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New To The Scene. Need Advice.

post #1 of 13
11/1/11 at 2:11pm
Thread Starter 

So my parents live in Milwaukee, home of KOSS. They went to a children's museum benefit and entered a silent auction for a prize and to donate to the museum. My dad ended up winning a pair of KOSS PRO4AA Titanium Headphones which since he is on the road so much he has no use for.

 

He gave them to me. They are not the "vintage" design that I am seeing people talk about as being awesome on these and other boards. They are a new more modern looking design. They feel a tad large on my ears too...

 

Mostly I will be using them to listen via my 2011 MacBook Air or 2011 MacMini, and not a regular stereo amp. 

 

I've read stuff about breaking them in and sound becoming better with age. Does this still apply to these brand new style headphones? If so how many hours of break in and at what volume should I do? Any certain type of music or EQ settings (within iTunes) that would be recommended?

 

I am having mixed feelings about the sound quality they are putting out vs. my dual driver in-ears that I have. I don't feel like they are as rich and have as much range. Maybe thats what the break in is for?  

 

Most of my 30,000 songs are live recordings from tapers or soundboards. I listen to a lot of jambands and classic rock.

 

Any advice would be great.

 

Thanks!


Edited by agentphish - 11/1/11 at 2:13pm
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post #2 of 13
11/1/11 at 2:35pm

For a fellow Milwaukeean, here's some links:

 

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/evidence-headphone-break

 

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/testing-audibility-break-effects

 

Which IEM's are you listening to?  A lot of them give great over ears a run for their money.

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post #3 of 13
11/1/11 at 2:49pm
Thread Starter 

Just the Apple in-ears...not their standard **** ones, but their high end ones. I have a friend who works for them and gave them to me for a price I couldn't pass up.

 

Thanks for the links.

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post #4 of 13
11/1/11 at 3:24pm
Thread Starter 

So it seems that there's some truth to "break-in" but that it seems a lot of it could be perception.

 

Opinions of these PRO4AAT's?

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post #5 of 13
11/1/11 at 3:26pm

How do they sound to you?

 

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post #6 of 13
11/4/11 at 5:38pm
Thread Starter 

sort of flat honestly upon first listen. there's no richness or life to them. After about 20 hours I might be hearing a difference though...

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post #7 of 13
11/4/11 at 7:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by agentphish View Post

Just the Apple in-ears...not their standard **** ones, but their high end ones. I have a friend who works for them and gave them to me for a price I couldn't pass up.



If $100 Apple In-Ears impressed you, then proper audio company $100 IEM's will blow you away. Recommend you have a look at this guide.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/478568/multi-iem-review-202-iems-compared-fischer-audio-consonance-ultimate-ears-350-added-10-25-11

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post #8 of 13
11/9/11 at 6:56pm
Thread Starter 

Will check that out. I can't say I was "blown away" with the apple in-ears but they sound nice to me. I've listened to my dad's old Shure e3c's which were nicer yet.

 

I'm not really looking for new headphones, more just opinions on if these KOSS ones are any good or if they're the cheap crap i've always known KOSS to make.

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post #9 of 13
11/9/11 at 7:03pm

Koss makes some solid stuff.  ESP950 can run with some much pricier models.

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post #10 of 13
11/9/11 at 7:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by agentphish View Post

Will check that out. I can't say I was "blown away" with the apple in-ears but they sound nice to me. I've listened to my dad's old Shure e3c's which were nicer yet.

 

I'm not really looking for new headphones, more just opinions on if these KOSS ones are any good or if they're the cheap crap i've always known KOSS to make.

 

Here's the frequency response for them. I think a neutral headphone measures as a straight line with the system they're using.

 

So "flat" sounds about right! That 12db peak at 3k looks kind of disturbing too.

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post #11 of 13
11/9/11 at 7:46pm

Blasphemy! lol
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by agentphish View Post

I'm not really looking for new headphones, more just opinions on if these KOSS ones are any good or if they're the cheap crap i've always known KOSS to make.



 

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post #12 of 13
11/9/11 at 7:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 200poundsofamp View Post

I think a neutral headphone measures as a straight line with the system they're using.

 

Very unlikely, but it depends on how they compensated the graphs. Look at Inner Fidelity's graphs. None of them are flat, uncompensated or not. They shouldn't be flat.

 

But if we don't know how the graphs were compensated, we can't use those graphs for comparison, and you're more likely to misread them (which you probably are concerning that 3 kHz peak, that exists in some form in all uncompensated graphs).

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post #13 of 13
11/9/11 at 8:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Head Injury View Post

 

Very unlikely, but it depends on how they compensated the graphs. Look at Inner Fidelity's graphs. None of them are flat, uncompensated or not. They shouldn't be flat.

 

But if we don't know how the graphs were compensated, we can't use those graphs for comparison, and you're more likely to misread them (which you probably are concerning that 3 kHz peak, that exists in some form in all uncompensated graphs).


Just speculation honestly, site's in japanese so I don't really know. I'm not sure they're even that accurate.

 

Here's how the HD650 and srh840 look. So whatever they're doing it's really different from innerfidelity.

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