So, I spent a few hours last night listening to the Annies. I really like them a lot. The bulk of the time I had them on, I was enjoying everything I heard. I plan to write more on that later, though.
I want to first address an unfortunate occurrence I ran into. I experienced what I'm pretty sure was bass distortion while watching a sequence from the Inception blu ray on my PS3. I watched the scene at the sidewalk cafe where Cobb and Ariadne dream-share for the first time, and Cobb is explaining stuff to her. As she realizes she's dreaming, things start to fall apart and start blowing up. I thought perhaps I was hearing distortion as the brick pavement was exploding, but also thought it was perhaps "texture" in the sound. But then when she started messing with the physics of the dream and bending the buildings, that's when I heard it. The buildings were creaking and groaning with a very low thrum and vibration and at first it sounded fine, but then the sound broke-up a bit and started to sound scratchy.
Needless to say, that worried me a bit. I didn't expect to hear bass distortion on my expensive headphones, especially on the first day out.
For reference, here's how I was hooked up:
Receiver --(Optical)--> Mixamp --(Y Cable/3.5mm to RCA)--> Magni --> Annies
I remembered reading earlier to turn the Mixamp up to where I started to hear hiss, then back it off a bit and control volume from the Magni. I turned the Mixamp all the way up and heard zero hiss. I was quite surprised. I have the '09 version and knew it had the least amount of hiss, but didn't expect to hear none. Anyway, I considered the red color on the end of the Mixamp volume dial to be the last 2%, so I backed the dial off into the white at about 95-96%, just to be "safe". I then had the Magni turned to about 9 o'clock, maybe 9:15 (what is the Magni's sweet spot again?)
Moments before I watched Inception, I was watching the speeder bike chase on the Return of the Jedi special edition DVD (tons of fun!). No problems there. Afterward, I even went into the THX optimizer from the disc and ran the audio tests. After the individual test tones, it moved to in/out of phase sounds, and then finally the LFE crossover. It cautioned to turn the volume down, so I did a bit, and it played back fine. No distortion at all, very clean.
Everything I listened to pre-Inception sounded great, post-Inception I did a bit of gaming, and set off some nearby explosions and fired guns and again it sounded fine. I did back the Mixamp off a bit more to about 90% after the Inception distortion, but not really sure if that's the cause.
So, any ideas what's going on? I'm wondering if I should hook the Annies right into my receiver (no DH, only stereo) and see if the distortion still occurs. Any other thoughts?
Hoping I haven't killed my new phones...
(depending on tastes) . For me depending on my mood i could prefer one or the other ... Highs transparent and airy and not overpowered by mids like on AD2000 just a bit tamed peraphs compared to my former K702 , so they are a bit more present compared to AD2000 and probably a bit more agressive with bad recordings , but nothing to complain about , as they are clearer than AD2000 at the end . Sub bass ... well K702 has more subb bass than AD2000 but less mid bass . Soundstage , large (but more oriented left/right than AD2000) airy , relatively deep , and great instrument separation . (i think that the signature is a bit more forward than my gone K702) . Dynamique is good but not as fast as AD2000 (but i don't mind at all) . They seam detailed as AD2000 but with the cleaner over all presentation seams more easy to pick up details (the funny thing is K702 seamed to me a tad less resolving to AD2000 cause it's more distand sounding ) .
