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Slowest headphones you've ever heard? - Page 6

post #76 of 88
2/10/10 at 9:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dw1narso View Post
<snip>
I think lots of people (including myself) misunderstand or even mixed the concepts of the fastness (which equal to speed) and the responsiveness of the driver... and what we think about "fast driver" is actually should be "responsive driver"... Responsive in this case should still be differentiate between the responsiveness to start and the responsiveness to stop... (the former heard as "dynamics" and the later heard as "decays"?)
We're getting into language issues and semantics here, but "speed" is probably best changed to "acceleration." Also, all "responsive" means is the ability to react to a signal. Put simply, the winnowing down to measure this capability would have to be a measure of the ability to react to small and differing signals. However, this could simply be the movement (a discrete distance) of the transducer and have nothing to do with the magnitude of acceleration.

As for "responsiveness to stop", there is no such thing, because by definition, a "stop" is the absence of a signal. There is nothing to respond to - only a measure of decay, which is essentially the damping quality of the headphone (or the amp).
Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by sinner6
What if we replaced the term "fast" with "agile"?
I think sinner6 telling well with the proper term...
Respectfully, I disagree. "Agile" also implies quick stops and the ability to negotiate tightly congested passages. Unfortunately, an ortho can be very fast - but under-damped. Hence, fast - not agile.
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post #77 of 88
2/10/10 at 9:51am
I herd those foldouts with scribblings all over em r good for this things like learnings of audeo and speakerz.
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post #78 of 88
2/10/10 at 10:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by b0dhi View Post
I herd those foldouts with scribblings all over em r good for this things like learnings of audeo and speakerz.
cuse my why - ya mate yr pnt.
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post #79 of 88
2/10/10 at 11:49am


GREETINGS HAEDFONS
I AM THE KING OF BASS
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post #80 of 88
2/10/10 at 12:16pm
The biggest issue is that people are talking about two different things in this post.

1) The ability of a headphone to handle "fast music" that is, lots of quick, hard transients in very close succession to one another. This has very little to do with frequency response. This mostly has to do with how fast a headphone can "recover" after making a quick hard transient and then make another one. This is what people are talking about when they refer to a "hard leading edge". If a headphone can do this a lot, very quickly in a row, then I call this headphone fast. I think this is the general meaning of what people are referring to when they call a headphone fast.

2) The ability of a headphone to move very fast at a relatively stable frequency. This is what a couple of the last posters seem to be talking about. This actually has to do with how fast the driver is moving, which I guess makes sense in terms of the word speed. But headphones aren't particularly bad at this, in general. It's mostly a non-issue. Even relatively mediocre dynamics can make frequencies much higher than what the human ear can hear.

The two concepts are somewhat related, a headphone that has enough power to move at a very high frequency with a lot of power will also, generally, be able to hit lots of hard transients in succession. But they aren't the same thing.
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post #81 of 88
2/10/10 at 12:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomb View Post
We're getting into language issues and semantics here, but "speed" is probably best changed to "acceleration." Also, all "responsive" means is the ability to react to a signal. Put simply, the winnowing down to measure this capability would have to be a measure of the ability to react to small and differing signals. However, this could simply be the movement (a discrete distance) of the transducer and have nothing to do with the magnitude of acceleration.

As for "responsiveness to stop", there is no such thing, because by definition, a "stop" is the absence of a signal. There is nothing to respond to - only a measure of decay, which is essentially the damping quality of the headphone (or the amp).
I got what you mean... I forgot that music signal come as sine waves... not that digital square wave...

I think most importantly is the responsiveness is about how the transducer will truthfully following what the amp drive it. Transfering the electrical signal sine into soundwave sine.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomb View Post
Respectfully, I disagree. "Agile" also implies quick stops and the ability to negotiate tightly congested passages. Unfortunately, an ortho can be very fast - but under-damped. Hence, fast - not agile.
he, he, he... ferrari with toyota break....

Does this mean that "normally" ortho don't have a good impluse response without proper damping? or is this because of the magnet field that supposed to control the plane are mostly not strong enough? (I remember that in the speaker world... driver with strongest magnet usually yield as overdamped driver (low Q) while driver with weak magnet usually yield as underdamped driver (high Q)... these are all need to be compensated with the box design at the end...)

language is a bit of issue for me... I'm not born with english tongue... I fluent enough in English only after 25...
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post #82 of 88
2/10/10 at 4:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dw1narso View Post
<snip>

he, he, he... ferrari with toyota break....

Does this mean that "normally" ortho don't have a good impluse response without proper damping? or is this because of the magnet field that supposed to control the plane are mostly not strong enough? (I remember that in the speaker world... driver with strongest magnet usually yield as overdamped driver (low Q) while driver with weak magnet usually yield as underdamped driver (high Q)... these are all need to be compensated with the box design at the end...)
The problem is that except for the Audeze and HE-5 (well, the Fostex, too - but they've always been a bit weird), all the orthos are old - perhaps very old. So, they weren't damped up to the standards that we demand today. I don't know exactly - maybe this let them have more bass, mid-bass, and "false bass" and satisfied the masses more from a marketing standpoint back in the day. The guys in the ortho thread have said that you can damp orthos until the bass starts to disappear - then back off slightly on the damping (blue tak, hard felt, reflected dots, etc.) for the best overall tuning.

Since the two new orthos are new-new and are essentially trail-blazing, it remains to be seen whether they are damped perfectly from the outset or not - I think they are, though.
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language is a bit of issue for me... I'm not born with english tongue... I fluent enough in English only after 25...
No problem. Semantics shouldn't be an issue in this thread, but I guess it might be for some and I wanted to be a bit more technically descriptive.
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post #83 of 88
2/10/10 at 10:26pm
TomB, thanks... I really like when a discussion could become constructive... Like what you've done to me.. I'm learning and learning...
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post #84 of 88
2/10/10 at 10:33pm
Oh yes, thanks also to Kevin and FJrabon for your inputs...

beamthegreat, sorry that I don't mean to steal your thread... I hope you don't mind... just this kind of this discussion is what I'm looking for in one forum...
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post #85 of 88
2/10/10 at 10:35pm
HD650 on a airport shop demo...
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post #86 of 88
2/11/10 at 1:46am
Fastest: electrostatic phones
Slowest: everything else
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post #87 of 88
2/11/10 at 2:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dw1narso View Post
Oh yes, thanks also to Kevin and FJrabon for your inputs...

beamthegreat, sorry that I don't mean to steal your thread... I hope you don't mind... just this kind of this discussion is what I'm looking for in one forum...
I think it's possible sometimes to beat the more insane threads into something useful, specially when there are people around who know what they are talking about who can give us useful information about the subject at hand.
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post #88 of 88
2/11/10 at 5:03am
Fastest headphones I have heard/owned/used are the HD800. I must admit that I haven't heard the Stax Omegas however, but from a purely objective standpoint the HD800s present the leading edge of percussion sounds as closely as they are in real life as I've heard from any music reproduction system.

In a nutshell, they want not a jot for any more speed so I'm not sure whether an electrostatic could add anything of real significance here.

John (disclaimer: delighted beyond words with his HD800s!)
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