Balanced HD650 or Denon D7000? - Page 2

 

Wooden cups aside the whole Denon line should be priced under $100, they are not mid-fi worthy. The mid-range reverberation is heard throughout the entire line yet the popularity of them tells me their owners either do not hear it or do not care for accuracy. I would never consider a closed phone for at home listening, the design is flawed.

 

There are more headphones out there than the D7000 and HD650, how about a DT880, AD2000 or HD800...

I'm sorry, but that about as wrong as statement as it gets, the Denon range is one of the only headphones capable of reproducing a completely linear frequency response, wether hifi snobs run screaming at the sound of a headphone capable of reproducing bass in its natural quantity or not - unlike most hifi cans. I consider the Denons to be amongst the best headphones I have ever heard, and i would buy the even if they had been even more expensive. As pop culture adapted giant amounts of bass, most of the hifi world has shied away from it altogether, and i think its sad.

I haven't heard anything that didn't sound amazing through these cans. And no i do not hear any midrange nonsense and when i had my cans measured there was none, just a almost perfectly linear graph. You might not like them, but that statement was just pure rubbish.

 

The Denon line up is for bass-heads with a toe in the audiophile water. They are bloated and inaccurate, sugarcoating even the worst recordings with a don't-care-for-accuracy attitude. So yes, they will make everything sound 'amazing' if indeed you like their signature sound.

 

To say there is no reverberation and they produce a perfectly linear graph is complete fanboyism baloney, I only need point you to this and this.

 

I don't like them because I look for accuracy first and foremost in a headphone. Sure they might sound 'fun' and you're welcomed to enjoy them without criticism, but you're embellishing something simply because you own it.

 

Check the dates.

Just because the hifiword has become so scared of bass doesn't mean these are for bassheads, go look at the graphs on headroom, or this range of videos or the last bit  where you will see that the Denons are the only ones capable of a completely flat response and reproducing a squarewave at any frequency, there is a reason why its used in pro audio as well as HiFi. You may not like it, but it is a undeniable fact that what these are capable of is extraordinary and the are some of the only ones if not the only ones capable of it.

You can get more sharpness with other cans, yes but the sound is colored and with most hifi headphones the bass is rolled off. The Denons simply present you with the amount of bass that is naturally there - if you dont like that, then alright, but the musician who made the music you listen to obviously did, and I want to hear the music as the artist plaid it, if i think that has too much bass, then I'll respect that and find something else, not just get some cans that colors the sound to my liking.

 

As for Lawton audio, they contribute with some mods that will improve the control over the lower frequencies, because the D2k and D5k as slight issues on those areas - but even so, as you will see above they still outperform almost anything on neutrality - the real kind anyway, not the, for some people, pleasant coloration that is often refered to as neutral. 

 

There are a heck of a lot of amazing headphones out there, that like Sennheisers or Grados will make the music sound engaging and so on - and i love that, but its not as accurate a reproduction, and any sort of measurement will tell you that - no can to date can reproduce 100% naturally, but the Denons, like it or not, are the closest at the moment. 

 

I don't get why this argument is even appearing in a thread comparing two very colored headphones.

We have the first post referencing a question as if the 650s would be fast enough.

 

Many maybe would state that the 650s are not really as good for rock as the AH-D7000s. I really like the HD 650s and will be buying a pair for a second headphone rig as they match up well with my Woo 3. I like the way the 650s sound with rock with my W3 better than the Denons? The Denons are truly the greatest with my Woo 5LE though!

 

The issue here is not to go balanced or not, as that will make a much smaller difference than changing headphones. It is not like balancing the rig is going to raise the Titanic and make the HD 650s become rock headphones.

 

The middle echo is almost a color tone in the use of maybe wood in the Denon cups or just a defect of the design that they left in because it was a lesser evil. I use the Denons for rock and have had a love affair with them for a while now. I guess I'm not into flat response headphones. The perfect flat curve headphones that they say have very little color sound boring to me. I want music with authority and detail. The sound I'm looking for I usually know right away. I'm not one of these people who state you have to live with a flat headphone for a month before understanding it.

 

I did have a middle detail blur in my presentation which because of the warmth and magic in my rig I settled for. Then I did some tweeks which totally removed the mid blur in the Denons that everyone talks about. Even my most respected audiophile friends said it was still there but reduced 90%. I think that is a good review. I can still hear it but at a 90% reduction. I could see that in some systems it could get big sounding in the sound stage.

 

What you have here at Head-Fi is many people taking about the same headphone on many different systems. The system has as much affect on the total sound as the headphone itself. Balanced or not.

 

Just go to a Head-Fi meet and play your HD650s in a couple of systems and listen to the D7000s in a couple of systems, back to back. The balanced amp and mod on your 650s would be a big gamble if you then heard a stock Denon AH-D 7000 which in the end had your personal sound signature after all.

 

There was actually a post somewhere that showed the waterfall plots of both the 650 and D7000.  650's bass lingered longer.

Just big no.

 

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/DenonAHD5000.pdf

 

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/DenonAHD7000.pdf

 

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/SennheiserHD650.pdf

 

HD650 is much more linear than any of Denon.

Hehe, i love how you chose to leave out the D2000. But thank you for proving my point. As you will see from those graphs, the hd650 starts off Wilma bass roll and then flies in a curve slightly above 0 (at all other measurements ive seen of them, that curve was way above 0) to return on a higher frequency roll off with fluctuations. Now if you look at the D2000 or 5000 it is completely linear at 0 db up to about 1200hz where it rolls off like the hd650 but wit fluctuations around 0 unlike the hd650 which sustains the drop. The d7000 adopts some coloration as the price for more control, a coloration which mods can get rid of. I must say, on innerfidelitys measurements the sennheisers look a lot better than on others, fx headroom

I'll jump in on this one - looks like fun!

 

Fortunately there is a wide range of headphone brands and models out there allowing us the opportunity to find the best phone for our own taste and price range.

 

I have owned both the D2000s and HD650s.  I bought the D2000s as an upgrade from my Grado SR60s and intended to use them at work.

 

I listened to a wide range of music with them and from my point of view - I just didn't like them.  The lows didn't really seem that bloated to me although the extension caught me as being a little over the top.  I could live with it though as it did make some styles of music fun but others it became almost annoying. 

 

For me the mids were really funky, very hollow sounding, almost as if my head was in a bucket - whatever you want to call i didn't find it at all natural.  Then there was the highs which were the worst part for me.  I found the highs to down right offensive.  Some may call them fast, or detailed and I agree I did hear detail that I wasn't hearing in my Grados but the sibilance was constantly making me turn the music down to protect my hearing - it was just over the top harsh.  I ended up returning my D2000s - I actually preferred my SR60s to the Denons buy a large margin.  I struggle to see how these headphones could be so highly thought of.  Yes they seem very well made, the metal and leather on the D2000s seems like a nicer build than the HD650 plastic - but at $350 I think they are maybe about $250 over priced for my ears and even then I would still take the $80 Grados.

 

The HD650s for me on the other hand seem much more accurate in their sonic character and the detail in the highs and mids is spectacular.  The lows could maybe be a little punchier for my tastes but other than that I truly am enjoying them.  To me - the HD650s are in a totally different class than the Denons with respect to sound quality.

 

As for measurements - take a look at the HIFIMAN HE-500s and compare them to the Denon D2000s.  They are almost the same frequency response curves.  Totally different technology, one is open, the other closed, one is a planar magnetic, the other dynamic, but very similar sonic frequency responces.  Presonally I love the HE-500s and would love to own a pair but I truly find the D2000s to be downright offensive sounding.  Measurments are one thing, what sounds the best is totally subjective and might be something completely different.

 

Isn't it great that there is more than one model of headphones on the market?

 

 

Very similar story here.  Bought D2000 to upgrade SR80i's... found I liked the SR80i's over the D2000's for the reasons you mentioned... discovered the sound I was after with HD650... all is well now...