First post and wish list

[Pete10]

Hi all,
Just started reading, good to see a no-nonsense site! Thanks to the crew. First post, so a little bit of introduction below, and a comment on what I am still missing most. Comments or questions welcome,
Pete

Wanted:
A streaming option with more and better info for both modern and classical music.
Good headphones with staging in front of me rather than in the middle of my brain.

Current gear, see signature.
Recently used gear: Dragonfly black DAC, Musical Fidelity VDAC, Pipo X8/Windows10/NAS/Foobar2000 (all overcomplete now..).
Older stuff (in 40yrs..), sold, dead, or otherwise gone, cd players (nice early Kenwood, mediocre Luxman), amps/receivers (mediocre NAD 320BEE, HK63??, Luxman A-???), loudspeakers (nice Elipson 1003), cassette decks (bad Akai toploader, awful Teac with dbx), turntable (Thorens/Ortofon - dust cover that could not be closed while playing), headphones (nice Sennheiser Reference I HD540).
First buy: Pioneer sx-450 receiver, paid from hard work as teenager during the summer holidays.

 

[kemmler3D]

A streaming option with more and better info for both modern and classical music.
Good headphones with staging in front of me rather than in the middle of my brain.

Welcome to ASR!

I'm told Apple Music has good Classical metadata.

Your headphones are good, but if you EQ them and add crossfeed you should get a more "in front" soundstage.

I resisted crossfeed as a "special effect" for MANY years, when I finally tried it I realized that was stupid. Headphones are fundamentally unrealistic because your left ear is never totally isolated from what your right ear hears in real life, and vice-versa. Crossfeed corrects this so your brain can at least attempt to create some kind of realistic soundstage. A little goes a long way.

This is easily done on a Windows machine using EQAPO and a VST, other audio players may have the option as well.

 

[Pete10]

Thanks for the reply. I tried Apple classical but was not really that impressed, maybe give it another go.
I did follow up on your suggestion to look at DSP (again, did some testing with foobar2000 plugins in the past). I found and managed to install rootlessJamesDSP and Shizuku on the Android tablet, and then usb-c otg > dragonfly > AKG K550 > ears.
Lots of DSP options, including crossfeed. It indeed gives a notable improvement.