Neutral and natural sounding headphones in the High-end world?? - Page 2

While I had them, the SPL Phonitor + HD800 sounded pretty darn neutral to me (with crossover disabled on SPL)

No one's going to mention the Senn HD 600 ? I know it wasn't in your list but 'natural' and 'neutral' are definitely two buzzwords used to describe the 600s. They definitely sound neutral and natural to me. Then again I don't have a whole lot to compare them to. They would also save you quite a bit of cash.

 

Edit - I'm not an 'experienced member'... my bad. ignore me. ;)

Edited by devhen - 6/8/12 at 12:12pm

The Grado HP1000 I recently bought is probably the most neutral sound I’ve heard. (after the foam lining mod inside the cups to remove some ringing at 2 kHz). No part of the frequency spectrum shouts for attention but there is a slight richness to the lower midrange that may be a little over accentuated (still sounds amazing with it).

 

just below that is the Stax O2 mk1 (was a a little darker but I wasn’t running it on the best available amps so that would be affecting it)

 

Then HD800. slightly tipped in the treble but not aggressively so, in my opinion. thinner mids compared to the HP1000.

 

then LCD2 (only briefly owned this but I thought the treble was shelved down way too much to be realistic)

 

then PS1000. I loved how these sounded but they had some increased treble response and a kick in the mid bass to make them sound more speaker-like in the lows.

Yes, HD600 for sure.

From further listening, the Fostex TH900s are the king of natural. I just posted on this subject in the big thread on these phones.

 

Yes the Paradox measures beautifully. The old Aiwas that beat them were flatter in certain parts of Tyll's FR measurement, but they also had fairly high levels of THD throughout the spectrum which was not present on the Paradox. Tyll also didn't say that the modded Aiwa was the best sounding headphone ever, just that its frequency response was very well balanced. There's a lot more to it than that.

 

The PS1000's "most neutral evar!!!" comments just make me laugh. Just buckets of distortion in the bass region, very high distortion in the treble, and that 300Hz wave, yuck. You could make a headphone that measures worse than the PS1000, but it wouldn't be easy.

but ps1000s are awesome, i think once i buy them, my headphone search will be over. 

 

they where the funnest headphone to listen to ive ever heard. i just never bought them because of the price.

 

 

maybe not most neutral, but most speaker like and dynamic, yes

 

Tubes also distort.

 

People are the ones who listen to music, not machines, and 90 dB pure tones and 300 Hz square waves do not compare too well with music at general listening volumes. PS-1000 are preferred by many people over just every other better measuring headphones.

Edited by devouringone3 - 6/11/12 at 4:20am

Well, the HP1000 measure very well at FR and the CSD waterfall. Maybe not so much at distortion with very low bass frequencies (just my assumption based on my listening)

 

no nasty peaks and clean, fast decay throughout the frequency response. the one broad ridge at ~2k − 3k is smoothed out by the foam mod (and possibly by Joe’s i upgrade that adds the oil inside the cups)

 

I’d say those results are impressive, even comparing them to the HD800 and the Stax O2.

 

 +1 Dubstep :-)

 

 Bass across a wide range of material is a funny one with the PS1000 - sometimes they render bass so beautifully like on the opening of 'Hotel California'

 by the Eagles - at other times they sound glassy like on Dr Dre's compilation, namely the track 'Still Dre'

 

 Go figure, as noted in the Grado and all over - the PS1000 is a not a perfect can in many respects but it does gel very well with some recordings.

 it makes you smile - you cannot ask for more than that. Measurements or not.

 

Complete that flagship line-up of yours and you'll have an incredible palette. If you still have money swap the LCD-2 for a -3 and the D7000 for a TH900 and you'll be deadly :P

 

I don't want to implant new desires into your brain and cost you money, though... like a certain Head-Fi phantom.

No love for the Koss ESPs?

hp1000i are probably as close to neutral as i've ever heard. Couple of the flagship monitors are also very impressive.

 

Yes... the only thing the matters is how they sound to the listener's ear - measurement curves / plots are almost totally meaningless... except to those who "plot."  

I wouldn't take it quite that far - such measurements are useless if they exist out in space, but if you can personally/subjectively correlate them, they can be useful. In other words, you can't look at a graph and say "this is going to sound good" but you can listen to something and decide "this DOES sound good" and then look at a graph of it, and go "okay and that's what it LOOKS like - now let's go find other stuff that LOOKS similar and try it out!" At least, that tends to work sort of well IME.