Great combo with the Qudelix 5K for EQ 👍🏾

First of all there are many configurations for multi-driver speakers and coaxial is just one of them and it's not necessarily the best. It's a complex topic, so let's unwrap it.

Speakers need many drivers because they move a lot of air. Unfortunately there is no way one driver can do that and at the same time reproduce highs accurately. A big cone is too heavy to follow a coil that changes direction that fast, so instead it vibrates chaotically. But it gets worse... Basically the speaker plays into open space and every driver has it's spatial character. I don't mean how you perceive it, but actual spatial character - where the driver sends the sound and where it doesn't. We call it directivity. Multi-driver speakers have severe problems with it - they simply make no sense and the response doesn't add up apart from one spot in front of them. Coaxials exist solely because of that. They're supposed to cover the fact that they're separate drivers. Take any other criteria and coaxials suck. I don't mean a particular model, but they are in general a challenge to engineer, because every single part of the woofer messes up the tweeter's response and vice versa. They have severe amplitude intermodulation that comes from the fact that tweeters waveguide (woofer's cone) is constantly moving. Few coaxials sound good outside of car audio. Most of them are weird. In hifi Kef got it right and that's about it. Generally the only way to make a coaxial work is 3-way and up. Two way coaxials are intended to work with subwoofers. So you have a complicated solution that comes with many compromises.

Headphones don't have that problem. There are coxial headphones. I don't remember which, but I don't think they are anything special (?). But let's start from the beginning...

First of all heapdhones are doing fine with one driver. Think about it this way: a speaker is a pump, a headphone is a compressor. A compressor makes high pressure with very little fluid. Headphone driver is big enough to make bass and small enough for highs because it can make that bass with very little displacement. It works by creating pressure, not flow.

There are headphones with many drivers but they're expensive and heavy and comfort is important. Any benefit in sound? I don't see much.

If you want to experience multi-way headphone then there are a couple worth mentioning: AKG K340 and1more tripple driver OE, maybe Meze Empyrean. There were some other, but completely unremarkable headphones from Technics and Universum for example. There is no polite way of putting it - they suck hard.

Axel Grell, who is a famous acoustics engineer, is currently working on a two-way headphone, so hopes are high for it, but nobody expects them to be on par with his single driver work like HD800, and HD800 has a ring driver, that has space for a tweeter inside. Despite that they desided to leave it open.

I actually like the Z7M2, it just took me a while to adjust to how it presents music. I grew to like it so much that I wish I just went with the Z1R in the first place. For detailed/analytical listening, I already have the Hifiman Shangri-La Jr, the Stax SR-L700mk2, and the DCA Aeon 2 Noire, so I'm not lacking there. Hence my interest in the Z1R and the AWAS, warmer headphones with unusual tunings that contrast against the planar-type headphones in my collection. Thanks for the advice though, I agree that no headphone will do everything well.

Agreed. Cable looks like cheap tin, absolutely disgusting.

>Audio Technica Awas

It is what it is, don't expect Z1R to blow you away if you deem Z7M2 as muddy, details wise, Z1R is not competitive at its price range, unless you really need closed backs, which inherently at a disadvantage compared to open backs.

you need 2 sets, one for analytical, the other warm, bassy guilty pleasure, don't expect one set to do it all, even you go super high end.

ANC makes me feel like I have a cold. Like my sinuses are blocked.

Seconded. Btr3k and low latency codec.

+ an inline volume control maybe.

https://koss.com/products/vc20

Counting on it! ;)

I listen to EDM and nothing sounds better than my $1600 TH-900s

No noise cancellation or Bluetooth.... Seems cheap.. no RGB either. Better look for some Skullcandy.

How does the Serratus compare to the U12t?

[deleted]

Did you also try the clears at A2A sale?

I was considering getting a pair of closed backs and the elegia were tempting given how much I love the clears.

long 3.5mm extension cable?

"moar drivers = moar better" marketing sizzle?

while I'm sure you could make some reasonable case for a 2-way setup to separate high and low frequencies, a lot of the IEM market seems rather over the top, given what you can clearly do with 1DD.

sure

You don't mention whether your TV has Bluetooth. But if it does, an inexpensive Bluetooth receiver like the Fiio BTR3 will do the job. I don't notice any lag when I listen this way.

If your TV doesn't have Bluetooth capability, there are also Bluetooth transmitters that hook up to RCA and optical outputs.

Headphones can create a mindblowing experience, even with low-fidelity content. I'm honestly struggling to even hear the difference between regular mp3 and lossless, no matter what gear I use.

My order didnt even go through, so there is that

Connect a bluetooth transmitter (can recommend 1Mii) with APTX low latency to your TV via TOSLINK and get a Fiio BTR5 (or similiar).

This way you can also apply some EQ to tweak your IEMs to your taste.

yep

If you want to get into detail, then with electronic music timbre accuracy doesn't matter, but tonal balance and sharpness still make a difference. You don't need to be into technicalities of sound reproduction to notice that some gear is smooth and precise and full of nuance. People just call it "fast", because they feel like the headphone feeds them more information. This is especially true for electrostatic headphones which are the most expensive way of listening.

That detail can be interesting or not and pleasant or not. I personally don't enjoy detail on a lot of music. You can say that audiophile music is a genre of it's own. You can pick tracks across the whole spectrum of music and find ones that are sonically interesting. I love listening to Tipper on resolving gear for example. The texture in his music is a new kind of pleasure that I was completely unaware of before getting into audiophilia.

You can think of it like a game of paper chase. The detail needs to be hidden in the recording. It needs to be subtle and it needs to be fun. If it isn't, then you'll be uninterested in it. Electronic music is perfect for this, because the artist has an enormous control over shaping the character of each sound and layering them, although of course few take advantage of it.

That being said, the examples that you gave are generally music that's the opposite of audiophile, broadly speaking. Simplicity is the motto of 8 bit artists. They're the punks of technical refinement. With most EDM, the basis are pretty much covered with $500 headphones. So even if you can find headphones that will resolve more, will it be important to you is questionable.

Now I feel like it needs to be said that not all expensive gear is about increase in accuracy or refinement. Many are what I call "effect headphones". Stuff like HD800 has detail and all that, but the pricetag is from it's spatial character that is basically a different experience than listening to typical headphones. Because of that I always felt like most basis for electronic music are covered with $500 semiopen headphones and other products are like a second pair or in other words a surplus luxury, a gadget.

I do. They are a work of art and almost too pretty to use. But at $15 a pop /s I use them anyway. They sound really good on par if not better than other TOTL headphones. Final D8000, Audeze 5, Focal Utopia 2022, Meze Elite etc

2nd hand Audioquest Nightowls.