Quote:
Originally Posted by TheAnomaly  just curious, how would you compare the new 6 series to the older 6 series? my dad has the 603 S3 in our living room as the fronts for a surround system. i fired them up (Marantz integrated processor/amp, rated at something like 105 wpc, so power was not an issue; separate Marantz cdp) and noticed that, at even a reasonable volume level for the room, the 603s were not able to convey the same dynamics, crispness, and detailed presentation that the DT880s in my room do. i was listening to some more punishing Megadeth tracks, and i think the DT880s perform well on this and virtually everything else i throw at them. overall the 603s sounded congested, i suppose the word might be, even at a mid-level volume, where the DT880s clearly resolved every aspect of the track with a much better sense of speed and clarity.
this concerns me because the 601s and 603s are well regarded bookshelfs. am i utterly spoiled by headphones as to make a system at my price range unsatisfying? i know we've talked about similar setups in other threads so i'm curious what you think about it.
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Some points:
- The DT880 has a slightly peaky treble response. You can clearly see this in the headroom graphs, so what you are hearing in the DT880 is an exaggerated treble response. It's like taking a magnifying glass to the mids and treble, and gives the DT880 a slightly upfront presentation. A speaker such as a B&W is going to be far more neutral, and if your room is well damped and you are sitting far back, the treble is even going to seem even less crisp than a headphone, especially compared to Beyers and Grados. B&W's tend to sometimes do sound a bit polite and warm, and the 600 series is on the borderline of that sound character, so you are comparing one extreme to another (A leaner more clinical sounding headphone to a warm sounding speaker). The new 600 S4 series is more smooth and warm than the S3. The tweeter is improved so there is more linearity in the treble, and the bass does have a bit more punch in the upper models. I'm not sure what you are hearing as congestion, but some B&W's have a slight suckout in the mids, so that could explain a bit of that.
- Dynamics is one thing a headphone can do better because it takes a lot of energy to pump out the realistic range of sound that you can get easily in a headphone. Resolution and dynamics is where headphones shine the most. It would take a pretty good speaker to topple the dynamics of a typical $300 headphone.
So I think in your case, it's just a matter of you preferring your headphone's sound signature to speakers.
