A great article I found on Amazon, of all places.

Some quotes/comments:

> More money often gets you nothing but more treble, less bass and a high end look.

Heh, they call it speed, fast transients and high resolution. 

> For now, speaker measurments must be ignored when they lead to an unnatural sound. 

Well, of course it's pointless to look at how nice speakers measure at a distance of 10 cm / in an anechoic chamber if you put them in an untreated room, possibly in a disadvantegous position and not doing the measurements there, at the listener's position.

> What was shocking was the amount of treble reduction that was needed, ten decibels. 

> Other audio engineers admitted to me that we were not alone, but since there is no scientific proof it is better not to talk about it. Attempts to publish on this subject were roundly rejected.

???

See studies e.g. by Schulein or Bridges from the 70's.

And I'm confused, is he talking about the 240 Studio / Monitor or the newer MKII? Because both the Studio and Monitor seem to have an unnatural treble peak around 10 kHz. Would be a bit ironic..

> What you will hear when using pro quality headphones is dependent on what you drive them with. One of the many good things about the AKG K 240 Studio phones is that compared to other phones, based on my experience and that of other Amazon reviewers, is that they are fairly easy to drive.

Compared to other headphones, they are inefficient, period. Measurements show that they produce less than 90 dB @ 1 mW.

> In many cases sound from the speaker outputs is inferior to the headphone output.

In many cases the headphone output internally is connected to the speaker outputs, with some resistors in between.

> The vacuum tube (or valve ) just will not go away.

aww!

> Or, put another way, don't fix a bright speaker problem with a treble deficient amplifier. [regarding tube amps with 'warmer sound']

Heh, yes but you can find a lot of people around here that think differently.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeorgeGoodman 

It is a great article with some flaws, but I found it interesting. I kind of ignored the whole plug for AKGs, since I am no in the market for those kind of things and Amazon is not my go to place to look up reviews. The whole tube thing is interesting, but why not fix bright speakers (or headphones) with a warm amp if you like everything else about them?

Because you might realize your fix wasn't much of a fix and other deficiencies rear up causing you to upgrade your speakers.  Now you got to worry about that amp that 'fixed' everything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anaxilus 

Because you might realize your fix wasn't much of a fix and other deficiencies rear up causing you to upgrade your speakers.  Now you got to worry about that amp that 'fixed' everything.

Precisely.

Further reasons:

- Such an approach doesn't have much to do with high-fidelity, imo.

- High-fidelity means getting closer to the ideal. While real amps cannot be totally linear they can be linear within limits.

Here's the opposite of that (some random headphone tube amp):

- Because that's what filters, equalizers, room correction systems, DSPs etc. are made for. (which don't produce a distorted mess like above, unless you explicitly ask for it).

Sure, there can be small synergy effects between certain pieces of equipment. Nothing wrong with that.

But I wouldn't want to rely on 'deficiencies' that probably cancel each other out. Anaxilus made a great, and less theoretical, point there with upgrades.

And we all know, the urge to upgrade is a common head-fi trait. 

Decent article. I'm sure there's a lot more to it that's not covered in the piece, but this is a good guideline when considering what to buy.

Interesting article...

I know, I am not easily convinced though... Working on a vinyl set up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeorgeGoodman 

You are always trying to get god sound for cheap and not accepting that you have to spend thousands for good sound, deepfunk. This is your kind of article.

Eh?