You hit a nerve in the sense that your idea of winning an argument is to be as patronising as possible, instead of actually having a point. It's a bad character trait, I suggest you get it addressed.Originally Posted by russ18uk
You hit a nerve in the sense that your idea of winning an argument is to be as patronising as possible, instead of actually having a point. It's a bad character trait, I suggest you get it addressed.
Dangermoose you seem to do the equivalent online of running into a room full of raging homos backwards with your arse out then complain when they all try and anally rape you.
Since head-fi was mentioned, here's what I think about that.
It's a very unhealthy place for a budding audiophile to spend time. You'll get all sorts of recommendations based only on personal feelings with limited reference. You'll get people recommending expensive warm amps with terrible amounts of distortion or otherwise blatantly incorrect parameters to balance cold headphones or vice versa. Why not just buy a warmer pair of headphones and buy a transparent digital chain for very cheap? You'll get recommendations for buying expensive audio gear that have performance straight from the 70's, having massive distortion, little power output and massive frequency range deviations, to "smooth out" a sibilant treble or "lush up" a "dry" midrange.
You'll get people claiming massive differences in "soundstage" with drivers that are at most a couple centimeters away from their ears and call that accurate. Nobody even stops to think, "what if my soundstage is bigger than it should be?" Nobody stops to think how most modern recordings and stereo audio equipment only have two channels to work with. That's left-to-right balance and that's it. Depth can only be simulated with tricks like delays and phase adjustments. These's comparatively very few distant mic ( I don't know the correct English term for this ) recordings in existence that have a real soundstage, it's just audio trickery implemented directly into the source, similar to Dolby Headphone. What is the reference in soundstage? Why is more better?
You'll get people defying scientifically proven physical reality because their senses tell them otherwise. Flat earth believers or religious people do that. Scientists and intelligent people require evidence based in reality.
My advice is contrary. Don't buy esoteric and expensive amps and dacs with specific tonalities or "sound" to complement your headphone's shortcomings. Buy good headphones you like for their sound and cheap transparent dac and amp to source and drive them. Don't think that when you think you hear a difference it actually has to exist. Don't think that when there is a difference, it's necessarily for the better just because it sounds better to you.
Head-fi is the gathering place for lunatics, fanatics, believers, people who get emotionally invested into a pile of electronics. They think there's way more to audio reproduction than there really is. Like it's some sort of magic or mysticism. A much more sane, intelligent and level-headed place is the Hydrogenaudio forums, where scientific reality is accepted and not shunned.
Last edited by valtterieranen; 04-16-2012 at 10:30 AM.
Thanks Val', I missed that bit.
That's a very good point about the 'sound stage' as, unless I'm very much mistaken, most modern recordings are individually recorded and them mixed and, if I understand it correctly, the term should really be applied to live recordings using a couple of mic's as anything else is a result of an engineers 'meddling' and/or introduced delays at various frequencies which is also a introduced distortion?
Or am I completely missing the point?
Regarding the deafness, I mentioned that a couple of times already and I'd agree that often people seem to be chasing more and more bass and/or volume to counter increasing feafness. A while back I and some others had some hearing test done and, despite being almost twice their age and having working in some very noisy environments (I bought my own grade 5 ear muffs) I had relatively little hearing loss compared to some of the youngsters.
And with hearing damage, once it's done, it's permanent!
So would posting here while drunk.
You're well on point. You could say a good headphone accurately reproduces the "meddling" but what's the correct soundstage? How do you tell that subjectively? You can't. You can only rely on measurements telling you how close to the original recording your headphones are outputting. Then again, almost all music is mixed for stereo speakers set up in a perfect listening triangle so it's a lost cause anyway. Why not just accept the inherent shortcomings of headphones and let them play the signal accurately rather than introduce phase and frequency response trickery to try and hide the problem at the expense of audio fidelity.
Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds is a good example, if I recall it correctly - sounds great through speakers but awful through headphones as the sounds are so specific and isolated to one ear or the other. There are numerous other examples.
Newer recordings tend to be better in this respect.
On the other hand headphones have some immense advantages to speakers sound quality-wise which they should build on.
Last edited by valtterieranen; 04-16-2012 at 11:59 AM.
You know, a thousand years from now, people will still listen to the music I play. But in the span of just a few generations, the crap you listen to will be lost to history. Isn't that fun to think about?
I think AGAIN vetteranian you are relying entirely on measurements with no actual experience of the headphones.... You will probably reply saying you have tried them all but tbh I doubt you have.
It istn't hard to realise that whilst the HD650 are good headphones for some genres, they are quite slow sounding and this sub bass is not amazing so they are not really suited to some genres such as faster electronic music etc.... The Denons however whilst being worse in some areas and probably overall sound quality, they are faster and have better bass, making them better for these genres than the HD650. I did not mention the HD800 because they do not really appeal to me, A lot of people prefer the HD650 over the HD800 because the HD800 are too bright etc. Headphones like LCD2 appeal to me because they have more bass and a warmer sound.
Also your comments about soundstage are silly considering you own a HD800 also... I mean come one a cheap pair of closed headphones clearly have a very confined soundstage and sound cramped in whereas headphones with a better "soundstage" sound more open and you can position things better with them.
Last edited by CorrupT88; 04-16-2012 at 06:40 PM.
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