/hpg/ - Headphone General

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
pni.org/psychopharmacology/doubleblind/DoubleBlindNeppe.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_and_Wolf
head-case.org/forums/topic/12921-schiit-jotunheim/
audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/budget-dac-review-schiit-modi-2-99.1649/
audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/hardware-teardown-of-schiit-modi-2-usb-dac.2082/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/6wdcig/bad_experience_with_schiit_audio/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/6lnyd8/ama_request_nick_t_from_schiit_tech_support/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/7bwko4/schiit_refusing_to_replace_the_misconfigured/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/7b33wc/schiit_fulla_2_problems_about_blew_out_my_eardrums/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/71wtot/schiit_cs_has_left_me_between_a_rock_and_a_hard/
youtube.com/watch?v=nROvY9uiYYk
youtube.com/watch?v=BLgqyQMjd5s
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Is Stax spam worse than HD600 spam? Vote now!

hd414 haver from a few threads back. o2 amp showed up and yeah it really helped get more sound out of these. 2-4 o'clock on low gain for normal listening. high gain doesn't blow them out (fucking 2000 fucking ohms fucking), but they still get pretty nicely loud with little enough distortion. my regular-ass hd598 sounds great on it

b-stock from jds is goddamn rad. $40 off. a few nicks on the case no worse than what i'm gonna give it just traveling around

probably all the effort i'm going to put into making a 50 year old headphone design sound any better. maybe a cheap ebay dac board for funsies

Idol trash here, what are your non-HD600, non-MA900, non-Stax headphones like user?

Are there any open back over ear headphones that are like, really open back? so I can run or cycle with them without dying?

Good luck getting over-ears to stay on your head while running. I'd just use KSC75 for that. They'll stay in place, they sound good and they're open.

Hd600s lite
Howre the new cans?

I’ve got a pair of these (((akg tuned))) galaxy s8 earphones laying around, are they any good in terms of quality? I’m too pleb to tell

Like said, KSC75 are often recommended for runners and bikers for those reasons. Also, they're cheap as fuck so if you somehow lose/break them, you're only out ~$20 at most.

They're good for phone-included headphones. Nothing amazing but they do beat apple earpods.

This is what I use for bicycling. Just perfect and the sound signature gets so much right.

Vote objectivity.

By the way, guessing which is which isn't very hard if you are familiar with the respective frequency responses.

FR can predict how much people might like a can outside of many considerations, and some are obviously better than others.
> hints at things that has neither low nor high ends

sometimes plebbit poops out a diamond, pic related

OP is a bro. Every hpg should start with a 2hu.

I'll look into them, but I've not had any problems keeping my ath-m50xs on when cycling.

I like to have a bit more situational awareness while cycling. I don't listen loud, and want to hear around me. I dislike over ear cans for the purpose. Just a personal preference but for me the KSC-75 have been ideal. I don't really use them for much else.

If you mean the humongous answer to Dreyka this is more poop than gold. The root of the argument is wrong from the get go, if you can't understand what would make something magically better because people did the test sighted instead of blind, all based on a magical fairy that can't be measured with any instrumentation, how can you reliably reproduce the positive effect in a product and consciously build such product in the first place? if such DAC magick arcana existed then how does the manufacturer know how to make a new revision that keeps the supposed magic fairy intact since nobody knows what caused this supposed imagined effect in the first place?

Everything argued by the tacos guy is pure bull. The root of the argument is all boiled down to "it's made by X brand, so it must be that good" or "it cost that much, it better be 1000 dollars better".

i love my porta pros and ksc75s

>Budget
Loose budget, $350
>Location
JewSA
>Source
PC, will get amp if necessary
>Open or closed
don't care
>Comfort level
don't care
>Sound signature
v-shape

Was looking at the Beyerdynamic DT-880

DT-770? I mean, that's classic V-shape right there.

>Everything argued by the tacos guy is pure bull. The root of the argument is all boiled down to "it's made by X brand, so it must be that good" or "it cost that much, it better be 1000 dollars better".
nah, it's a response in reply to keyboard warriors online who are budget objectivists that try to pass off studies and measurements as fact. graph readers who are biased af because they cannot afford better and are jaded at the industry. anything too expensive to own that doesn't measure like the hd600 is tossed aside because it's "objectively bad"

this is the argument and you know it is. it has always been this way for decades. subjectivism vs objectivism camps. they are both full of shit.

DT-990 is far more pronounced in terms of V-shape, but perhaps a bit too much in terms of treble. DT-880 is bright, it has a decent bass presence but not enough of it to genuinely make it a V shape can.

Eh, I'm one of the people who dislike the HD600 here, so you bark the wrong tree. The pics I posted which started your reply to me were from a study on people's preferences in headphones during blind test by Sean Olive in his research at Harman Audio.

The HD600 measures well.. for an incredibly narrow idea of "measuring well". When your driver can't show any subbass at all and sounds distorted if you EQ boost it, is that measuring well? Subbass is important in so much music for the body of sound. Even some classical music can have rumbling tones.

Since nobody tried to guess btw, the can that won the preference rating in that particular study was the Audeze LCD-2. The second most highly appreciated was the 702, and I bet it would have fared better than the 702 if it had been the 712 (but not necessarily win over the majestic linear response of planars).

The point of many of his studies show that you can absolutely predict how well people will react based on the response of a phone. It's not the only factor, but it's clearly a very important one. It's not purely mechanical measurement studies since it takes into account people actually listening to the stuff and stating their preferences.

The HD600 I don't consider as an objectivist camp. They are so attached to their first cheap entry to high fidelity that they can't admit any of the absolutely objective faults of their pet can. It only measures well if you restrict the field of "measure well" to "it's like a hd600" which is what the Golden Ears people are doing.

>Eh, I'm one of the people who dislike the HD600 here, so you bark the wrong tree. The pics I posted which started your reply to me were from a study on people's preferences in headphones during blind test by Sean Olive in his research at Harman Audio.
I wasn't arguing with you, I was making a random comment
>The point of many of his studies show that you can absolutely predict how well people will react based on the response of a phone
this is the part where you need to stop. what are your qualifications that allow you determine this as fact?

Anyone know of a good way to tighten the hifiman smc connectors?

>tfw HD598SE
Am I just a tone deaf peasant?

>this is the part where you need to stop. what are your qualifications that allow you determine this as fact?

Not my own qualifications but the fruit of years and years of research by Sean Olive in the field. You can go google them if you want to (tried to post a link earlier but it's blocked as spam).
Sean Olive and other people at Harman Audio have done more to elevate the field as something reproducible, understood that could be improved upon rather than randomly throwing shit at walls hoping it sticks than most phone manufacturers. It's too bad he doesn't lead the development of phones in one of the brands owned by Harman.

I know perfectly well who they are. mm, I would argue that they are chasing a moving target and until they can establish a standard for recording then it's not very interesting research.

also another thought. this kind of test is meaningless, if the market is competitive then it will determine the most preferable sound. look at what sonarworks is trying to do (for the sake of profit). companies make money off selling preferable headphones. the market will already autonomously converge on a standard curve. independent research isn't going to make it happen sooner, profit margins will. companies themselves are doing studies like this already. you can be damn sure that sennheiser is.

one more thought is that tests like these with simulated headphone FRs or actual headphones are impossible to do blind because of too many variables. FR is just one characteristic of a headphone. too many biases as well.

>what are your qualifications
Ad Hominem much?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

fallacy fallacy

I'm not the same user you are arguing with so 'im not trying to disprove you based on your falacies, i am however pointing out the falacy in your argument, which in turns can't be used agains user's argument either.

is there any point in getting a dac if i own a low impedance headphone? i own an m50x, is it worth it at all?

I know, but you are interpreting the context wrong, or I didn't make the effort to make it obvious. the latter likely. I asked because no one should be claiming something is the truth so matter of factly. it ties into and how not even the researchers doing the studies should make claims like that if they want to approach the argument from an objective standpoint

I don't consider that an ad hominem in the first place. my argument is not that he lacks the qualifications but that no one has the qualifications. only when something can be held up to extreme scrutiny that it can be considered true, and only temporarily

I'm getting a modmic for my hd600. Will it sound fine if I plug it in directly into my laptop?

Depends what your onboard audio is like

You are thinking of Amps, user, not DACs, an AMP is what you get in case your headphone doesn't get loud enough (high impedance and low sensitivity), DACs are Digital/Analog Converters, they turn the binary code back in analog singnal.

But the answer is probably No, the M50 is easy to drive so you shouldn't be needing an AMP and a DAC usually is only required if your source is not very good (adds wanted noises, hisses, distortion etc) which isn't the case for most recent mother boards and smartphones.

Ahh, the market. The one where the vast majority people spend based on brand loyalty, meme and cachet more than anything. The one where the currently most recommended headphone on the internet is the m50x and its shoddy muddy bass. The market whose majority barely ever heard a variety of higher quality headphones, many stopping at the m50x, some others at the hd600. The one where you can rerelease the same product with very slight tweaks to refresh the base price of the product (every time Sennheiser's mid-fi dropped in price, they felt the absolute need to relaunch it with minor tweaks and cosmetic changes to be able to charge $400 and $500 again. The HD600 is just a HD580. The HD650 is a HD600 with more damping for the bass response. The HD660s recycled the HD700 drivers into the body of the HD580. So much R&D efforts).

The one where actually most of the money being made these days is in wireless bluetooth headphones with horrendous drivers being somewhat fixed with DSP eq.

You overestimate so much the importance of people who care enough about headphones development, and those who still manage to care after such decades of recycling of products with little R&D involved are those who have already bought all the products, both the good and bad, and are obsessed enough by the hobby that they will keep trying new stuff.

Sennheiser's R&D department at the sight of companies like Focal managing to sell a $4k dynamic driver: let's put some gorilla glass on a HD800s and command $2k minimum.

Although they don't necessarily do the sort of research done by the people at Harman, at least I can credit companies like Audeze for working hard on improving the reliability of their manufacturing of planars and bringing something different with a possible higher potential and ceiling to the market. But companies such as Audeze are even a tinier minority of the market so it's even more to their credit that they're actually putting an effort.

so if i have a generic shitty notebook integrated board it wont make any difference? fuck

whats the point of getting a dac if you have a good audio card then

alrighty thank you user, that helps

I don't really dissagree with that, while i do find their research interesting i also find it to be more of a general guide line that doesn't necessarily needs to be follows for perfect FR, the idea of a single FR being perfect is like assuming a one-sized hat will fit all heads, there's too much variables in the human end of the equation to find an ideal answer.
Besides, musics is produced to sound somewhat good from most sources anyway.

One of these days, I'll really have to order blindly an electrostat on the internet. Nowhere to try them here where I live, and that's the only thing I haven't heard and really want to know as to how well it fares in reality.

Laptops sometimes have shit onboard audio, but not always. You might benefit from an external audio source, even with just an M50x, but I can't be certain. If you got a FiiO E10K or something like that from Amazon, you could always just send it back if you can't tell the difference.

you have tunnel vision both from looking at the wrong sector and a narrow timeframe. the market right now is in IEMs and portable audio. if you want to find the market then look towards where the chinese are. look at how much chinkfi we have. it's ridiculous, too much to even handle. next is VR and we already have an extreme race for noise cancellation.

I don't really want to get into a huge capitalism debate on whether the free market works or not. it's too time consuming and too much energy for me to care.

The point of a DAC for a laptop user is that your laptop doesn't have a line out that works well with amps, the headphone out is not a substitute for a clean lineout if you want no distortion to be magnified in an amp. And as for why you'd want an amp.. you don't want one for a m50x. That's something you'd want for headphones that need more power.

>my hd600
Nice. The best headphones in the world.

This is some retarded ass reddit garbage. And just fyi that second guy is talking out his ass. He doesn't know what a double blind study is and when you do actually do a double blind study or any kind of study to test the ethicacy of something you don't do the testing in the lab... Also double blind isn't done much because it's expensive, complicated, and requires a legal team.

Aka shiit made for retards like you.

what happens when you do a double blind study? oh right, you are biased by the researcher who designed the test method. whoops! so much for blind!

Always believe the opposite of what the HD600 shill says.

What even your point besides calling everyone retarded? If anything it's making you look less smart yourself.

I would actually agree with you on the point of IEMs. Etymotic did indeed a lot of worthwhile research, and the ER4SR and ER4XR together offer something that covers 90% of possible taste, and their high ability to respond well to EQ should iron out the last 10%. And chink IEMs are progressively getting better and better and there will come a day where high fidelity IEMs will be mere commodity.

IEM are close to being able to be called a solved problem imho. It has achieved true maturity as a technology.

I don't like wearing IEMs though.

>what happens when you do a double blind study? oh right, you are biased by the researcher who designed the test method. whoops! so much for blind!
I work in DM nigger. Double blind in layman's terms just means the site (doctor) and the patient don't know who is getting placebos. That information is randomized until after the study lock.
The point is using the argument of "double blind is garbage" while claiming to be some kind of researcher is beyond full retard and any statement this guy makes shouldn't be taken seriously. The lab comment he goes on to make just emphasizes that.

>STAX
Limp dick bass impact and rollercoaster treble response.

So basically HD600?

thanks lads

The HD600 trolls just don't realize how hilarious they are. Limp dick bass and roller treble is indeed the essence of the Senny.

o i am laffin

>>I work in DM nigger. Double blind in layman's terms just means the site (doctor) and the patient don't know who is getting placebos. That information is randomized until after the study lock.
that's not what double blind means. double blind means the tester and the testee are blind. the designer of the study is not. drug pharmacuticals are fucking easy. for the majority of things with many variables it is horrible and useless. a good example is nutrition where a researcher believes cholesterol is bad so he bases the test around testing cholesterol levels. it's stupid.

>that's not what double blind means. double blind means the tester and the testee are blind.
Is what I just said retard.
>the designer of the study is not
The medical team can be blind. It's randomized.
>a good example is nutrition where a researcher believes cholesterol is bad so he bases the test around testing cholesterol levels. it's stupid.
That has to do with double blind how? Fuck what's that have to do with what were talking about in what way?

>Is what I just said retard.
yeah, I wasn't paying attention.
>The medical team can be blind. It's randomized.
only meaningful when there are limited variables you can control for in a blind fashion. placebo tests are the most simple for example. why are you refusing to think of a possible scenario where a double blind is either impossible or not useful? does blind testing only apply to drugs in your mind?
>That has to do with double blind how? Fuck what's that have to do with what were talking about in what way?
because if the test is flawed or biased from the start then it doesn't matter if it is double blind or if you have a sample size of 1 million. there are entire fields worth of studies that are complete jokes with obvious false evidence and testing methods that don't hold up to any scrutiny. nutrition is an excellent example of this, it's why I brought it up. it doesn't have a lot to due with blind testing but it is related to the argument in general you seem to have an issue with

>why are you refusing to think of a possible scenario where a double blind is either impossible or not useful?
Because the reddit man was talking about double blind specifically?
>does blind testing only apply to drugs in your mind?
It's by far the most wide use. If you mean real double blind studies.
>bla bla bla
A sample size of under 20 is plenty for headphones. We aren't testing therapeutic drugs. So I'm not sure what the issue is here.

>. nutrition is an excellent example of this,

Nutrition is a magnificent can of worm. A lot of the problems here are not just due to methodology or the scientific method, but bad faith. Actors acting on bad faith. A lot of it coming from the way research is funded and the grubby hands the food industry has on it. Leading to mind numbing conclusions like eggs being bad because dietary cholesterol (eggs are one of the best source of nutriments we could have and dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with blood levels), fat is bad (but we will give you plenty of servings of sugars and carbs) and so on.

It's all bad faith. Thankfully, actors on bad faith can only impose lies for a limited amount of time, so research disputing the lies slowly trickle down to us. For example it's now finally accepted that one simply does not get elevated cholesterol just because they eat eggs.

pni.org/psychopharmacology/doubleblind/DoubleBlindNeppe.pdf

>pni.org/psychopharmacology/doubleblind/DoubleBlindNeppe.pdf
Ya thank fuck I don't need to keep track of a patient's complete medical history. Only what is reported. You know that 100% of the time that info is fucking useless right?

oh fuck off

I'm not even trolling. That info is fucking garbage. All that matters is adverse events and that info actually gets from there to there completed.

Semi-related, how do I get my sound to not be ass on my computer? I basically have Realtek to work with after drunkenly uninstalling DTS and resetting everything on the former since I couldn't get the EQ to sound good at all

A lot of headphones are being released next month. Which are you most excited for? I'm looking forward to the M1060C and the HP70 the most.

>Which are you most excited for?
the only one worth being excited for, the L300LE

Don't bully me, the D7200s I ordered were a flop so I need some closed backs.
With my luck, audiocubes will cancel my order and be like "yeah we don't have stock, get fucked".

>six headphones which will be worse than the HD600
wowitsfuckingnothing.jpg

worse than limp dick bass impact and rollercoaster treble response?

I've settled on the DT-990 600ohm.
What kind of amp would you recommend?

That's STAX you're thinking of. HD600 feature robust, stalwart bass response and perfect, mellifluous treble.

I can count 7 headphones worse than a stax

It's okay shrimpdick dynamiclet, we know you can't compete.

Magni 3, and it's officially Holo.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_and_Wolf
>Concerning the spelling of Holo's name, Yen Press has stated that they "were instructed that the proper spelling of the character's name is indeed Holo" by the Japanese licensor.

Jds o2.

Get the O2, don't listen to Schiit shills, bad quality control, customer service and although inaudible but tends to measure worse than chinkfi. JDS labs makes good stuff in general too.

I've always sperged out when people say Horo. Must have been drunk when I named these.
Is there a difference between Jds and Mayflower o2?

When should HD600/HD650 ear pads be replaced?

Um, I dunno. When you want new ones?
Is Holo your waifu? If so, you chose a fine waifu, user.

When you notice a significant difference in compressed thickness between new and old pads. Keep a spare set of new pads around to test the difference.

I think mine are about half as thick now as when they were new. New pads are over $40 though, damn.

Get new pads now

Thread reminder to never buy Schiit products.

>#1 recommended brand by reddit shills because hehe i get to say Shit
>owner thinks authoring a 140-chapter work of fiction about the company history makes up for garbage quality and performance

head-case.org/forums/topic/12921-schiit-jotunheim/
audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/budget-dac-review-schiit-modi-2-99.1649/
audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/hardware-teardown-of-schiit-modi-2-usb-dac.2082/

>solder splatter
>caps on output
>Either they don't measure their DACs, don't care or don't know how to design a clean DAC.
>For me the biggest letdown with all of this is the major disservice Schiit and others are doing to the community. They are toting these frankly "shit" amps as power houses

reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/6wdcig/bad_experience_with_schiit_audio/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/6lnyd8/ama_request_nick_t_from_schiit_tech_support/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/7bwko4/schiit_refusing_to_replace_the_misconfigured/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/7b33wc/schiit_fulla_2_problems_about_blew_out_my_eardrums/
reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/71wtot/schiit_cs_has_left_me_between_a_rock_and_a_hard/

oh, well staxaudio is also selling them

Is the KZ ZS6 w/ Triple flange conical replacements a good IEM if I listen to almost exclusively kpop?

If kpop is mastered similar to jpop, yes.

is this endgame?

I've noticed a big uptick in QC complaints from them over the past year. Guess I got really lucky with original modi/magni, but I'm avoiding them for all future products.

this is

No this is endgame

HD600 is endgame.

I need more shit like eve.

youtube.com/watch?v=nROvY9uiYYk
youtube.com/watch?v=BLgqyQMjd5s

My wallet weeps, but I know the cheap chink pads would only ever be shit

>no image
You own them, right?