That is cool, but does not solve the problem.

See, I do not even care about whether or not it is reflected in FR that is secondary to the first problem: DEFINITION.

If they cannot tell me what to listen for, like a certain thing at certain time in a certain song, for example, then I just cannot take it as anything but the ramblings of a guy high on placebo.

For future reference.

https://www.headphonesty.com/2019/04/headphone-impedance-demystified/

So the way I see it: if I listen to a particular headphone and the song has drums in it - do I hear the impact from the very beginning, does it sound slow and sluggish, almost farty?

Do you hear echoes or reverb from instruments while other stuff is already going on, or is the whole image too mushy to listen for that?

The phenomenon that you described, hearing something new on a high-end headphone and then hearing the same thing on a cheaper one is your ears being trained basically. You know now what to listen for, but you needed the better headphone at least once to properly be made aware of it.

If you have the chance: try to compare the focal utopia to the Audeze LCD-X. You would assume that the Utopia, given it’s price, is better in every way - but I don’t think that is the case, I would describe the LCD-X as more detailed and faster, but the Utopia as smoother and more pleasant for longer listening sessions. I do think the terms make sense, but only in comparisons with relatively large differences.

I've come to learn that what many people refer to as "detail" is something I would personally call "clarity".

This becomes particularly noticeable in fairly treble heavy vocals. Less "detailed" headphones will make them sound somewhat "grainy", more "detailed" headphones will present them more cleanly.

It is this treble cleanliness that can make it easier to distinguish details, but less easy does not equal impossible, and other factors play into how easily details are heard as well.

Topping D30 Pro DAC, Topping A30 Pro amp, Tripowin GranVia XLR cable. I'm more than happy with this setup,.

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I think resolve lately refers to those terms as "subjective things that aren't easy to see in FR, but may be contained in FR"

Yeah I used his eq that fixed it

Yeah that's what I've heard particularly in the upper frequencies. Thanks

We’re talking about the same tech but different applications of it.

Yes.. I know most people would find it an odd choice but using tubes for doing the actual amplifying seems unnecessary to me now that we have semiconductors to do that job. It wears out tubes faster and the output impedance is too high for my headphones at least (unless you buy a $2.5K amp, which I won't). I researched for hybrid amps and I couldn't find anyone with unanimously positive reviews so I thought that the most technically correct solution would be using discrete units that perform their own specific task instead of one combo that does two completely different things. And a preamp leaves the possibility open for using in a speakers setup as well.

That's seems like a sensible way to think of it actually. I definitely have had instances with my new iems where I'm not paying attention to the music but I'll suddenly prick up at something I'd never heard before. And they are just way clearer than my old ones which goes a long way.

No, this is something that's often misunderstood, but in real world use, you can't easily EQ one headphone to another without knowing how that headphone or IEM response on your own ear. Even if you could EQ two headphones to appear to have the same FR on a measurment rig, on your own head the FR at your eardrum can still be drastically different

Try oratory’s eq and turn on the bass boost on hip dac, the bass sounds legendary on these.

Here’s how I define it after hearing the difference between detail and resolution on high end systems:

Detail is the ability to clearly present barely discernible sounds which would be veiled by other less detailed systems due to their higher noise floor. These are sounds and micro dynamics within the track such as the sound of a guitarist lifting his finger off a string to move to the next note (small quiet pops etc). On a a very detailed system you will notice a physicality to the image presented in front of you

Resolution I define as how lifelike the sound appears, it is the auditory equivalent of moving from a 1080p HD display to 4k, there is just more information there that the driver is able to present to you. Lees resolution sounds fuzzy or veiled by comparison

I hope this makes sense, Hifi can be hard to put in to words until you have heard it. To answer you question, yes all that information is in the song if you look for it, but very detailed systems present this VERY obviously, all clearly separated and relaxed. You shouldn’t have to look for detail that is already there in a good system

Do you think that means you can just buy one really good pair and EQ it to the FR of other headphones and it will sound exactly the same?

Don't know much about the Shure, but I'd skip the Aria. It has very widespread problems with moisture causing channel imbalances after you wear them for a while (and the paint chipping after a while).

I'd take a look at the tangzu wan'er/truthear hola/kiwiear cadenza instead. They are all cheap, tuned pretty similarly to the Aria and each other (mildly bass-boosted warm neutral), and I haven't really heard any reliability horror stories about them.

First party

It can be hard! Unfortunately, this hobby is filled with snake oil. There are a cadre of companies and people who claim that there is a difference in sound between something like a Chord Mojo with Chord's proprietary filter and discrete circuit output stage compared to something like a Schiit Heresy/Modi which is an op-amp based "clinical" sounding amp paired with an analytical AKM (now ESS) chip.

Well I wanted to get to the bottom of this myself so I purchased a switcher and I compared my Schiit Heresy and my Chord Mojo. I staggered the playback times from two different sources but the same track by two seconds. This is a correction for the first mistake people make when trying to conduct a test like this... they try to time the playback exactly... Well if you do that, when you initiate the switch, you're not listening to the guitar strum you just heard, you're listening to the next one... obviously. So you aren't ever comparing apples to apples. It's actually beneficial to stagger the playback slightly and examine the exact same cymbal hits, the same strums, the same reverb trails.

I took this so seriously, I had my hearing tested at an audiologist beforehand at a not insignificant cost to me (American healthcare and all). My hearing sensitivity is perfect. I can also hear up to 18kHz.

After all this, I have never heard a difference in this test or other tests and I've never heard a difference between a DCS Bartok and anything else 1/10 the price.

Solid state electronics (barring particularly terribly designed ones like the Stellar or ones with high output impedance) are all audibly identical and anyone who claims otherwise is selling snake oil... and in fact this may be 90% of audiophile stores considering their business model and collective livelihoods depend on folks believing there is a difference. Keep in mind that you can purchase a speaker cable that costs $125,000.

Now of course, if you want to get into the rabbit hole of tubes and play with harmonic distortion to get a warmer, less precise, but possibly more relaxing or pleasing sound, that's a thing a lot of people enjoy doing. But for now, I'd focus on just getting a DAC that is well measuring, useful, and one that is affordable enough to reserve your capital for the part of the system that actually matters with real, measurable, and audible differences- the headphones.

Going to go by US prices for a second but if you had purchased an LCD2 Classic for 800$ and a Stellar for 2150$, that would be a total spend of 2950$. That puts you into flagship range for headphones. And if I had 2950$ laying around, I kid you not, I would just buy a Utopia and plug that right into my 9$ Apple Lightning Dongle and sleep very well at night knowing I had better sound than all the people who bought an HD800s and a Burson Conductor or something.

For me I tend to bucket them into macro and micro. Macro detail is largely dictated by frequency response.

Going from a headphone with a dip in a certain frequency to a headphone with peak in the same frequency may present "new" details. Then when you go back to the old pair you can still hear the "new" detail... because you know what to look for now. The new pair just made it stand out, due to a peak/lack of dip.

The micro/low-level/nuanced details are the bits that I think differ due to things beyond just frequency response/tonality. Here distortion and other factors are at play IMO.

To put it another way, macro is noticing a new background instrument/effect because you either corrected a dip in the fundamental range or used a headphone with a peak in that same range. Hearing additional texture on a guitar string pluck would be an example of a "micro" detail in my book.

Overall smoothness and not rolled off at the top helps.

I use a MagSafe case and didn’t want to attach a piece of Velcro to my phone.

I wonder that myself. And yet, everytime someone asks, all they manage to do is provide a pseudo-physical explanation, without giving any examples.

If they cannot name a method or way to listen/test for "detail", "speed", "dynamics" and all such things, then their assesments in that regard are just noise.

Soundstage is one example of a loosely defined term, relative to tonality. BUT one can EASILY provide a test for people to conduct at home to understand the meaning. Just use an old IEM to listen to any song. Then use any over ear headphone to listen to the same song. Chances are that with the IEM the music will sound "more in your head", this difference between the IEM and the over ear headphone is soundstage and it can exist between different headphones as well.

One can easily explain and show what tonality is. These "audiophile terms" on the other hand are, poorly defined and cannot be tested for. Reminds me of a cult:

"You shall not put these terms, technicalities, to the test" -Headphonomy 6:16

I started with some Hifiman Sundaras, an Atom AMP and a Khadas tone board 2 years ago, it was a rocky start but I grew to love them, I wanted an upgrade that will give me more of everything, I tried the LCD-X, focal clear MG and Hifiman Arya in an audio store

My initial impressions were actually quite low, I couldn't tell much of a difference between my sundaras and the clear MG / LCD, the aryas sounded the best but where way to airy and I didn't really like the crazy wide soundstage and for rock music everyone says the LCD-X are better anyway. I'm not sure if the AMP / DAC I was using in this store was any good tbh, my old sundra stuff sounds better

The LCD-x sounded weird, and I know this now because without a harman EQ they do sound.. strange (this almost caused me to walk out the store without buying anything, but luckily I knew that they sound weird with no EQ). The clear MG sounded better than the LCD-x initially but they lacked some of the bass that my sundaras had and I didn't like how the headphones looked, also everyone says the clear MG are a jack of all trades, which I dont need, I need rock music cans because that's what I listen to

The store had an open box deal for the LCD-x for 850GBP, and the Clear MG was 1100, considering the LCD also comes with a literal nuclear launch box they where the obvious choice

So after plugging them into a SMSL SU-9 DAC and SP200 AMP and putting on a harman EQ they sound incredible, they dont have that annoying hiss that my sundaras had with some vocal frequencies, the bass is insane and the soundstage is decenetly improved (if the LCD-x is 10/10 then sundaras are a 6), Vocals sound cleaner and more separated from everything else, they feel sturdy as hell, the cable is really nice although the mini XLR looks likes it has just cheap heatshrink to indicate the polarity, which is really questionable but whatever.

All the reviews I watched said the weight of them (like 650g vs 350 ish of the others) was a huge issue, I just see this as a way to get a hench AF neck, I've had them on for a few hours and It's not really an issue, I'm sure I'll get used to it

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