You mean the HA7000BTL product that was announced
last year? That one is an integrated DAC/amp product, very different frm HA5000 in that it has balanced outputs and a DAC portion in it. Audio-technica revealed it during their press conference last yr when unveiling their latest products such as ESW11LTD/AD2000X etc, but don't know why they did not have an actual sample unit for reporters to take pictures of, they only do an official announcement of it during the conference. Was waiting for more info to be leaked but apparently really no news of it for the last couple mths, so dunno whether we got trolled by ATH or not lols. Maybe they are really prepping for release later this yr during end of yr Winter, who knows.
Was intending to hoot AT-HA5000 by this mth one after pay-day, but last mth just hooted SSD for my PS3 and bought a new NEC ultrabook to replacing my aging laptop. Lately my interest was also piqued by the recently announced FitEar Parterre universals as well so after some serious consideration, I think i will hold off the amp purchase until later this yr, maybe see after the HA7000BTL gets announced liao whether the HA5000 will come down with price drops or not.
I originally had the intentions to sell off my W100 few weeks ago and other stuffs to gather funds for the HA5000, but thinking over it properly and reading
some comments recently in those older W100 threads, I think i would rather keep the W100 woodies instead as it may be quite hard to acquire for a mint pair agn in future if I ever wanna get it again. Especially with comments coming from someone who had the legendary W2002 before as well, and also owned before some well-regarded cans such as the Grado RS1/MDR-R10, tbh if he says the W100 is his fav pair of cans then there must be some truth to it.
So before being able to fully unlock the full potential of my W100's, I do think it's probably a wise idea to keep it around with me for now.
Recently been discovering some more ACG vocalists and been impressed once agn by the magic of ATH's woodies. Those of you who own ATH woodies one, please do go try this song embedded below. Really enjoyed this vocal track by Kana Hanazawa pretty damn much. She's an active
seiyuu who has been casted in alot of anime series projects, unfortunately as I'm not exactly a huge anime fan/regular I don't recognise alot of her roles actually, except in
Angel Beats and
Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ganai which i have watched. Still doesn't deny the fact that she has some pretty healing vocals, very gd to listen to after a long day's work. I currently consider her to be one of my favs apart from Maaya Sakamoto, in terms of ACG vocalists. Be sure to check out her
1st album as well, she just released one back in Feb.