By the “some random person on some random tech site said a headphone is good” metric, my sony WH1000XM3s must be among the best sounding cans in the world. If you have no idea how a reviewer’s expressed opinions tend to correlate to your own, their takes are useless even if they’re not paid for.

Two of those programs I am aware of can have legitimate uses:

• Process Lasso can manage which cores and core affinities a program uses, not unlike Windows' Task Manager, but also remember them. If the CPU is overly taxed by multiple programs at once, an affinity can be set to try to prioritize one over the other. This can help to reduce stutter and artifacts in live audio processing software by prioritizing it at the top with a high or real-time affinity. But with a strong enough CPU and good program management, this is unnecessary.

• Throttlestop is used for systems with Intel CPUs, usually laptops, to reconfigure the CPU's power (wattage, voltage) and speed. Intel even offers its own tool that does much the same, called Intel XTU (eXtreme Tuning Utility). Many laptops are incorrectly configured by default and will quickly overheat when stressed, causing the CPU to slow down which could be a cause for audio to not be processed correctly. By limiting the power or speed, or even setting a new artificial overheat point below the hardware's actual overheat point, it's possible to maintain an expected amount of speed.

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As someone who's only ever owned one Apple product (the wired dirty buds), it's really hard to tell which of those are fakes from the photos. The boxes are easier to tell than the headphones themselves.

Nope, they’re not. You can simply measure the windows audio loopback and see that windows direct sound with its upsampling and dithering is as transparent as Wasapi/Asio

Funny thing is that even Windows audio is completely audibly transparent

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Screens. Digital channel balancing for that perfect left and right balance.

Also the relay volume control knobs are really cool.

Don’t need a focus on power anymore, we already have way too much of that now lol

I know some people like Sivga headphones a lot. However, this headphone only just came out recently afaik and there are not many reviews yet. My advice is to wait a bit. On a separate note, avoid any “tech” website when it comes to audio reviews

The Timeless are ok I guess. The HBB Hook-X is in another league for not much more.

I'm running the Edition XS with an Asus Xonar Essence STX with Burson Audio op-amps and I really like them. I don't think they're lifeless at all. I add a bit of EQ, including a +3dB low shelf.

I kind of like HQPlayer myself, it uses your CPU horsepower instead of the chip inside your dac to do the music upsampling with much heavier digital filters.
For me the differences are subtle but nice, for 44.1khz content digital filters can have quite an impact as the nyquist frequency is so close to the audio band.
But don't believe my claims, you can listen for yourself! It has a free trial mode with the only limitation that it has to be restarted every 30 minutes.

use it for a few days, your brain will be adjusting any time you get new headphones. Then try the two out again.

If you boot into a live linux environment does it do the same thing? If so, it is hardware on the laptop somehow.

If not not then it is software and to be honest I would just make sure you have backups (which you should anyway) and re install a fresh install of windows as it looks like you have tried a great many things.

I personally don't trust this mainstream website reviews unless there's actually objective measurements on the headphones.

The G6 is not powering them well. They have a firm minimum and the G6 does not meet it. I've tried them on around 50 amps and the Asgard 3 or SMSL SH-9 with a balanced cable are the two cheapest options for an amp. The G6 is not relevant in today's market.

How does it compare to shuoer s12? Is it worth getting it if already owning s12?

>Elear

What didn't you like about them?

How is the isolation and leakage? If you're in a room with someone, will they be able to hear what you're listening to?

the mest mk2 is pretty good and an easy recommendation for trying out, but far from the best, especially for classical music where it struggles massively in imaging and timbre to a lesser extent. Most other things they do quite well

Agree about the veil thing, and i think the highs sound weird, having a much lower dynamic range than the mids and bass

I would say be prepared to lose $200. For example, ebay's charge for sellers is 13% I believe.

I have a HD800s, I like it, but for actual daily use, I wear my HD599 and HD650 much more than my HD800s.

I would say if you live alone or are often alone and absolutely love to listen to movies and music, go for it.

But if you mainly listen to YouTube/podcasts, live with others that don't want to hear your super sound leaking headphones, then you're spending a lot of money for something you might not use much compared to your current headphones that aren't picky about the source and leak sound way less. I think people underestimate diminishing returns and the daily usage practicality of headphones that leak sound as much as high end open back headphones do. But if you've got the funds, it's not a big deal if you aren't using them daily. Your mileage may vary.

I recently bought a second hand HD800 for 500 bucks, and I regularly see them for 550-650. One of the best deals in audio ever, from that point on there's only different and not really meaningfully better.

So If 1600 bucks is a lot of money for you I urge you to check the second hand market!!

What do you think is a good upgrade to go from the 560s? I enjoy basically everything about this headphone, but I would like something with better resolution and punchier bass, with a bit less heat in the treble. I was thinking the edition XS, or maybe the audeze LCD-2C. Or does it make more sense to go for something higher end, like the Arya or the LCD-X or the Clears?

I'm a little sad I didn't get the 2C for 450 from the black Friday b stock sale, but I've already spent money on a computer and some racing stuff the past couple of months and I don't have a dedicated amp/DAC yet.