Long time guys! I've been to some strange lands while I was away. So you would not believe but there are guys who buy expensive flights to the oriental part of this world in search of metals magical and they call it IEMs...Alright I'll cut the Marco Polo out...

So, I know you can't simulate your sound source [i.e. speaker, headphone or iem] and these are ones who are the only things that can have techs [timbre, resolution, imaging, soundstage, etc.] in the chain. But, other than that...

These guys who have 20k cables, 40k dcs system, personal electric pole which they got from the mayor's wife...Like these things really would not make as much of a difference when compared to a solid plugin chain.

To be clear, I'm not talking of making a broken record sound like Focal Grand Utopias but let's say you have a decent source say Softears Volume S or Hifiman Arya with a decent Topping Amp-Dac with hqplayer as dsd256 upsampling. I bet the 50k chain [dcs and some expensive cable shit] that leads up to these can be overcome by a plugin chain [Nebula, Tone Projects and all those things that once I knew existed]. I know this will not make them Brise Fugaku or Warwick Aperios but I reckon they'll make a difference better than 20k cables and a 40k amp-dac. Also this is not for mixing or mastering but just for pleasure listening at home. The only thing the audiophile guys ever attempted is a simple digital peq, like these are the guys who will spend 20k on cables and find it better, I bet compared to that peq, something from AlexB or Timp is gonna make more of a difference.

So, did any mad-lad ever try to add a plugin chain and compared it with audiophile junk?

 

Last edited: May 3, 2025

The most expensive aspects of audiophile gear are built to fix issues that never existed or can only be viewed through lab equipment. Some stuff such as tube amps make some sense, but overall nothing you can't do with actual studio gear or some plugins. I find the Three Body Tech DV series pretty convincing, but overall I have a dislike of coloring the sound with further saturation. Cables, DACs, power supplies, filters, etc don't really do shit unless you're living in pretty bad conditions, and I doubt people who have the money to spend on that are living that poorly. Unless you're more specific, I don't know what plugins vs hardware can really do in that case, but at least for coloring, I doubt most people would pass a blind test. Some audiophiles might even prefer a plugin like Kelvin over a real tube amp.

 

Yes, it adds more harmonics.
And yes, there are a lot of paradoxes.

 

Check out Acustica's Daisy Plugin.

 

I didn't mean saturation, though Acustica or Nebula pre-amps may be worth trying. For IEMs there's Frequency Response and Tech [Driver quality and engineering]. Like one can change the FR to some degree, obviously it's taxing on driver if the changes are like 15-20db but for Tech one can't just make a Honda into Ferrari so there's a reason to buy expensive iems to a degree. Obviously something like Mysticraft Hex 13k is not even 2x better than say 1-2k stuff like Thieaudio iems.

Like audio plugs are also luxury similar to dumb expensive hardware. There are people arguing about a simple digital eq being no different that expensive stuff like Michelangelo or Nebula. But, at the end if one is to spend money on audio I was wondering if the plugs can do more for your buck or time than looking into r2r dac technology or the alloys of cables. In the end one wants better sonic enjoyment. My current iem is immensely better than stuff I used when I was young like dollar store earphones to Anker to DT770 [shitty timbre and metallic] to Hexa to Volume S...

I'm not loaded to just blind buy say Susvara unveiled or APX SE but it's tempting as the more I've thoughtfully invested in gear, the better it got sonically. So, I desire to make it as better as possible [my definition of better being Susvara Unveiled>Volume S>Hexa>DT770]. I was just hoping did someone try to use plugs to reach say a higher price bracket of quality...Say making Volume S better to stuff 300-500$ expensive stuff like monarks [obviously I'm not hoping for tech improvements but I don't know, probably Volume S>Hexa might just be tech]...

 

The main soundquality component is the frequency response. So using an eq to change it can subjectively and objectively make sense. The most important frequency parts that should be considered when buying a speaker is the bass extension and the treble response because it is the most uneven part.