Recent comments in /f/headphones

H3y8a83 t1_iyc9b98 wrote

Reply to Is this min-maxing obsession or are there benefits to be had by tweaking things on the OS or digital side and using 'audiophile' footers? by Orangutan_Ulti

That person has been spending too much time listening to bullshit artists. Most of the posters on that particular website are delusional idiots. The sane ones are ridiculed into silence and if that doesn't do it, silenced by admins and moderators. The Sound Science section is frequented by a few knowledgeable people who knows what they are talking about. But even there the good threads gets trolled hard every time by the ignorant majority. Overall it's a truly dogshit website.

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ILoveFondue t1_iyc8tqw wrote

Reply to comment by Lapralapso in Going from the Sennheiser HD 560S to the HD 800S by Lapralapso

I see. Well, it's impossible to judge if they are worth the money or not. To some folks it definitvely is to others it definitvely isn't.

I know this isn't the clear answer you were looking for but that's how it is. Hence the best thing you can do is trying them for yourself and make your own decision.

All I can add is that the HD800S are nice indeed. Extremly so but Sennheisers entry levels offer an absurd good sound for a relatively low price. So you probably will notice an improvement in many areas but, especially because 1k doesn't seem to be pocket change to you, it most likely won't be worth the money.

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UnnecessaryMovements t1_iyc8ptx wrote

Reply to what features could future amps/dacs have that can make them better than what's available today? by 2ndRoundExit

I prefer listening to portable. I am already satisfied with what I own but I would love if they somewhat made a miracle dongle that doesn't lose its connection when it my phone is in my pocket. Also, an audiophile level dongle (not a thumb drive style) that has mic support. Like Meizu Hifi Pro, which they discontinued.

Edit: or better yet. Bring back the good ol' headphone jack, but with abs.

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Gofa_Kirselph t1_iyc87ng wrote

Reply to comment by pheonix10yson in Edition XS | My experience as my first audiophile grade gear. by pheonix10yson

Yeah… it’s hard to say for sure since I don’t have the same exact gear. I do have the Aeon Open Flow which is rated at 13ohms with a sensitivity of 93db and a Creative Sound BlasterX G6. While it drives the Aeons more than loud enough, it sounds harsh and grainy compared to the Magni 3+ and the tube amp I have. It could be a similar scenario or the XS just aren’t to your liking. That’s the difficult part about this hobby.

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Puzzled-Background-5 t1_iyc87mc wrote

Reply to Is this min-maxing obsession or are there benefits to be had by tweaking things on the OS or digital side and using 'audiophile' footers? by Orangutan_Ulti

It's an obsession with these types of people, pure and simple, and of no sonic benefit whatsoever in a playback environment.

Audio playback and the Digital Signal Processing involved in it have very light system requirements:

For example, I've stress tested my own music server by having it stream to 6 network players simultaneously. This involved running independent DSP profiles, which included convolution filters, for each of the 6, as well as transcoding the results of that processing to 24/48 flac for transmission via WiFi. The server's CPU never reached over 8% utilization while doing this and the sound was as high fidelity as anyone could ask for. I experienced no dropouts/glitching, either.

All of that was done on a Dell Optiplex 990 (i7 2600) computer that was built in 2011. It was running an "unoptimized" Windows 10 Pro install at that.

All the best... 😎

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PolarBearSequence t1_iyc81ni wrote

Reply to Is this min-maxing obsession or are there benefits to be had by tweaking things on the OS or digital side and using 'audiophile' footers? by Orangutan_Ulti

Absolute nonsense. On the software side of things: the only job the OS has is decoding and pushing the digital audio towards the DAC (external or internal, doesn’t really matter). This is not a bottleneck on modern devices, and ignoring some fringe edge cases, it will end up being bit-perfect.

I’m quite confident all of that "optimization" software mentioned falls into one of three cases:

  1. Does absolutely nothing (except cost money)
  2. Waste CPU cycles
  3. Attempts to actually do something and will put your systems reliability in danger

In fact, I can’t even find the last two programs mentioned, and TrustedInstaller is a windows builtin.

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therealrydan t1_iyc1sbv wrote

Reply to comment by simurg3 in Headphone wizardry by SupOrSalad

Binaural doesn’t translate well to speakers. (And it’s slightly flawed in that it still doesn’t model your specific head/ears so without significant wizzardry it won’t be 100%)

But yes, as more and more music is listened to through headphones, I’m kind of wondering this as well…

There are a lot going on with stuff like Atmos though, and virtual studio simulations for mixing in headphones, so we might see interesting things in the future.

Re repriduction of different kinds of music I think the challenge is exactly the same. The challenge is to reproduce a signal with flat frequency response, correct transient and phase response, with low distorsion. As long as you do that, you reproduce every kind of music well. There may be tradeoffs that ate more important in some kinds of music. Soundstage/positioning perhaps being more important than sub bass in jazz/chamber music but (perhaps) not in EDM for instance. But I still think the challenge is the same. Have a good enough system and everything will sound good on it. Or be correctly reproduced atleast, which may not be what sounds the best, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

That can of worms may also be part of it, because, we might for the most part not actually want the recorded music to sound like the real thing, we want larger than life. Have an anecdote from a former colleague who's worked a lot on recording classical music for radio and TV. He had this story where he worked on an audiophile symphonic recording. They used a small set of really high quality microphones, set up as a blumlein pair as main source + some more microphones to capture and be able to adjust tonal balance, width and room in the final result. Apart from slight corrective EQ, they weren't supposed to process the sound at all, it should be all natural. Compression or artificial reverb were strictly prohibited. They did several different mixes with different mic balances, but the producer weren't satisfied and still thought it sounded unnatural. So, without telling anyone, they sent the mix through a Manley VariMU compressor, just compressing a few dB:s at most. That's the version that got released...

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blorg t1_iyc0oqs wrote

Reply to comment by Buick6NY in Truthear Hexa Review: Count Your Blessings by darmanastartes

They're not totally bereft of bass. It's just a little leaner in the mid-bass than something like the Kato or Aria. More than something like the Dioko, which I do find lean. And more sub-bass than the OG Blessing 2.

https://squig.link/?share=Truthear_Hexa,Moondrop_Kato

They are nowhere near a basshead set, but they aren't totally bereft of it either. More mids-forward than bass light I think.

They EQ well, as well, you can add in just a little more bass and this works well.

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