Hi All,
I'm what you could call a 'noob' in the world of headphones and audiophillia so please excuse my ignorance on the subject, hopefully you nice people may help me out with that.
I've had a pair of Sony DR-9 headphones, that I inherited, for quite a while and untill now I haven't given them much love as initially I never thought there were very capable and they often sounded a bit flat and weak.
However, I've recently started listening to good quality FLAC CD-Rips via a Squeezebox Touch with S/PDIF coax to my AV Receiver (Marantz SR6200) and have noticed that the phones do seem to reveal a surprising amount of detail in the music - more than I've noticed previously with various systems/speakers/headphones etc with familiar albums, leading me to think that these Sony DR-9s are definitely worth a closer listen.
So after all the preamble my question relates to the presence of both volume and tone slide pots (both for each ear) of the phones and how they affect the sound quality.
Can anyone offer any advice on what settings would in theory provide the most transparent sound? I had initially thought that having all sliders set to maximum would leave the sound as unaffected as possible but with these settings the sound is very aggressive / 'in your face' and isn't very listenable for very long. Volume-wise it seems reducing to about 40%/50% and simply increasing the volume on the amp to compensate provides a more natural sound, similarly dialling the 'tone' slider down to 70% or 80% seems to make the sound a bit smoother with less harsh sounding top end.
Is there an objectively 'most neutral' setting for a particular slider/pot (For both volume and tone controls)? -Is that question even meaningful?
Is there any way of determining which is the most neutral combination of settings for said volume and tone controls?
Would love to hear any advice/opinions anyone has to offer on this.
Thanks in advance
Alastair
