we find good deals for you!
Our previous post covered the Massdrop Doorbusters, now let us take a look at their Black Friday blackout sale that features 210 products site-wide!
Among the headphoolia-related products:
+ Dekoni x Hifiman Cobalt closed-back for $300
+ Moondrop Voyager Bluetooth neckband for $89
+ DROP + XDUOO TA-84 OTL TUBE AMP/DAC for $349
+ Noble Kadence IEMs for $999
+ yes, the keyboards have won 🙂
Black Friday daily Doorbusters have arrived at the Massdrop website and swimming in the sea of mechanical keyboards we have some HEADPHONES:
+ open-back over-ear wired Sennheiser HD 58x Jubilee for $129
+ Drop + Hifiman HE4XX planar magnetics for $149
+ Drop + EPOS H3X gaming headset for $45
+ site-wide bonus rewards depending on the purchase amount, eg $250+ gets $25 rewards, $500+ gets $50, $750+ gets $100
+ this is not a percentage, it is a tier/threshold type of thing
+ new doorbusters added daily at 9am pacific until Cyber Monday
Good until 11/30/23 (or earlier if stock is depleted), Headphones.com, the shopping side of the popular YouTube channel, is offering a FREE AudioQuest Dragonfly Cobalt USB DAC/Amp with purchases of $750+ in new and open-box products too!
TO GET the FREEBIE
Do NOT add the Dragonfly manually to your shopping cart!
Add $750+ of products, new condition and/or open-box to your shopping cart, and the Dragonfly will auto-magically appear in your cart as FREE!
There is no coupon code to enter!
One thing to note, from the text of the email it is not 100% clear whether the $750+ must be from a single item, or a combination of items. Play with the shopping cart and see what happens.
It’s a Feast Of Choices in open-back Sennheiser headphones these days. If of all the choices out there you have settled on the HD 650, good until Saturday 11/18/23 at 11:59pm eastern (or earlier if sold out), B&H Photo is offering the new condition wired open-back over-ear Sennheiser HD 650 headphones for $250 after an “add to cart” type of an instant coupon (no need to type anything in).
Note that B&H observes the Sabbath, so online ordering is paused between Friday PM and Saturday PM – check their website for the exact times.
Good until Saturday 11/11/23 at 11:59pm ET or earlier if sold out, B&H Photo is offering the new condition V-Moda Crossface 2 Wireless in the Rolling Stone edition for $70. This is available in two options, “Classic Licks” or “No Filter”.
The “Exoskeleton case” is the star accessory that is included standard in the package.
Good until Saturday 11/11/23 at 11:59pm ET, this crazy Tripod x Headphone bundle is back at B&H Photo for $650. For this you get:
+ Ultrasone Performance Series 880 wired closed-back over-ear Headphones
+ Ultrasone SIRIUS Bluetooth Adapter for Performance Series Headphone
+ Manfrotto 504X Fluid Video Head & MVTTWINMA Aluminum Tripod with Mid-Level Spreader
A coupon promotion until 11//16/23 at the Monoprice website features an extra 30% off on orders of $50+ using coupon code EXTRA30 on select Monoprice audio products, headlined by some of their headphones:
+ AMT headphone drops to $700
+ Planars M1070 open-back and M1070C closed-back drop to $280
+ Planar M1570C closed-back drops to $420
+ a couple of other consumer headphones, various speakers, audio cables, stands, and speaker wire are among the other eligible items
There’s a Chi-Fi sale party at the KZTWS online shop! Among others they are offering:
+ KZ EDX Lite earphones for $9
+ CCA Polaris for $12
+ KZ AM01 cable DAC/amp for $14
+ KZ Castor for $15
+ CCA Pianist for $30
+ KZ Krila for $16
+ and more!
IF you add to have this to your collection [or replace worn out copies], as a benchmark of sorts, good for the next three days or so, you can have the new condition wired closed-back over-ear Sony MDR-7506 studio headphones for $70 at Woot. These are new condition, up to ten pairs per customer, with a 90-day Sony warranty. A drawstring pouch is included. These come with a hardwired coiled cable. No mic/remote, but a 1/4″ adapter is included.
These are part of a Woot Plus headphone sale good until 11/4/23 at 12am central time. It includes the Philips L3 for $100, B&O Play, Lenovo Yoga, Philips H9505 ANC, a Skullcandy ANC, and a couple of more items.
A Halloween themed sale at Monoprice brings us, among other things, the new condition wired closed-back over-ear planar-magnetic Monolith M565C for $200, the Monolith AMT (Air Motion Transformer) headphones for $900, or for the same price you can buy almost 900 “Premium” (product name, PID 18591, 1-button mic/remote) IEMs at $1.04 each 🙂
Various other products are on sale including cables for all sorts of things.
These are open to all customers, they are not part of the Prime Deals!
If you don’t need the balanced cable and you are comfortable with refurbished headphones, the open-back over-ear wired Philips Fidelio X3 is offered for $80 by PhotoTech on Amazon. Per the customer reviews there, the balanced cable is NOT included in the refurbished package, even though the listing says it is included!
IF you want the balanced cable, the new condition Philips X3 is offered by Amazon actual for $140.
OR you can get the Philips SHP-9600 that hovers around $70 (depending on seller) in new condition OR around $50 as refurbished…
Counter-headphone-culture darling KOSS is also participating in the Big Prime Deals during October 10-11 in 2023 with the good old Classic PORTA PRO going for $27.60 and the KPH-30i-RB going for $21. As fate would have it, I purchased the classic Porta Pro almost exactly ten years ago!
But the Koss Amazon store also has a few on sale that are not part of the Big Prime deals – meaning anyone can buy them, not just Prime members:
+ Koss Porta Pro Utility On-Ears for $25
+ Koss Porta Pro Black On-Ears for $30
+ Koss Porta PRO Limited Editions for $35 – either the “Black Gold” or the “Rhythm Beige”
From the audiophile perspective, the headliner of the headphone deals during Prime Big Deal Days running October 10 and 11 in 2023 is a 16-item Sennheiser headphone sale that includes:
+ HD 599 SE open over-ears for $80
+ HD 600 open over-ears for $285
+ HD 660 S2 open over-ears for $427
+ HD 450BT Special Edition bluetooth over-ears for $80
+ HD 450BT Bluetooth over-ears for $95
+ Momentum 4 Bluetooth wireless for $300
+ RS 175 RF-wireless for $171
+ various truly wireless (obviously!)
Headphones are part of the Amazon Prime Big Deal sales with three pages of offerings in this, headlined as per the Amazon display, by the Sony consumer headphones.
Needless to say, Amazon is not Massdrop, so you won’t find all the audiophile/audiophool products there, but there is Beats, Bang & Olufsen, Shure Aonic, BOSE, Sennheiser [there’s a separate post here on these], various Amazon-famous bluetooth-y brands, and of course the consumer-darling the AirPODS PRO (2nd Gen) for $189 in your choice of USB-C or the abandoned and discarded by Cupertino Lightning connector 🙂
If you are a fan of heavy metal and eBooks, one of the Thursday 10/5/23 Kindle Deals du jour is the 562 page “Eddie Trunk’s Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal” going for $4. Yes, that’s the guy from Sirius XM and VH-1. As of the time for writing the book averages 4.5 out of 5 on 373 customer ratings.
Piercing treble and Grados, here we come 🙂
If you are curious about Hifiman’s non-planar (dynamic) closed-back over-ear headphones, for a limited time, Massdrop is having a sale on the new condition Hifiman RE-R7DX closed-back wired over-ears for $89 with a 1-year warranty and 30-day returns. This is an “in-stock drop”, it will ship typically within two business days of ordering. The only included accessory is a TRS adaptor.
Despite the name, you cannot use in the bath 😉 With that out of the way, we have a bundle promotion for a hype headphone, yes, now Bluetooth/ANC headphones are getting “normalized” by some audiophiles 🙂
Adorama is including for FREE the Energizer Qi wireless power bank with the purchase of the new condition FOCAL BATHYS for $699.
The headphone itself comes with a rigid case, audio and USB-C cables and 2-year warranty.
If you are wondering why I often post Monoprice deals is because they organize their offers in a simple way that is fast to post and fast to read/scan through to see if you are interested in anything 🙂
Which brings us to another limited time sale, a MEGA SALE (LOL) that starts with headphones, headlined by the wired closed-back planar-magnetic over-ear M1570C for $420 with free standard US shipping. Yes, a very special price 🙂
Move over Chi-Fi, here comes Mono-Fi! The sale also includes a $1 (actually $0.99) wired earphone with mic/remote even [free shipping on $39+ orders]. You can buy as many as you want. Yes, a fun stocking stuffer. Or the only gift for those who misbehaved during the year 😉 As of the time of writing it averages 4.4 out of 5 based on 274 customer reviews and it has a handful of answered questions as well.
I remember buying it a long time ago, but I recall nothing else.
Good until 9/9/23 at 11:59pm ET or earlier if sold out, one of the limited-time offers at B&H Photo is their house-brand AURAY under-surface dual headphone hanger offered for just $5! Up to ten per customer. If buying more than a few, note that on the same listing they sell a 10-pack for $40, making it $4 per.
It averages 3.7 out of 5 based on 19 customer reviews and it has a couple of answered-questions.
If you are interested in classical music and you like the “DK Big Ideas” type of books, for Wednesday 9/6/23, one of the Kindle daily deals is the “The Classical Music Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (DK Big Ideas)” going for $2. The ebook is eligible for “Great on Kindle” previously earned store credits, and it will also earn a $0.20 future purchase “Great on Kindle” store credit.
It is 800+ pages, it came out in December 2018, and it’s a big book, over 300MB. Given the size and style of the DK books, these are probably best read on larger tablets and laptops, and computer monitors.
As of the time of writing it averages 4.6 out of 5 on 514 customer ratings.
New York City’s iconic B&H Photo store is celebrating 50 years in business and as part of the festivities they are having a two-day special sale running until Thursday 9/7/23 at 11:59pm ET.
The sale includes 170+ headphones including the very popular with the iSheeple AirPods MAX for $480 [MAX = over-ears in Apple speak].
In terms of the general population, the headliner is the new condition BOSE 700 UC ANC/BT with USB bluetooth module going for $249. Remember, if you are an audiophile, Beats and Bose, they break my bones 🙂
On the more audiophile front, the sale includes:
+ V-Moda Crossfade 2 Wireless (Rolling Stones) for $100
+ HEDD Air Motion Transformer for $1499
+ FOSTEX T60RP RP Stereo for $250 after clip-on coupon
+ Audeze LCD-XC closed planar kit with the Grace m900 headphone amp for $1763.10
+ there’s also a BIG Sennheiser sale with fifteen options that includes the HD400S closed over-ears for $50, the famous open-backs HD600 and HD650 and HD660 S2 for $300 and $400 and $500 respectively, the open HD599 Ivory for $120, the IE600 and IE900 IEMs for $600 and $1200 respectively, and various others, including of course bluetooths.
+ Astell & Kern AK ZERO1 Universal In-Ear Monitors with 3.5mm Cable for $529
Unlike the elitist and pretentious audiophile/audiophool blogs, we cover all kinds of headphones, including single figure ones. Which brings us to the September 1st (2023) Meh daily deal, it’s the new condition Kaloc TWS truly wireless going for $9.99 plus shipping. If you are a paying Meh member, you get free shipping.
Despite the low price, they come with bluetooth 5, USB-C and the charging case can theoretically [I haven’t seen or used them] provide five full refills.
The Meh website points to the PulseTV 2-minute overview of these, YouTube-embedded below.
If you prefer buying open-box headphones because they have the benefit of the manufacturer warranty, as of the time of writing, Adorama is having 241 headphone options in their open-box category including models from Sennheiser, Focal, Hifiman, Westone, and such.
Among others, the closed-back open-box Focal Elegia goes for $282.
You can use the various filtering options over there, by manufacturer, by sub-type, by price-range, and such, to filter them further…
Oh dear, we have fallen behind on our postings! But we have a round-up type of a post today!
First up, the Massdrop website has launched a $20 off coupon on orders of $100+, coupon code WHATSYOURMAJOR entered over there. This runs until 8/27/23.
This drops [no pun intended, really!] the HD-6XX to $180, the HD-58X Jubilee to $130, the HD-560S to $200, the HE-R7DX closed to $79 (if you buy something else that costs $1+ to get the pre-coupon order total to $100+) and so on.
The aforementioned headphones are all listed and featured in the coupon promotional page.
There’s other headphones as well, along with earphones, DAC/amps, headphonalia accessories, keyboardalia of course, and such. Remember, if you want accessories that cost under $100 each, you can still use the coupon code if your order total is over $100, eg multiple units of the same accessory, or different accessories, or accessories + headphone or keyboard, and such. Any combination that gets your order total to $100+ in eligible items!
Monoprice coupon ends today!
Monoprice too is running a limited time coupon code on select audio products (those listed in the aforelinked promotional page), use BIG30 to get 30% off on orders of $50+. Coupon ends 8/17/23 at 11:59pm pacific.
OOPS, I just realized I posted this coupon earlier in August 🙂
As usual, their shopping cart decides on which products quality. The listed products include some of their bluetooth headphones, Monolith DAC/amps, the M1070C planars, and such.
Monolith Speakers sale
A separate promotion, for a limited time, kinda their deals of the day/week or so, they have three Monolith speakers on sale, with the all-important free standard US shipping, because unlike headphones, speakers weigh more than a few grams 🙂
+ Monolith Encore T5 Tower Speaker for $90
+ one speaker
+ Monolith Encore B5 Bookshelf Speaker for $50
+ one speaker
+ Monolith Audition T4 Tower Speaker for $130
+ one speaker
Good until 8/17/23, Monoprice is running a coupon promotion on specific Audio products, namely the ones listed at the aforelinked page. You have to use coupon code BIG30 to get the discount!
Eligible items include:
+ budget earphones, a $2 Premium (yes, LOL on that combo) and a $4.62 “reflective sound”
+ prices above before coupon
+ your order total must be $50+ to get the discount, whether you buy multiple of these and/or in combination with other eligible products
+ Monolith M1070C closed over-ear planars for $280 before coupon
+ drops to $196 after coupon
+ three Monolith headphone amps, two from Alex Cavali, and one THX AAA balanced
+ bluetooth and SonicSolace over-ears
+ various speakers and soundbars and assortedly related products
+ mounts and stands for the above
+ all kinds of audio cables and adapters along with Speaker Wire
REMEMBER, to take advantage of the discount your order total must be $50+ from any combination of products participating in this promotion. Ultimately, their shopping cart is the ultimate decider on what qualifies 🙂
Today (July 12 in 2023) is the second and last day of the 2023 incarnation of Prime Day!
OVER EARS
If you are curious what’s happening in the world of headphones, both in terms of offers and in terms of what others are buying, here are the Top-Selling Over-Ears over there.
As you can expect, the list is dominated by Beats, Sony, Bose and various budget brands such as this well-reviewed (4.4 out of 5, 13,290 ratings) KVidio bluetooth over-ears for $20 in five color options. Despite the price, it has Bluetooth 5.3 which makes you wonder why some of the big audio brands are still on Bluetooth 4 while charging an order of magnitude more for theirs 🙂 It folds, plays via 3.5mm as well, promises up to 65 hours, USB-C, etc!
The first open-back headphone in the list appears at #31, it is the Sennheiser HD 599 SE for $80, a pretty good price, thus the high chart position ~ considering the normies buy cheap and Beats and Bose and Sony and JBL and Apple proper and Anker and such 🙂
Sennheiser is also at #37 with the HD 450SE bluetooth over-ears for $80. And that’s it for the audiophile name-brand products in the Top 100. One open back and two Sennheisers 🙂
ON EARS
The On-Ears category is more of the same, with Beats and Sony and JBL and cheap brands dominating among the name-brand products. Yes, the good old Sony ZX-110 for $10 is charting high at #10. I never got around to writing a review for this, but I believe this headphone was tuned (intentionally or not) for usage in coffee shop background noise 🙂
A few of over-ears also appear in the second half of the Top 100, [see meta note below], the Sennheiser HD 350 BT, the Bose QC 45, the Beats Studio 3 🙂
At #79 we find another old friend, the lightweight Panasonic RP-HT21. Per the Amazon listing, I bought this almost exactly ten years ago!
And shortly after that we have another lightweight, the good old Koss KPH-7 for $6 in the black color scheme. This one I bought eight years ago.
Meta: On the Lists
Before you freak out looking at the list, note that Amazon’s categorization is a big mess, you will find non-canon products (eg truly wireless and such) in the listing. There’s too many 3rd-party sellers listing their products everywhere, intentionally or not 🙂
That’s why I’m not mentioning the open-back category, it’s fully of kinda bone conduction and random truly wireless 🙂
Massdrop (yes, I’m still calling them that) is having its very own Prime sale featuring exactly 200 products, including plenty of audio-related items.
In this post, I’m rounding up some of the offerings. This is a sampling, not a comprehensive listing!
OPEN BACKS
+ Koss KPH-40X Utility lightweights for $29
+ Hifiman HE-X4 planars for $89
+ yes, you can dabble into planar over-ears for under $100
+ Sennheiser HD 58x Jubilee for $149
+ Hifiman HE-4XX planars for $149
+ Hifiman HE-5XX planars for $169
+ Sennheiser HD 6XX for $199
+ Drop+ Dan Clark AEON for $369
+ FOCAL ELEX for $599
+ Sennheiser HD 800 S for $1425
CLOSED BACKS
+ Hifiman HE-R7DX for $79
+ Drop+ Dan Clark Audio AEON for $449
+ Drop+ MR Speakers Ether CX for $649
IEMs and TW
+ Etymotic ER3-SE or ER3-XR IEMs for $95
+ Akoustyx R-220 IEMs for $149
+ Beyerdynamic DT 177X studio for $349
+ Campfire Dorado 2020 IEM for $499
DAC/Amps and such
+ DROP + SMSL HO150X LINEAR head-amp for $169
Head-Accessories and such
+ various gaming headsets (not listed here)
+ Kanton H2 headphone stand for $30
+ that’s too cheap for Massdrop? 😉
+ Craighill headphone stand for $80
+ Barrett Creative Lamina V2 stand for $90
Etc
+ FFT Audio Light for $140
+ if you are mesmerized by shiny lights that go with the flow of the music!
+ lots and lots of keyboards and their new category of PC/gaming accessories
+ I’m glad I avoided the keyboard fetish special interest, because it looks like a never-ending and very expensive hobby 🙂
+ this is not a keyboard blog, so I won’t mention them here 🙂
This offer is open to all Amazon customers! A 3rd-party seller (Phototech) is offering the new condition wired open-back over-ears Philips Fidelio X3 for $140 with the order fulfilled by Amazon, so Prime members get free 2-day shipping.
Amazon’s own price is higher. Phototech is a frequent seller of the Fidelio line.
As to which one of the Fidelio X-series headphones to get, or whether to get them, well, head on over to your favorite headphoolia websites, forums, blogs and vlogs for never-ending discussions 🙂
Prime Day 2023 is here and there are five pages of Headphone deals including the usual suspects of popular with consumer options like Bose, Beats, Sony, AirPods and such.
But the big surprise of the day is a Big Sennheiser SALE including:
+ open over-ear HD 560S for $150
+ open over-ear HD 600 for $283~
+ open over-ear HD 660 S2 for $400
+ open over-ear HD 599 SE for $80
+ closed over-ear HD 450 SE Bluebooths for $80
+ also various truly-wireless and a couple of RF-series TV headphones
+ IE 200 In-Ears for $100
+ to purchase most of the offers above, you must be a Prime Member, thus the Prime Day name
+ if you want to buy any of these offers, fear not, you can jump in and buy anything you want as long as you start a 30-DAY free TRIAL of Prime!
If you are fond of Monoprice audio products or their many audio cables and assorted accessories, they are currently having a Lowest Price sale of select products, including a few headphones, speakers, a couple of DACs, and all kinds of audio cables and assorted accessories.
Please note that I’m not familiar with the price ranges of the various Monoprice products, so I can’t trust-but-verify they are the “lowest price sale” as the Monoprice website states.
Happy Independence Day to all and especially fans of wood material type of headphones! Good until 7/4/23 at 11:59pm eastern time (or earlier if sold out), one of the deals of the day at B&H Photo is the new condition wired closed-back over-ear Denon AH-MM400 Reference headphones offered for $129. The “Reference” is part of the model name 🙂
It comes with two cables and a case and an adapter. They have five customer reviews over there, three of them from audiophile-sounding custaomers – they mention Chord Mojo, Fidelio, Fostex, Fiio, AH-D600, Oppo, etc 🙂
If you are interested in checking out some of Monoprice’s headphones or DAC/amps or stock up on audio cables and other consumables, or most of the other items they sale, the Monoprice website is having a 4th of July coupon promotion!
Coupon MPS20 gets you 20% off the vast majority of products on their website. Some products are excluded, they even made a list of exclusions.
You can search for headphones or DAC/amps, or follow the categories and sub-categories over there to find what you want/need. Or search for Monolith, but do note that some of the Monolith products are not coupon-eligible [you can see them at the aforelinked list].
If you are fond of shopping refurbished and open-box products, they have some headphone-related options there as well!
And don’t forget to stock up on cables!
What’s even better, the coupon can be used three times per customer during this promotion. Each use has a maximum coupon-discount of $2000 per order. The coupon cannot be combined with other coupons!
Have fun Mono-shopping 🙂
Good until Monday June 26 (2023) at 11:59pm eastern time, or earlier if sold out, as one of its deals du jour, Adorama is offering the new condition V-MODA Crossfade 2 Competition Edition headphones for $109. This is a bundle that includes “shield customization”.
Among other things included in this bundle are a customization voucher (to get your custom shields printed), a BoomPRO mic, an ExoSkeleton case, a SpeakEasy Lightning DAC/amp, and assorted other small things (1-button cable, clip, adapters, etc)…
This is a bit of a fun audio accessory and it is one of the first batch of products featured in Massdrop’s new “Battlestations” community of computer and gaming accessories of sorts!
It is the FFT AUDIO LIGHT and it is offered for $140 with a mid-September 2013 shipment estimate.
If you haven’t seen this before, I won’t ruin the surprise by detailing it here. I will just YouTube-embed a short video demo of it and if you are curious, the aforementioned Massdrop link has all the details!
Every few months, B&H Photo creates a special 72-hour sales party they call the MEGA Deal Zone. This features almost all of the daily deals of the last few months. All of them available for purchase at the same time. There are nearly 1500 options and you can buy as many as you like!
In the Headphones section they include, among others:
+ Senal studio headphones, $45 for the SMH-1000, $50 for the SMH-1200
+ these are homages to the good old Sony MDR-7506/V6 type of headphones
+ Polsen HPC-A30 Mark II studio headphones for $15
+ Shokz swim-type bone conductions
+ various AU-sounds truly wireless
+ sale ends Thursday 6/23/23 at 11:59pm ET or earlier if sold out
PS: unrelated to the above, but I didn’t want to create a separate blog-post for this, one of the Tuesday 6/20/23 Kindle ebook daily deals is the ebook “Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius” by Harry Freedman for $2. This averages 4.7 out of 5 on 161 customer ratings as of the time of writing. It is 258 pages, October 2021, from Bloomsbury Continuum.
Recent Comments