That's exactly where I tried them and got them, Guitar Center. They had Uptown Funk on it and it sounds incredible. In term of seals, I didn't notice anything off from a 3 hours practice session I was having with my bass guitar. It got a bit hot but it's not bad at all. I did had to adjust a lot of my stuff on the bass VS the settings I had using other cans to practice.

Spotify on best quality is 320kbps Vorbis (a patent-free alternative to MP3). It should be virtually indistinguishable from lossless for human ears (while using about 3 times less bandwidth / storage).

Here's a blind test comparing 128 kbps MP3, 320kbps MP3, and lossless. See if you can hear the difference ;-) Personally I can hear the difference between 128kbps and the rest most of the time, but not between 320kbps and lossless.

Note that Vorbis is slightly better than MP3 if I remember correctly, so if you can't hear the difference between lossless and 320kpbs MP3, you likely won't hear the difference between lossless and 320kpbs Vorbis either.

>I went to a music store a couple days back and got myself the AKG K371. At the store they had it for demo and it does sounds pretty nice on their demo but I wasn't really doing any critical listening and it's probably had a very EQ-ed song

I'm wondering if they silently changed the pad design or something, to address the complaints about the seal

While it's got that Harman bass shelf, boomy is not how I'd describe it (on the rare occasion I can get a good enough seal to not leak out all the subbass), certainly nowhere near the XM3's. I got my pair at Guitar Center and they sound like the demo units I listened to.

lil bro stuck in 2010

You mean the open-box section of their store.

Tip: Don’t just go and buy some random expensive “audiophile” headphone that people on the internet rave about. The most important thing is that they first meet your taste. An expensive headphone that doesn’t fit your preferences is never going to impress you. I can’t stand headphones with rolled off bass, so listening to HD600s will always be a disappointing experience for me regardless of how much everyone else seems to love them.

What kind of frequency response do you prefer? Do you like over-ears, on-ears, earbuds, or IEMs? Open back, closed back, semi-closed? How much do you value soundstage and imaging? If you don’t know the answers to all of these questions, figuring them out after you spend $1000 on a headphone is a great way to find yourself with buyer’s remorse. Play around with different options in the budget range to figure out what you like, then upgrade from there.

I kinda discarded that has a lot of those IO would be paid for but not used. A bit too pricey

That good to hear, I still wonder how convert headphone like 560s into wireless with the AZ09 Pro

fair enough!

I could definitely see that being a benefit for keyboard enthusiasts, but as someone who was much more into my music than keyboards it wasn't a positive for me!

Hmm, so it wasn't so much being underwhelmed by the performance of the headphones, but rather issues you had with the sound itself?

You didn't experience pain with the dt770, but you did with the 560s? That's kind of strange actually. If it's something with actual physical pain (and not just discomfort that you'd get from, for example, piercing treble) you may way to see a doctor about that. You really shouldn't be feeling any pain at all when listening to headphones. Except maybe your wallet!

If it's more treble sensitivity (which still seems odd if it was only the 560s), maybe give either the 650/6xx a try, or the 660s. Both are much darker than the 560s, but are still incredibly capable headphones.

I just bought myself an Ananda v2 recently because i really love the sound quality, but seeing all the posts about hifiman QC in this sub is really getting me worried.

What is a good alternative to Ananda Stealth?

No problem. You will eventually learn about them as you stay longer in the hobby

Don't think I could ever take the plunge with a HIFIMAN product for this reason.

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There is no upgrade you can make from the HD560s that's like going to an OLED panel or a 144hz monitor. 60hz is nowhere near the motion resolution of the human eye, and not even OLED is anywhere near the dynamic range of the eye (not sure about color gamut and stuff like that). With headphones, anything decent can reproduce the full range of frequencies you can hear and more dynamic range than you'd want to listen to. Different headphones may have a different tonal balance that you'd find more appealing, but there's just no room for some huge leap in fidelity.

huh, i had someone reccomend open backs for this exact reason, listen to you keeb and music at the same time lol

heya, thanks for lettibg me know, though I dont know what EQ'ing or an FR target means. I actually do use cherry switches so thats funny!

Would Spotify on its best quality be a good enough sample? Or are streaming services in general not too good in that department?

thanksan! what's EQ?

I'm not sure how to describe the problem I had with the 770s. They just sounded bad from my untrained ears' perspective.

The main problem I had with the 560s was that it hurt my ears for some reason. Not necessarily related to clamping force, but rather when I would play any type of audio.

If you’re listening to lossy or low res music services like Spotify, pandora or Apple, and/or Tidal at their lowest quality or the one where you can store the most songs in the least amount of space, headphones aren’t going to make a difference.

The better headphones you get, the more you get out of the music. But if there’s nothing to get out of the music because it’s been compressed out or so little data from low sample rates, there’s no point

The biggest reason that I don’t have a planar yet is because of the price. But hifiman solves that issues with very good and affordable planars.

But the only reason I haven’t done that yet is because of hifiman QC.

You can get a FIIO R7, and connect it to the same switch as your NAS.

Are there phones with micro USB without an audio jack? I thought USB-C was standard by the time everyone started copying (the worst) parts of apple.