>Headphone purchase advice
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Etymotic research:
Are the budget mc5 good enough or should i dish out a bit more for hf5
Does anyone own either?
You know what to do.
>mc5
They sound like shit. You can find $10 chinkshit that sounds a lot better. You'll have to shell out more money if you want good Etymotic IEMs. However, I'd stay away from IEMs if you can.
Repost the same pics over and over again ad nauseam?
...
You mean ER4
But iems are easy for everyday carry and smartphone listening
KZ ATES or Senfer UES?
>perception already has it's own coloration
What coloration are you referring to here exactly? Ear gain and response is filtered away by our brain. When you equalize you are removing coloration of the ear-headphone response and it's the only method to do that. Ear still continues to be nonlinear in multiple ways which EQ can't touch on.
>a neutral signature is only neutral up to a certain point defines by a general measurement that doesn't hold true to all humans anyway
You'll have to rephrase that. Neutrality is equal perceived sound pressure level across the hearing range.
>to think that by EQing you are not listening to the gear
No, that's not what I think. EQ can help to minimize the largest source of coloration: the headphones.
>is like thinking Photoshop can make grass real
That doesn't work.
>That doesn't take away from art though
I disagree.
>art doesn't end at the tip of the pen, but rather at the mind of the reader, some times not even then
This doesn't work either. Coloration would be comparable to watching a movie on a display which has poor color reproduction. Whatever the movie is about doesn't change here. It's mostly separate from the audiovisual presentation which has been carefully tuned and is part of the art. Your display could end up changing an originally high contrast, cold bluish color temperature to green-ish where blacks look like a single tone gray. Do you think this is not dismantling the vision?
Your reproduction gear is not art and they should alter the art as little as possible. The issue here is the "circle of confusion" where we lose a reference. If the production and home environment differ from one another, your content is going to sound different and very likely just wrong on either one. Where do you draw a line of what's acceptable? You can't work magic in the mastering. If you make your music to sound good on vast variety of gear, you are sacrificing something and limiting what can be done. That's an awful idea.
Anyone have experience with the Status CB-1? I've heard that they're a bit brittle, but you don't always know whether the people that say that are
>I drop them sometimes and let them get pulled off my head when I stand up
Or
>They started to crack after moderate use at my desk after a year
If anyone has experience with them, I'd be curious to know what you think of the build quality.
>You mean ER4
those are discontinued. try ER7 if you're on a budget. but beware that there's a huge difference between Etymotic's cheaper and more expensive IEMs. Their cheaper ones are no better than IEMs you can buy at a big box store.
>Status CB-1
Why not go with a known quantity like one of the Audio-Technicas? Not only will you get better support but they're well test and you'll have no trouble reselling them when you get bored or want to upgrade.
I've made few stupid buys in the past by buying cheap or chink shit and you're stuck with that once you get annoyed with them.
...
Why the HD 650 and not the superior HD 600? See what I did there? There are multiple ways to define superior. Some like the response, comfort or value are subjective. Why are you worrying about the tonality when you could just change it?
What do you guys think of the Audio Technica MSR7?
M40X (for most of the reasons you listed) with either Shure HPAEC840 or Auray sheepskin pads are my current pick, but the CB-1 caught my eye.
Just a curiosity.
I had a hard time fitting everything in, but I managed to get it in the end
>pick, but the CB-1 caught my eye
if you have cash, go for it. you might strike gold (or silver). but if losing $100 is gonna make you hurt, go for AT.
thank you.
Is this the correct thread to ask about desktop speakers or is there a more appropriate thread on this board?
No loudspeaker thread around. Rarely is and dies in a day or two. Ask away.
What is your daily driver?
I just got a $60 gift card for my birthday and haven't had the money to buy anything other than groceries and gas for the past few months.
What's a quality desktop speaker for that price?
Ok
I can get the ATs for dealer price...so M40X it is.
Cheap amerifag here, need budget cans that don't sound like complete garbage.
Budget - 80 bucks, give or take.
Location - US
Source - Don't know yet, buying a new rig and cell soon. Nothing fancy, prob just whatever happens to come with the rest of the shit I buy for the rig.
Type - No IEMs, full sized, preferably closed.
Sound quality>Comfort
V-shaped sound signature preffered, but im flexible on that.
Past Headphones - Been using the Koss KSC75's kramer modded and shoved into a cheap pair of cans cause those ear clips suck ass. Don't have much to complain about when it comes to sound quality, considering I always used shitty earbuds before. Still pretty new to the whole "audiophile" thing. Don't care that much desu, just want the best sound for the price.
>What's a quality desktop speaker for that price?
There's no such thing. The cheap thing is actually headphones.
>If you make your music to sound good on vast variety of gear, you are sacrificing something and limiting what can be done.
But that's exactly what is done, the loudness war was one of the extremes born from it, but less badly mastered songs still are made so that people can listen both on electrostatic headphones and cheap smartphone earbuds without much problem, it's also probably on the artist's interest to get as many people listening to his music as possible, unless he specificaly wants a small crowd and works for that end.
>What coloration are you referring to here exactly?
If during life an individual is exposed to different levels of different frequencies and any audition loss happens, his "neutral" already differs from yours, of course the brains adjusts itself to make whatever seem neutral, however if it does, than EQing shouldn't be necessary unless to fix that which you cannot filter naturally.
>That doesn't take away from art though
>I disagree.
Well, that's has subjective as it gets, so there's in no problem in disagreeing i guess.
Cyber Acoustics CA-3602 if you MUST have speakers immediately, otherwise if you need sound asap, but can be headphones, look at that option. Or if you can wait, save for a decent set. It's not really an essential for most PCs.
ATH-R70X first impressions.
Previous headphones: AKG K712 Pro, ATH-ANC1, ATH-ANC9, QC-25, MDR-V55
Amp: FiiO E10K
Comfort: Pretty damn good, in some ways better than the K712, in some others less good. To elaborate, the pads aren't nearly as comfortable but the wing system works perfectly and doesn't put annoying pressure on the top of my head. This is very important for me because I keep my headphones on for hours at a time while I work. More comfortable than the QC-25s which themselves are very comfortable.
Response: Somewhat neutral, comparable to the K712, the highs are a little understated, but it could be the FiiO E10K at play here? The impedence of the R70X is 470 ohms while the E10K is specified for 150 ohms at most. That said, it's not very noticeable, actually it makes it much more comfortable on the ears for prolonged listening sessions. Does make me want to buy the HD600 as a second reference though. Maybe in a few months? I need a new DAC/Amp though.
Music listened to so far: Ocean born, DDR sound tracks masterpieces by Hirasawa Susumu
youtube.com
This one is the most interesting sound track, the main rythm is at first hard to hear until your ears adjust to it. This is the best way to observe the so-called "burn-in" effect, but I doubt it has much to do with the headphones, as I confirmed observing the same thing when I switched from the AKG K712 to the ATH-ANC1.
Please let me if you'd like more impressions of this not so common headphone soon.
I have pretty good headphones already (DT-770), I just need something so I can play games and watch videos with my friends and have audio.
Does youtube's lower bitrate audio make a significant difference to you in comparison to CD quality or better?
Then the CA-3602 or use the money on something you need (you said you had no money) and save at a later date.
Huge difference. I listened to FLAC tracks side by side to youtube of Oceanborn, it's like night and day.
I'm trying to get a FLAC version of the song I linked without much luck so far.
>Does youtube's lower bitrate audio make a significant difference to you in comparison to CD quality or better?
bitrate isn't a problem. filtering is a huge problem.
NEVER use YT music for audio testing... unless you're 50+ years old and you've lose more of your high-freq hearing.
Just get some logishit speakers then. You're not going to find anything good for $60 without hunting for a while
sure.
Which one is your favorite, user?
High-freq is no problem for me. But I do feel I'm losing some of my ability to hear details. An example is having trouble understanding people talking over the phone when there's background noise. I seem to have more issues with that than others. It's not getting worse and it seems to have been something since I was a kid. So I dunno.
I will probably do this.
Well yeah you're probably right but I'm going to be an irresponsible young man for the rest of my college career.
>So I dunno
time to see audiologist. you clearly suffer from hearing loss. get it treated to stop further degradation.
Absolutely none new. Might get lucky on a thrift store but you'd need to know what you are looking for. Speakers around that price range are nothing but a series of massive compromises constrained by manufacturing costs. The real problem is that there is no data on them so we don't actually know which one is terrible and which is less so. The designs are usually so freakish you can't even eyeball basics of performance as it all just looks like various types of unconventional and bad.
I hate to give you this advice but you'll basically have to go by a word of mouth from someone who hopefully has a little bit of expertise on them. Unless of course you can get the loudspeakers into your place to audition them on the spot but for $60 I doubt anyone bothers.
Generally the cheapest pair of loudspeakers I can recommend at the LSR305s or Philharmonic Audio Affordable Accuracy Monitors but they are well above your budget.
>mastering
I simply don't see any way to compensate for tonal accuracy beyond extreme compression which just sucks.
>hearing loss
Happens to everyone and is quite unrelated to tonal accuracy.
>his "neutral" already differs from yours
It can, a bit. You can compensate for this with equalization and it doesn't make the importance of having matching systems in home and in production any less important.
Chiming in. There are a lot of problems with this. Format Youtube uses not necessarily any kind of a limitation. On supporting hardware/browser it uses 160 kbps Opus VBR which is an excellent format and mostly transparent at that setting. However YT applies a volume cut for all content played through it and always re-encodes the audio. Lower SPL is easily audible and added artifacts of lossy transcoding can be too. You also don't know what master is in use most of the time so chances are you are comparing two different versions from the get go.
Opus is cut at 20 KHz so that's not a problem.
>However YT applies a volume cut for all content played through it and always re-encodes the audio
This is the main thing I observed, but because of the volume cut you couldn't hear a lot of the subtle instrument dynamics.
Youtube encoding/transformation is often disgusting. No substitute for getting FLAC. I just can't trust people to encode shit properly anymore. But fuck me I just can't find that track, I'm going to have to buy the CD.
MDR-7506 Master Race reporting in.
>MDR-7506
Enjoy your tinnitus!
>but because of the volume cut you couldn't hear a lot of the subtle instrument dynamics
Higher SPL generally improves clarity by rising the sensitivity of the extreme ends of our hearing and improving SNR. Louder is almost universally better sounding until it starts to hurt.
>encoding
I believe you can't send lossless audio to Youtube but I haven't tried. That could fix the problem with lossy transcoding entirely as the format they use is seriously good.
>lossless
The main reason why I download lossless is to reduce the likelihood of getting a bad encode.
puhleez
Probably the 600, but it is the most expensive one too. I like the imaging and mids, but I wish the highs weren't rolled off. I've been thinking about getting a t90 sometime soon to have a headphone that does highs well.
>Opus is cut at 20 KHz so that's not a problem.
YT isn't Opus you doofus. Plus their filtering is not the default. Why don't you rip a YT song and see for yourself instead of talking out of your ass?
>The main reason why I download lossless is to reduce the likelihood of getting a bad encode.
Pretty much, I also keep them around just in case I want to re-encode or mix them in the future.
By the way, soundcloud seems to have much better encoding than Youtube.
Not not hearing highs as well as other people is really unrelated though? If you need increased highs to hear everything somewhat evenly than you are altering tonality, your "neutral" won't be the same for others. Personally i view neutrality as a "within the bell curve" kind of thing, which makes it a bit more subjetive due to different perceptions.
>having matching systems in home and in production
But does that happen? Of course in studio we will have certain quality standards (or at least should have), but once a song hits the market there's nothing defining the quality of the listener's headphone and that shouldn't stop him from being able to enjoy music, which brings us to super-compressed music.
My only point is, if a song is mastered around the idea the it should sound good enough in most devices, how can we determine that a less colored reproduction is further from the original artistic ideal, giving that the only standard in the first place was "it must sound good for most people"?
Not trying to prove anything here though, i just like the direction this conversation is taking.
>YT isn't Opus you doofus
It is. It can be. It depends on your browser/app and hardware what is chosen. You can force whatever if you know how though. Pic related.
>Plus their filtering is not the default.
What filtering?
>Why don't you rip a YT song and see for yourself instead of talking out of your ass?
You shouldn't talk so much.
If MSE and VP9 is enabled, you can enjoy 160k Opus audio.
>By the way, soundcloud seems to have much better encoding than Youtube.
If you are streaming through a browser or app it's 128 kbps MP3 on likely one of the new LAME encoders. Pretty nice eh? They use a different format for downloads, 320 kbps CBR MP3 I believe.
>Pretty nice eh? They use a different format for downloads, 320 kbps CBR MP3 I believe.
How do I download from soundhurf?
Also where's a good place to download losses audio
Leave the headphones on desk/stand. Pump the volume up.
Instant loudspeakers!
Senfers UEs by far. A better comparison would be KZ ZST Vs Senfer UEs as both are more V-shaped. UEs would still win. ZST mids are more recessed and fit is worse. Highs felt kinda sharp but didnt give as much detail as the UEs, which weren't as sibilant. Not sure how that works but w/e.
ATE's are just uncomfortable mud city, though admittedly okay for the price. KZ ZS3 are a better comparison to ATEs. Sub-bass is more controlled, fit is miles better, and mids arent bloated. Highs are a little dark but not stupidly so. I preferred them to the ZST even though they werent V-shape, which I am usually a fan of for some genres.
Also the UEs can have some pretty fuckin radical designs. I got camo. Looks pretty cool, though the like 'resolution' isn't too great. Some people have reported the stock cable is shit though. Its just a generic MMCX cable. My cable borked after a while. Bought a nice cable and haven't been bothered since. Just get the Tennmak cable. Still comes to around the same cost as you can get a version of UEs that dont come with cable.
>How to damage your drivers
Yeah quality is kinda gronked at the hinges. Its just a generic chinese OEM headband [though so are M40x/M50x if i remember correctly]
Thanks
been a while.
>the loudness war was one of the extremes born from it
What do you mean by this?
HD650 doesn't have suffer those dreaded lower treble peaks that the HD600 has. That marble finish is also pure cancer.
>How do I download from soundhurf?
Only if the artist allows. If you rip the audio off the site through whatever means, you get the same as everyone else listening. Something downloadable that I've been enjoying:
soundcloud.com
>Not not hearing highs as well as other people is really unrelated though?
I said quite unrelated so not exactly. Hearing loss by aging is caused by gradual loss of the sensory hair follicles each of which are tuned to respond for a specific range of frequencies. By age they die away. It's the same thing that limits our hearing bandwidth right from birth. You can compensate for the lowered sensitivity but not for the lack of cells. The loss is gradual and starts from the extreme end which is quite unimportant for tonality. If you low pass your audio at 10 KHz, you'll lose the "air" but it won't distinctively alter more than that. Furthermore the upwards nature of auditory masking makes low sensitivity high frequency range less important when there is content present lower in the band.
>But does that happen?
Rarely. You need to be quite the audiophile to even aim for something like that. Even studios aren't always on point:
genelec.fi
Page 5, fig. 7.
This is a problem in the industry and not something that can be forced on the consumer through any other means than by designing and offering better products which meet a certain standard and that this standard is used from production to reproduction.
>further from original
Further or closer, even when limiting this to the mastering stage, we can't. You can only assume that what was intended was heard during the production, that the mastering engineers had a good calibrated system and they knew what they are doing. They likely check it on multiple devices to make sure it sounds acceptable across the board. The best we can do is aim for a same standard.
>troll who never even listened with them
idiot's are always a dime a dozen in these threads but you take the crown.
>posting boat slut
Opinion instantly discarded.
Is there anything better in the price range? I wonder how long the HD800 are going to remain in this price...
amazon.com
Buy used, user.
Can I get a used Audez'e LCD-3 at that price range?
post a tiimestamped picture of your current audio setup. if you can't, you should stop giving people advice.
It would be interesting to see that level of control on an album, if they produced the music under esact conditions and actually gave instructions to how it should be reproduced in order to be faithful to the original vision.
...
Why are you triggered so much?
>Is there anything better in the price range?
I don't think so. Maybe one of the ZMF headphones but they offer a different kind of sound and lacks the finesse that the HD800 have.
come on, let's see it. quit stalling.
Good afternoon, /hpg/!
Pretty sure he means as he says. A lot of songs/albums got louder and louder (the loudness war), so there's less need to adjust the volume on the audio system in at your house, car, or wherever. This makes the song/album 'work well' with a variety of gear, since less messing around with the volume is needed. But with increased loudness you lose out in sound quality; things such as dynamic range is heavily compressed and clipping (or more clipping) is introduced.
Newb question: I understand the increased volume baked into the audio at production can reduce sound quality, but can an amplifier also reduce quality based on how much it requires increasing the volume?
And apparently I'm a bloody robot now. I'm getting actual captchas -.-
Good amps extract more details at lower volume level.
Why is massdrop so shit at shipping. "Anticipated ship date" was yesterday ffs.
Name a flaw.
Usually it's because they have to have a order to send to the supplier, have the supplier ship the order to them, then they ship your order out to you. Horribly convoluted
Utter nonsense.
Too expensive
This is for the K7XX which they already have in stock I thought?
Barely stays on your head, very light, pads are almost non existent, honestly even though it sounds great it feels kinda cheap for the price.
I'm 99% sure if it costs like say $500 /hpg/ will proclaim the HD800S as the second coming of Christ.
Yeah but it doesn't, so what's your point?
>spending hundreds on audio products
>having shit taste in music
choose one
>user can't handle anything remotely bright
Kek.
That /hpg/'s opinion on higher tier gear is clouded with bias?
...
Hey /hpg/, do you ever use software EQ? Why or why not?
If your headphone needs to be EQ-ed to sound good then something is wrong with your setup.
idk I EQ the highs on my DT770 a bit because they get pretty painful
I don't, but that's because i'm ok with how my headphones sound, if you don't i don't see why you shouldn't try to make it more pleasant.
>can an amplifier also reduce quality based on how much it requires increasing the volume?
It can, particularly if the amp isn't designed well and/or pairing with the headphones isn't optimal (if your headphones require you to have your amp set to max gain and volume to get a decent listening level).
Other than that, the amp should do it's job of just amplifying the input signal, without any added coloration or distortion (this goes for solid state amps... tube amps and such are a different story). Things like dynamic range should not suffer with increased volume. Though, with very/high dynamic songs, I'd be cautious of increasing the volume too much, as there can be rather loud peaks that happen throughout the song.
Software EQ do always work on buffers, taking from a source and handing after processing to another. Length of the buffers * number of buffers, plus possibly copies.
Not that there's anything to fix with HD600.
>(You)
>>spending hundreds on audio products
>>having shit taste in music
>choose one
Although one's taste in music is subjective, it's rather obvious I chose the first one. I do listen to a broad range of other genres as well, from classic rock to jpop.
I literally listen to an hour of music a week but I have around 2 grand in audio gear, its just a fun hobby homie
jesus how
i listen to like eight hours a day
half of that is on my commute but god damn how do you spend that much and listen that little?