4 audiophile headphones that are cheaper than the AirPods Max

Audiophiles are a strange breed. They tend to dish out thousands of dollars on gear with questionable characteristics - monocrystal wire cables, electrostatic drivers, cathode-biased vacuum tube amplifiers, etc. Many people argue that all of it is snake oil, and just as many fiercely defend every penny spent.

While the debate is one of the neverending types, there’s no doubt that most of the time audiophile gear sounds better than your run-of-the-mill Dre headphones, for example. Most of the time audiophile gear is also quite expensive. The trick is to find the perfect middle ground, where ...