Well, if you are willing to go second hand, you can find a Sony XM4 for around R3000-R3500.
I heard the Anker Soundcore before, and it wasn't that impressive. The Schiit stack would be wasted on it.
People recommend ear buds rather than HP for what you are talking about. I heard apple airpods are really comfortable and good for this.
Sent from my SM-A530F using Tapatalk
Yeah, ZAR and Covid-19 is really not helping right now.
I managed to bring in Fidelio X2 for 3k last year. Amazon only does priority shipping now that adds like 20-30$ to the cost.
Sometimes HD6xx pops up on the sale thread for 3.2k. You could try a wanted thread?
Second hand ATH M40x is...
You can do much better than the HP you mentioned but it's going to cost you 1-2k extra.
Try looking at: Fidelio X2, Sennheiser HD6xx series, AKG K702, Hifiman HE400i, Beyerdynamics DT990.
Been playing around with the nozzle and the filter on my Aten.
Sound is almost tuned to my liking but it's quite a different experience compared to HP.
Using the IMR R2 Aten, when I first used it the bass was overpowering.
But the Aten has the option to choose different filters and when I tried it out, the bass took a dip with better clarity.
So definitely get what you mean about the Bass being way too much on IEM.