchnics ST-GT350 Tuner

Rotel RA 931 MkII Amp

Monitor Audio Bronze B2 speakers on Target stands

Looks good!

I've not experienced whether really expensive electronics sound better than pretty good ones. I've experienced that good speakers have benefits, as do speaker and listener placement, acoustic treatments in the room and electronically correcting the sound (e.g. Arc, Dirac etc.).

There seems a range of opinions about how much which cables matter. (I found an article where they'd tested expensive vs cheap hdmi cables with a device that could log the received data directly and do bit-for-bit comparisons; the expensive cable was no better after hours of material)

I reckon that anything that really worked to improve signal accuracy would be used by the communications satellite companies; they get paid to accurately work with weak signals.