Listening to Lao Zhang's story, he is also from the generation born in the 1970s. His background and experiences differ somewhat from those of Lao Tang. He initially had a passion for tinkering with electronic products and later became an audiophile.

Lao Zhang, too, hails from a rural background. During his childhood, his grandfather owned an old-fashioned radio, a rare item in the countryside at that time. His grandfather enjoyed listening to Peking opera and weather forecasts on the radio. Hearing people speaking and singing on the radio fascinated the young Lao Zhang, and he found it incredibly magical. In his early years, Lao Zhang's dream was to own his grandfather's radio.

As he entered junior high school and gained more knowledge, he learned about the principles behind radios. Eventually, his grandfather's radio was replaced by a new dual-cassette radio, and Lao Zhang finally obtained his grandfather's radio. From that point on, he immersed himself in studying radios and electronics. This ignited a deep interest in electronic products within him. Later, during high school, neighbors would ask him for help in repairing televisions and small electrical appliances.

In high school, during the era when Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop music were flourishing, Lao Zhang became a loyal fan of popular artists such as Qi Qin, Jacky Cheung, Zhou Huajian, Wang Jie, Na Ying, and others. During that time, he saved money by cutting corners and allocating 35 yuan from his weekly allowance to purchase a second-hand portable cassette player from a classmate. This was his first portable cassette player, and he began collecting tapes of his favorite music. From that point on, he embarked on his journey as a music enthusiast.

Upon entering university, Lao Zhang naturally chose to major in electronics. He, along with his classmates, began building amplifiers, sound systems, and crossovers themselves. During that period, CDs were still relatively expensive, and the primary source of music was portable cassette players with analog signals. Bootleg tapes had poor quality and high background noise, resulting in subpar audio quality. Genuine tapes had better audio quality but still fell short of modern digital music standards. Lao Zhang once conducted an experiment where he played the same tape, using ordinary headphones and a classmate's SONY headphones. The difference in audio quality was significant, and this was when he realized that the quality of playback equipment and audio circuitry, as well as amplification, were crucial factors in audio quality.

Lao Zhang shared that when he first listened to a CD, it provided him with a fresh and immersive auditory experience. From that moment, he began collecting CD discs and delving into CD decoding. He experimented with decoding chips, ranging from single-bit to multi-bit, and tried various chip manufacturers, including BB, ADI, Philips, and SANYO. While Philips and ADI transitioned to single-bit technology over time, SANYO didn't offer any compelling solutions, leaving BB as his preferred chip manufacturer. Lao Zhang had a special preference for the PCM63, a 20-bit DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), and later, the PCM1704, a 24-bit DAC, which were known for their excellent audio quality during that era.

According to Lao Zhang, for analog signals, a sampling rate of 44,100 samples per second (44.1kHz) was still inadequate. This limitation resulted in a digital sound signature with noticeable artifacts and lost details. Furthermore, the 16-bit format of CDs inherently limited their theoretical dynamic range to 96 decibels (dB), which, in practice, fell slightly short of this theoretical maximum. However, modern symphonic music's dynamic range could reach up to 110 dB. Using CDs for playback meant that the audio was compressed. Many manufacturers searched for ways to improve CD audio quality, leading to innovations like HDCD and XRCD. While these formats offered some improvements over standard CDs, they still couldn't achieve a qualitative leap in audio quality. From the late 1990s onward, high-bit and high-sampling-rate formats were adopted in music production. The next generation of encoding and decoding chips emerged, and formats like DVD-AUDIO and SACD were introduced. These formats pushed the limits of audio information on discs to their maximum, but the high cost of the discs and high-quality turntables hindered their widespread adoption even a decade later.

Lao Zhang continued by stating that in his pursuit of high-fidelity audio (HI-FI), he believed that minimal coloration, high resolution, and the ability to faithfully reproduce the true essence of musical works were essential characteristics. He acknowledged that some CD players, amplifiers, and even cables might introduce sonic coloration to cater to specific listeners' preferences. However, at least in the context of original audio files, this approach deviated further from the HI-FI concept.

Lao Zhang emphasized that for audiophiles, the listening environment was crucial. When possible, the environment should be enclosed and quiet. In everyday environments during the daytime, the ambient noise typically ranged from 40 to 60 decibels (dB) indoors, with 40 dB being closer to quiet conditions. In a 40 dB environment, when playing CD-quality audio, the maximum perceived dynamic range would only reach around 50 dB (the theoretical maximum dynamic range of CD audio is 96 dB). This was one of the reasons he and many audiophiles preferred headphones because they provided an extremely low-noise, closed listening environment. Therefore, headphones delivered superior dynamics. Traditional HI-FI audio couldn't compete with the current PC audio, especially regarding source quality. CDs offered 16-bit 44.1kHz decoding. Nowadays, even integrated sound cards support 24-bit and 192kHz decoding. PCHIFI was destined to replace traditional HI-FI.

Lao Zhang noted that smartphones were now highly functional and approaching the capabilities of PCs. Smartphones with TYPE-C interfaces were becoming more prevalent, and many smartphones supported OTG (On-The-Go) functionality. In the current era of smartphones, many lossless audio sources were available for free, bringing good news to audiophiles. However, there were very few headphones that genuinely supported TYPE-C 24-bit 192kHz decoding. Lao Zhang believed that this was the perfect opportunity presented by this era, where he could finally leverage his years of expertise in audio decoding and amplification. He had full confidence that the Wimlim Weileng team, after years of extensive refinement and fine-tuning, would undoubtedly establish their brand in the TYPE-C headphone industry in the near future.