Headphones

I’d probably have to drive 1.5 hours to Buffalo just to find a decent HT store. No headphone or IEM stores that I can tell of exist within 5 hours.

Chicago FB and craigslist are 95% skullcandy, bose, jbl, soundcore, or gaming headsets.

I found a pair of K712's for 90$ once, in rough shape, and the guy ghosted me.

I'd pretty much always rather create an open box discount for someone else by ordering headphones new online, trying them, and returning them.

For new headphones, it’s pretty good. A couple of large hifi stores within a couple hours of driving. Haven’t seen the used market but I imagine that’s also pretty good since I live near a large city (Los Angeles)

Shithouse, there are literally no stores that sell iems near me. I have to buy all iems/headphones online blind

I live in the rural midwestern US.

Home theater and car stuff is pretty accessible here, but for headphones specifically, the closest I've found is in Chicago... which is a 7-hour drive away.

Only just recently started entering the hobby and realised that where i stay is the Mecca of the iem world, Singapore. Audio shops like Zeppelin where you can demo almost high end iem and dap you dream of, to visiting Crinacle’s hangout where you can demo his own personal collection. It’s also the home to upcoming major brands like fatfreq, symphonium, nightjar acoustics, subtonic. Count myself very lucky

VN used market is exceptionally strong, used SA6 here cost like 250$, used B3 200$, used Mest mk2 550$ and so on, all in good condition so good for our community here but Very hard for new brand to compete because of insane p/p value

I live in Brazil, so used stuff usually is more expensive than a new similar in a USA. New stuff is 2 or 3 times more expensive than USA.

Chifi is a bit different. Used prices for a bit less than a new sometimes. Because until recently one could import from China with no taxes.

But two months ago government decide to enforce a law to tax all importations above 50 usd in 90% of price + shipment. Below 50 usd is, for now, only 20% in taxes, could increase to around 50% next year nwespaper have reported.

This will destroy the used market for sure.

Y'all have a local headphone/iem market?

There's a handful of hifi shops in Seattle, but they don't tend to carry headphones/iems. The two that do, have a remarkably small selection that varies wildly. They all cater to people looking to spend waaay too much money on full home theater setups. So the prices are all remarkably high, even for used gear. If you want $6k and up speaker cables, they've got you covered. I had to travel to a headphone convention to test stuff out. I've bought some used stuff on ebay for a good price, but it was all from out of state. Same with stuff I've bought online. I'd love to be able to walk into a store and get decent headphones, but it's just not an option here. There aren't really any dedicated electronics stores in the area.

Croatia. Not the best, not the worst.

While we have pretty good stores but it's usually overpriced but cannot complain about the range from cheap JBLs up to Meze Empyrean and Hifiman Shangri-la which you can demo. But we have a large second-hand market with headphones and speakers, unfortunately IEMs are pretty rare especially those in 200 USD range. I bought and sold many headphones and it was always a good experience with really kind and enthusiastic people and it was nice to talk to someone who is as invested in this hobby as I am

Very bustling under the $60 mark, more than that and activity sorts of plumets (Indonesia)

In PH the second hand market is great. They frown upon “flipping” or basically selling your item for more than what you got it for, basically kills buying and selling of such iems/hps. You get kicked out of audio groups if you get caught flipping. I do appreciate this actually since you want to be inclusive of people in the hobby

Part of the reason why I was able to get a vxv, noble k10, shure se846 for a combined price of 600usd

If you consider best buy who only carries Bluetooth crap a local headphone/IEM market, I would say my local market sucks balls.

Pure shit here in Syracuse, New York. Only Best Buy and Guitar Center. No specialty shops.

The next bigger stores here in my area are a few kilometers away but they are only selling stuff from JBL, Bose (bluetooth only), Sony (bluetooth only), Beats and a lot of noname stuff that the mainstream seems to prioritize. A few Sennheisers and AKG's are there as well but that's about it.

No Focal, no Denon, no Fostex, even no Audio Technica's except one model that is really bright (the MSR7b), no Beyerdynamics (I had to drive a little longer to find a store where I was able to test them and I didn't liked them), no Hifiman, no Audeze, no Meze... Nothing.

There are a few other smaller stores but they mainly only have speakers and amplifiers from Denon or Marantz for example.

I wish I could demo the Denon AH-D5200 because I'm interested in them. They could fit my tastes but I've read some contradictory things about their midrange. Some say it's a bit distant and others say they are not. Some say it's about the amp some say you don't need one. This can be frustrating at some times.