The Neutral / Balanced Thread - Page 10

I don't see how neutrality can be cold.

 

For something to be neutral, it has no warmth and no coldness, no sweetness, no dryness, thickness, thinness, wetness or rainbowness. etc.

 

Characteristics like these can have to do with the magnetism, voice coil, driver(s), diaphragm, filter, housing, nozzle or tip and so on, and are seperate to an FR graph.

 

 

An example is an amplifier.

 

They are all perfectly balanced, and have dead flat FR, and yet people call them cold and warm all the time lol.

 

I don't want to get too much OT in this thread but can you explain to me why there's an added warmth when nothing in my setup changes except for the amplifier? Source, DAC, headphones, laptop, etc are all the same except for the amp. This is from a PPAv2 to V200 amp.
 

 

 

I can't explain that as I don't have enough experience of amplifier components, and I'm sure there's a technical reason for it, but I doubt it can be measured in the conventional measurements we see.

 

My hunch is both amplifiers will have the same frequency response on paper, and yet one sounds warmer than the other, so an FR is not enough data to conceive all the characteristics of sounds, even basic ones like warm VS cold.

 

From the amplifier example, I conclude that an FR isn't enough to measure headphones and IEM's, either.

 

This is just my opinion, what do you think, rawrster?

 

 

 

Believe it or not amplifiers each have their own sound signatures. The V200 is said to have warmth to a given degree. 

The Sony ex510 are very netruel iem's.

I'm not the one you have to convince. I got it because of that warmth but was trying to use that as an argument :p

 

^ ::thumbsup::

One way to get an idea of what is real detail and what is hyped detail is to is to spend some time listening to a quality neutral headphone like the HD600 with a good manly amp.  That will train your ears to what is a normal level of detail for a quality standard dynamic headphone.  You'll hear details but they won't all jump out at you.  Some you'll have to listen for, but they'll be there when you listen for them.

 

Then go to a treblehead headphone or a hyped clarity headphone of the same general caliber as the HD600.  Details that you used to have to listen for will now jump out at you.  Various details will be easy to hear.   The headphone won't be delivering details that the HD600 didn't.  Rather it will be delivering details with hyped clarity or hyped emphasis.  That's what I snarkingly call "faux details".

 

Better drivers like stats and better orthodynamics can deliver more real detail than the HD600.  You can listen to a LCD-2 and hear things that the HD600 does not resolve.  That doesn't make the LCD-2 hyped (the LCD-2 is anything but hyped).  It just means the LCD-2 is capable of extracting more detail than the HD600 ever could and doing so in a very effortless and musical way.

 

V-shaped signatures generally fall under the fun listening category.  Though they can also fall in the hyped clarity category as well.  I can find v-shaped signatures to be difficult to listen to due to peaked treble.  Too much treble energy for me for my normal listening volume.  For low level volume listening a v-shaped signature can be nice because it mimics the Fletcher-Munson curve for low volume loudness compensation.  At higher listening levels (what I consider a normal listening level for primary listening) the v-shaped curves are not neutral or balanced and the treble bump gets to be annoying.

I think the K701, HD800 and HD25 are neutral.

 

Bring it!

then it's technically a bad amp. amps are suppose to be nothing but straight wire with gain. mostly all professional or well built amps are suppose to have a flat response across the spectrum with no so called ''sound signature'' of their own. most audio gear is just suppose to do there ''job'' and reproduce audio as accurate as possible but most these so called audiophiles love to ''color'' their sound. that's why term audiophile today is way different compared to audiophiles during the analog and golden era of audio. not meaning to sound like a d0uche or anything. i respect others opinion. just amps are not suppose to color anything at all in the topology design.

same thing goes for speakers and headphones. the best sound signature is no sound signature at all. it just does it's job.

AKG 240DF is more of a precision tool then any of them. sucks AKG discontinued them. only headphone that matches and surpasses the 240DF on some fronts(mostly just soundstage) is the k1000's.

It's funny how often the HD800 and LCD-2 are hailed as extremely neutral and yet they couldn't possibly both be neutral because they sound so different. 

I don't think there is a standard for neutral as we all define it differently. I believe that's the same way for manufacturers and those that try to make their headphones neutral make it based on their definition of it. Many of these headphones on head-fi that I've heard that are regarded as neutral all sound different.