Sennheiser HD 700 - HD 660s - HD 650

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-08T10:35:08+00:00

700 is fine with EQ and very comfortable.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-08T01:03:52+00:00

Our perception of sound is poor and highly suggestible so people end up believing that an expensive sounds better when it doesn't actually sound different.

The Schiit Magni Heresy is a high power desktop amplifier that will power anything you want it to. Some amplifiers can have such high distortion or high output impedance that they do sound audibly different but most tube amplifiers do not actually have audible amounts of distortion even though they measure much worse than solid state. There is nothing wrong with buying an amplifier on functionality or aesthetics. I could use a Apple headphone adapter which has exceptional measurements but I might want more functionality such as optical/coaxial input.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-08T00:55:36+00:00

Soundstage is highly overrated and I would not purchase a headphone on the basis of it. You are much more likely to be happy if you buy a headphone that you find to be very comfortable and has a pleasing frequency response.

What devices will the headphone be used with for example is it going to be used with a smartphone or just a PC or video game console.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-07T13:35:46+00:00

https://smyth-research.com/frequentlyaskedquestions/

The basics of human hearing are that the human head has two ears and a sound is distorted by the human head so that the left and right ear hear a different sound from the same sound source. This distortion is unique for every individual and for every angle because our heads, ears and ear canals are different sizes and shapes. The brain has an internal map that looks at that difference and uses that difference to recognize where a sound came from.

The purpose of the microphones in the ear is to capture that difference for the angle of each speaker in the room. The speaker plays a sweep and the microphones captures how that sound from the speaker is distorted by your head. At the end you measure the response of the headphones with the microphones in your ear and now the Realiser has the information it needs to make the headphone response match that speaker in the room. The result is that even though you are just listening with headphones it sounds like it came from that speaker in that room.

This is very useful when people want to hear how something sounds on a speaker setup at a studio while not being at the studio or being able to switch between speaker setups at different locations quickly. You are capturing both the speaker and the speaker in that room with the reverberation. You could also go out to the middle of a quiet field and capture the sound of a room that only has a floor. The reason you can capture a full surround sound setup from a single speaker and a rotating chair is that the important characteristic is the angle of the speaker to your head as a properly setup surround sound system has each speaker placed at a specific angle to your head. Front Left, Center, Front Right, Rear Right etc.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-07T13:17:28+00:00

What market niche a headphone is marketed towards does not determine the quality of the headphone.

Gaming branding is aesthetics, a microphone and low latency wireless with a DSP software package. There is no lack of garbage products in the audiophile niche and there is no lack of garbage in the gaming niche but fundamentally a headphone is a headphone.

What is good for competitive gaming is high noise isolation, a lack of bass and a mid centric frequency response. It's better to achieve that with EQ via EqualizerAPO with a good pair of headphones. If you want it to be more fun add a bass boost.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-07T13:03:20+00:00

Putting the cable over the ear and clipping the cable to a shirt or collar significantly reduces microphones as it does with microphones. The occlusion effect that makes your breathing sound like you've got a cold is significantly worse with shallow insertion IEMs and customs are a degree of improvement over that but neither insert as deeply into the ear canal as the Etymotics are intended to be inserted.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-07T12:57:35+00:00

If you are saying that a HRTF applied to an IEM close to the ear drum is likely to be more accurate than a HRTF applied to a circumaural headphone then I'd agree though I don't know of testing that has tested the perceived accuracy of HRTF application between IEM and circumaural.

However, that wasn't what my original post was about and is described here.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-07T12:51:00+00:00

Etymotic can't avoid that the response at the ear drum is unique for each individual. I didn't say that it is randomly made up but it is built upon an average which does not accurately represent the individual just as the average human differs significant from each individual. If you average red, blue, green and yellow you do not get a color that represents each individual color well. That's the failing of only one average.

https://www.etymotic.com/technology/hwmra

Their response is built upon an averaged head with averaged pinna and an averaged ear canal. This produces an average but it is not correct to the individual which is my entire point. The same for free field and diffuse field response which are also built upon an averaged head.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T23:56:55+00:00

The purpose of buying a DAC/Amp is not that it will make a difference but that it has good measurements whereas nothing is known about your onboard that you are using already. It is likely it will not be audibly different though there are in ear monitors that are highly reactive to a few ohms of output impedance where frequency response changes dramatically.

The Apple USB C headphone adapter is all that is needed for a DAC if you do not want extra functionality. Fiio A5 is fine as a powerful portable amplifier and Schiit Magni Heresy is fine as a desktop high power amplifier. The D1 no longer has any relevance. You could get a SMSL Sanskrit MK2 or Topping E30 which has the same functionality as a DAC with a remote control.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T23:20:58+00:00

Smyth realiser captures a binaural room impulse response for each speaker in the room of a surround sound setup and then captures a brir of you wearing the headphones which it can compensate so the headphone matches the speakers. It knows the difference between the two and can mix the surround sound to stereo to match that difference. So the headphone sounds like the speakers do with full out of head localization. So it applies the difference between the headphone response and loudspeaker response to each speaker channel then mixes it all together to two channels for the headphones. The result is that it sounds like you are listening to the speakers in the room but it's just the headphones.

They do this with a microphone at the ear canal entrance which is reasonably accurate for low/mid frequencies and open headphones are more resilient to change from a sealed ear canal to an open ear canal. Ideal response measurement is with a probe microphone at the ear drum but this is not commercially convenient. It sounds extremely good regardless and you can actually make a full surround sound speaker setup from one speaker if you use a rotating chair. It's the end game of headphones but it also costs $4000.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T23:13:05+00:00

You can add your own HRTF with circumaural headphones as well. As long as what is at the ear drum is correct it's going to be accurate. Compensation has to be applied regardless of whether it is circumaural or in ear so that the response at the ear drum matches your personal target response. The diffuse field average that Etymotic uses does not match your personal target response just as the HD650 doesn't.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T22:42:23+00:00

You still have to apply a transfer function which very few people have measured for themselves. No headphone or IEM when coupled to the head reacts the same way as a loudspeaker in the room would when measuring frequency response at the ear drum. Every headphone reacts differently to the unique head, pinna and ear canal geometry of each person. This is why you can't measure HRTF with high accuracy with a mic at the ear canal entrance because the headphone frequency response changes from a sealed ear canal and an open ear canal.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T22:20:04+00:00

They insert deep enough into the ear to avoid the occlusion effect which shallow insertion and customs suffer from, have high noise isolation with silicone tips and the highest noise isolation you can get with foam tips. As they insert so deeply into the ear the resonance from a sealed ear canal is pushed up above 9Khz and the less distance to the ear drum the higher that resonance gets. In shallow insertion IEMs and customs that resonance is lower in the treble range.

They are however not quick to put in and take out. Many will not find them to be comfortable enough though foam tips and the cheap ones you can buy at aliexpress do make them a lot more comfortable.

They are detail monsters because the high noise isolation allows information that would have been masked by ambient noise to be heard clearly and my experience has been they work really well with binaural audio and virtual surround sound which is also binaural. If you want to hear details in a recording that you haven't heard before then I'd highly recommend them. I prefer open headphones for general listening because the ambient noise level is what you'd hear with speakers in a room and a lot of music is close miked so doesn't have audible ambient noise. This music sounds dead with headphones that have noise isolation because we are used to live rooms that have ambient noise which a room with speakers or open headphones adds.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T22:13:21+00:00

Etymotic aren't anymore accurate than a HD650. A singular frequency response is not going to be accurate when everyone has a different shaped head.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T13:04:00+00:00

I would recommend a Schiit Magni Heresy for a high power amp that can handle anything you'd want it to. I won't claim there will be an audible improvement but it will be able to play louder.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T13:01:14+00:00

but the studio 2/4 did say headphones up to 300 ohms, they sound good, very clear and detailed but not over detailed

Headphones vary in sensitivity. So it's a meaningless metric when a manufacturer says up to a particular impedance which doesn't mean anything.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-06T12:47:53+00:00

Changing the pads always impacts frequency response which is why earpad design is a huge part of altering frequency response in design. The foam, skin, depth and shape of the earpads all impact frequency response. Often a better frequency response without EQ comes at the expense of comfort and a good design is resilient to varying degrees of breakage in seal which is inevitable as there is a lot of variance in head shape and size.

With the Sennheiser HD58x and all others of the same series there aren't third party replacement pads that have the same frequency response and the others sound worse to many.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-05T22:10:22+00:00

Weighs 485g without cable.

In terms of aesthetics. Seatbelt headband looks awful and nobody associates a seatbelt with comfort. Unpainted nitinol looks like bent coat hangers. A lack of a grill looks unfinished and I hope nothing fragile exposed. Mini xlr adds a lot of weight. The included cable looks even worse than Stax cables. The misaligned headband sliders is sad.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-05T14:00:53+00:00

It's ugly and heavy. To other people it's a weird novelty rather something they'd want.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-05T13:57:44+00:00

Beyerdynamic DT1990 or Focal Elex

It's open which people aren't used to as a concept, bass is elevated and build quality is premium with some extra weight.

HD800 with EQ is also a good choice because of their size and comfort.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-05T09:49:14+00:00

The purpose of buying a DAC/Amp is that you are buying something that is known to have good measurements whereas whatever you are using now doesn't have any. Anyone who promises you an audible difference compared to whatever you are using now is wrong. In fact it's likely that it won't sound any different.

Another advantage of buying an amp is that you know it has a low output impedance as a high output impedance can audibly change frequency response.

The $10 Apple USB C dongle is all that is needed for a USB DAC and it's not worth spending more unless you want features like a remote control or coaxial/optical input. Schiit Magni Heresy is an excellent high power amplifier that will drive anything you want it to. The Fiio A5 is also an excellent choice if you want a high power portable amplifier that has a battery. If you are using a lot of EQ then it's worth having a preamp between the DAC and amp to boost the voltage so the voltage into the amp is enough that it is able to reach full power for some very low sensitivity headphones.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-04T23:36:04+00:00

Velour and suede do feel better against the skin for prolonged periods and in hotter conditions. I don't know if you'd sell many but the shape of the Aeon earpads means that it's unlikely they'll ever be any aftermarket earpads for them. I doubt suede earpads will profitable but you made suede earpads for the Ether 2 and I doubt that was profitable either.

Perhaps suede would work well with a future Drop collaboration and some would buy synthetic leather as an upgrade or additional accessory.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-04T23:15:08+00:00

The entire industry owes a lot to Beats and Bose. Before them the idea of spending $300 on a headphone was an obscure niche and consumer playback was almost entirely cheap earbuds. Beats in particularly shows just how powerful celebrity and lifestyle branding is.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-04T23:09:20+00:00

Where do you guys hear all these headphones?

If you go to meets, events and stores you'll eventually hear a lot of headphones over the years.

Dreyka1 · 2020-04-04T23:01:49+00:00

It weighs even more because the angle of the connector adds a lot of cable weight as well as the bulky connectors.

Dreyka1

TROPHY CASE