Headphones

Started by Bonehelm, June 10, 2007, 02:50:21 PM

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André

Quote from: Holden on January 15, 2021, 11:12:36 AM
Is this corona lockdown being done on a "hot spot", Provincial or federal basis? We don't hear too much about what's happening in Canada here in Australia.

It's provincial. Ontario too is locked down. That's 60% of the country's population. Conditions may differ on what's open and what's not, but basically it's the same situation.

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: André on January 15, 2021, 06:11:48 AM
Thanks for the replies, I'll check both of your suggestions  :). Hopefully I can purchase and arrange for home delivery. Non-essential stores/services are closed to customers until February 8. That is, *if* things improve. If not, the closings will be extended for another month.
I did check Sennheiser's Canadian link and it said that they weren't currently open in re stores and also service department.

And like Holden, am curious as to how things are being decided upon in Canada re hotspots, etc.  Perhaps respond under the corona virus thread?

In any event, good luck!

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

staxomega

One of my old Stax headphone setups when I used to live in apartments and was headphone only. SR-007 headphones in that picture and the older Headamp Blue Hawaii amp. I think listening to headphones for so long pushed me to the opposite extreme where I started to dislike them so much that I now have speaker systems in several rooms in both houses.


Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: hvbias on January 15, 2021, 11:58:53 AM
One of my old Stax headphone setups when I used to live in apartments and was headphone only. SR-007 headphones in that picture and the older Headamp Blue Hawaii amp. I think listening to headphones for so long pushed me to the opposite extreme where I started to dislike them so much that I now have speaker systems in several rooms in both houses.


*Nice excuse!  :D A good friend of mine has three stereo setups (soon to be four) in his house [minor one for kitchen] and doesn't use headphones (normally).  He did however when his children were young and sleeping.  :)

*Just teasing you a bit.  ;)
Pohjolas Daughter

André

I ordered a pair of Grado Prestige S 125. Affordable, good quality. I've had Grados in the past and liked them. That'll do until I can get my Sennheisers repaired  :).

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: André on January 15, 2021, 04:10:45 PM
I ordered a pair of Grado Prestige S 125. Affordable, good quality. I've had Grados in the past and liked them. That'll do until I can get my Sennheisers repaired  :).
Hope that you like them André.  :)

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

André

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on January 16, 2021, 03:32:50 AM
Hope that you like them André.  :)

PD

They have been shipped, so I should have them sometime next week  :).

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: André on January 16, 2021, 05:28:35 AM
They have been shipped, so I should have them sometime next week  :).
Nice!  Out of curiosity, why do you use headphones and how quiet are the open-backed type?

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

André

Headphones are for times when my wife is around. Since last March, that means almost all the time  :laugh:.

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: André on January 16, 2021, 05:37:39 AM
Headphones are for times when my wife is around. Since last March, that means almost all the time  :laugh:.
lol Well, if they help to keep the peace...  ;)

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

Daverz

Amir over at ASR has started measuring headphones.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/headphones-and-headphone-amplifier-reviews.57/

I'm intrigued by the Aeon RT closed back 'phones, as there's a lot of noise in my listening environment (I have the Senn HD650).


DavidW

Several months ago I bought Beyerdynamic dt1990pros and they are exceptional.  I see that Todd also bought and enjoys them.  They are very natural sounding.

DavidW

I've needed a closed headphone for quite some time.  Well I finally ordered one.  It is great!  It is the Shure 1540 and it has great bass, mids and treble.  Some reviews online suggested incorrectly that it is boomy, it absolutely is not.  I bought this over the 1770 pros because I trust "No Theme Reviews" and I was not led astray.


DavidW

Quote from: Daverz on January 16, 2021, 10:17:28 AM
Amir over at ASR has started measuring headphones.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/headphones-and-headphone-amplifier-reviews.57/

I'm intrigued by the Aeon RT closed back 'phones, as there's a lot of noise in my listening environment (I have the Senn HD650).

I love Amir debunking audiophile nonsense, and his objective detailed reviews of amps and dacs.  But his headphone reviews?  Complete garbage.  Too much emphasis on THD.  Fixating on harman target eq (which is not an objective measure!  that is not neutral!! it is just a statistical average preferred sound, it doesn't mean that much).  Headphone reviews require much more critical listening and evaluation based NOT on how close to neutral (which depends greatly on the dummy head used to capture the FR in the first place) but on how cohesive the sound signature is.  And open headphones, closed headphones, and iems will all sound different from each other even if they possess the same FR curve.

An example to illustrate the dangers of expecting a perfectly even response.  Closed headphones can quickly sound overly warm or boomy because they usually have elevated bass response compared to open headphones.  A common way to fix that is to have a dip in the upper bass to detach the bass from the mids so that it can still hit low but it doesn't effect tonality.  But on the graph it would just look like it is wrong.

Just as I find objectivist reviews of amps, dacs and sources superior to subjectivists which hear things that don't exist (placebo bias), I find that subjectivist reviews of headphones to be far superior than the objective approach.  It requires indepth critical listening and these are not subtle differences that can be imagined (so not influenced by placebo or expectation bias).  Many of the great headphones are not necessarily neutral.  They might be warm of neutral or bright or slightly V shaped.  It might be to compensate for a dip or a peak somewhere else or to develop a particular house sound.  And there is no necessary right sound.  Many people love the warm, dark Sennheiser sound.  The V shaped Beyer sound.  The old school bright akg sound or their modern Harman tuning. 

Holden

Quote from: DavidW on March 07, 2021, 05:59:53 AM
I've needed a closed headphone for quite some time.  Well I finally ordered one.  It is great!  It is the Shure 1540 and it has great bass, mids and treble.  Some reviews online suggested incorrectly that it is boomy, it absolutely is not.  I bought this over the 1770 pros because I trust "No Theme Reviews" and I was not led astray.



I seriously looked at these. I've had a pair of the SRH840s for over 10 years now and love their sound. They are my at work cans and have to be closed back for obvious reasons. I'll keep them there until they die or alternatively take in my Senn Momentum Series 2 wired.

Today I pulled the trigger on these.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0875/3864/products/AudezeLCD-1Headphones01_610x.progressive.jpg?v=1592994969

If these are as resolving as what I've read I'll be in chamber music heaven. To hear every instrument in a string quartet pinpointed exactly on the stage will be revelatory. My Flare Gold iems do this but they are closed back dynamics. These are planar headphones with an amazingly quick transient repsonse. I'd be interested to see what they do to bass.
Cheers

Holden

DavidW

As an owner of hifiman headphones I can attest to planar dynamics resolving more detail at least in the mids and treble than traditional dynamic headphones.  But... what you should know is that planar dynamics can be well... heavy.  I mean physically heavy.  Those Audeze cans don't look that big though so hopefully they will be comfortable.

71 dB

Quote from: DavidW on March 29, 2021, 04:54:58 AM
As an owner of hifiman headphones I can attest to planar dynamics resolving more detail at least in the mids and treble than traditional dynamic headphones.  But... what you should know is that planar dynamics can be well... heavy.  I mean physically heavy.  Those Audeze cans don't look that big though so hopefully they will be comfortable.

Most of the "resolving more detail" kind of talk is about placebo and things like that. If a technical solution is superior to other technical solutions it becomes dominant. There are trade-offs. If something is better because it is more expensive then the price is the trade-off. If a headphone has better sound than another headphone because it requires more amp power then the need of power is the trade-off and so on. We have different kind of products because they have their pros and cons. There is a reason why so many headphones use "traditional dynamic drivers." It is a good way to do things.

What is detail? Increasing the level of treble makes the sound appears more detailed, but it is not "real" detail. The sound is further away from the original sound. That can't be more detailed. How do dynamic drivers "hide" detail? What happens to the detail? You can't even begin to answer that question before you have precisely formulated what detail is. Without technical and mathematical analyse all of this is about subjective impressions of sound and anyone into audio and intellectual honesty knows subjective impressions are dominated by expectations, placebo effect. If you expect  planar dynamics "resolving more detail", you are likely to "hear" more detail. It has nothing to do with the technical reality. It all happens in your head. The sooner audio-oriented people understand this, the better. Lack of this understanding leads to audiophoolely and more snakeoil being sold.

If you really like the sound of a headphone using planar dynamics over other headphones using traditional dynamic drivers then congratulations for finding your favorite cans, but it is good to keep in my people have different goals for sound and other things also matter when selecting headphones (design, ergonomy, weight, price, amp requirements, bass response etc.)

Quote from: Holden on March 29, 2021, 01:07:31 AM
To hear every instrument in a string quartet pinpointed exactly on the stage will be revelatory. My Flare Gold iems do this but they are closed back dynamics. These are planar headphones with an amazingly quick transient repsonse. I'd be interested to see what they do to bass.

Headphones as such are very bad at "pin-pointing" sounds in a soundstage. This is because almost all recordings are mixed for loudspeakers which employ very different method of creating the spatiality. Headphones lack the acoustics of the listening room and also the acoustic effect of our own body before the ear canal. The pinna-effect is different and the proximity of the headphones changes the acoustic properties of outer ear. The result of all of this is the sound is full of spatial cue that don't much sense typically the most serious of these being unnaturally large Interaural Level Difference (ILD) at frequencies below 800 Hz. How serious these problems are is up to how the recording has been mixed. Early stereo recordings (late 50's and 60's) are especially problematic because of the ping-pong philosophy of spatiality while modern recordings are often more sophisticated spatially and problems tend to be milder. At some rare cases the problems are non-existing.

Headphones need binaural spatiality. That means the spatial effects of the room and our body are included into the recording. Binaural recordings are not only rare, but also work badly on speakers because you have the effects of room and body "twice." Recordings mixed for speakers can be modified to be more binaural-like. The simple, coarse method addressing the biggest issue of too high ILD at low frequencies is called crossfeeding, but there are more sophisticated and more expensive methods to simulate the room and body acoustically. Binaural spatiality makes pin-pointed instruments possible. Speaker-spatiality with headphones create "fractured" spatiality where sounds are scattered all over the place because of the unnatural and contradictory spatial cues our spatial hearing tries hard to make sense of.

The concept of "quick transients" is mostly a bs marketing term. Low frequencies are slow. High frequencies are fast. That's math. If you filter low frequencies out and boost high frequencies you get sound that appears "faster", but also unnaturally "thin." We don't want that. We want natural flat frequency response and that means we have also those "slow" low frequencies present. Resonant system have large group delays meaning different frequencies pass the system with different delays and that can contribute to the feeling of slow transients. However, is not related to the mass of moving parts of things like this". It's about designing the system so, that it has adequate damping. Adequate damping => no resonances => small group delay => transient response that appears "quick." Greater mass of moving parts requires more damping which means lower sensitivity meaning more amp power is needed for given SPL, but bigger mass of moving parts helps extending bass response into lower frequencies. All headphones have super-hyper-fast transient response compared to the delays in transients created by room acoustics (where the orchestra was recorded).
Spatial distortion is a serious problem deteriorating headphone listening.
Crossfeeders reduce spatial distortion and make the sound more natural
and less tiresome in headphone listening.

My Sound Cloud page <-- NEW Jan. 2024 "Harpeggiator"

DavidW

Quote from: 71 dB on March 29, 2021, 06:46:52 AM
What is detail? Increasing the level of treble makes the sound appears more detailed, but it is not "real" detail.

No kidding.  That is fake detail.  But there are differences in headphones with detail resolution that have NOTHING to do with treble.  Saying that it is just placebo is straight up BS.  If you can hear specific microdetail (like a creaking chair or someone coughing) in one headphone and not another and they have the same frequency response then one is just more detailed than the other.

André

I yet have to bring my Sennheiser 650 to the repair shop (no signal on the left side). In the past couple of months I've been listening with Grado SR125, cheaper but decent open air headphones. The sound is much different, airier, acoustically less blended. The treble response is quite high. That makes some recordings rather glaring and tiring to listen to. Typically I take the sound level one or two notches down, otherwise it's blasty. I have better hearing on my left ear than the right - always have. That difference seems more noticeable on the Grados than the Sennheisers. These are not subjective impressions.

Mirror Image

Quote from: André on March 29, 2021, 07:44:59 AM
I yet have to bring my Sennheiser 650 to the repair shop (no signal on the left side). In the past couple of months I've been listening with Grado SR125, cheaper but decent open air headphones. The sound is much different, airier, acoustically less blended. The treble response is quite high. That makes some recordings rather glaring and tiring to listen to. Typically I take the sound level one or two notches down, otherwise it's blasty. I have better hearing on my left ear than the right - always have. That difference seems more noticeable on the Grados than the Sennheisers. These are not subjective impressions.

Sounds like you need to get those Sennheisers to the repair ASAP. :) For the record, I never liked Grado headphones.