pbirkett
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2002
- Posts
- 3,239
- Likes
- 55
You know what, I've spent probably something in the region of around 8 years in the hobby, give or take, and one thing that I feel like I have never cracked in all of that time is to make my music just as enjoyable to me on headphones as it is on a well chosen pair of speakers.
I have owned dozens of different headphones, and that culminates with my latest purchase a Proline 2500.
The thing is, I think I am finally starting to realise what the problem is after all of these years.
I think its that headphones, or more specifically, mid - high end headphones are perhaps just too revealing. Let me elaborate on that and say that there are a few things going on here. First is that headphones are a compromise from the outset, having drivers placed right near your ears is not a natural presentation, and for me, it does not seem to matter what tricks are performed to try and overcome this, they can improve it, but never quite succeed to my ears. However, that is not a boundary to enjoying music I dont think. This leads me on to the second problem, and its the one I think I have personally. A lot of my music is electronic and trance. Some of it is very well recorded, and that can sound extremely nice on decent headphones. However, a lot of it really isn't that well recorded and I think a lot of headphones are just too matter of fact to really enjoy it, they reveal the flaws all too easily.
Now this is the part that might come as a surprise to a lot of headfiers, but in a headphone history that has involved such headphones as the HD650, DT880, CD3000, DT990, Proline 2500, and other similar tier headphones, the two headphones looking back that I enjoyed the most OVERALL are the Beyer DT531, and the Senn CX300!
Let me explain - the Beyers were what I think of as a kind of hybrid between entry level and more high end tier stuff. They just sounded sweet for everything. Sure, they werent the be-all-end-all in terms of technical ability - they didnt have the fastest or deepest bass, the most extended treble, or the most detail, but they did most things competently and did it without disecting your music and putting it under the microscope. They got across the musical message much better than most to my ears and they just made you forget about hifi, and just enjoy the music. With them, looking back, I rarely worried about slight flaws in the music, but with better equipment I'm always drawn to the flaws in the music. For me, what the 531 did was make well recorded stuff sound about 90% as good as what it can on the high end stuff, but made lesser material sound much more listenable.
The CX300, which to some people is probably quite a poor headphone, again to me, on the music I listen to, it communicates the musical message well. It has powerful, if somewhat boomy bass, and it sounds rather insistent, not particularly smooth or anything like that, but it just to my ear boogies particularly well, without ever sounding particularly high end, and as such, is enjoyable.
In a similar fashion, I am kind of finding a similar problem with my TV. I have a HD ready plasma TV that I use for blu-ray and such like. I now notice technical flaws a lot more in the picture and I am drawn to them in a similar way. When I had my old Sony Wega CRT, almost everything I put on it looked quite good. Again, a really good recording would, to my eyes, look possibly 90% as good as it does on my Plasma TV (a Panasonic Viera) but the lower stuff looked far better on the Sony.
I appreciate that we need to move things forward with audio and visual things, but I just find particularly with music but with a lesser extent also with video, the software we play on it is just not up to scratch, and the equipment we now use is capable of showing us everything, warts and all.
I can now see why I like my speakers because they make everything I play on them sound great, they might not be the very best you can get but they sure do make everything sound enjoyable.
Don't get me wrong, I am more than happy to accept that a lot of folks on here listen to totally different music to me, and that music may well be recorded much better on average than the music I listen to and as such, there is probably a lot more of a reason then to have high end stuff, particularly as said folks probably listen to a lot more music per week than I do. However for me, I am thinking its pointless given my music tastes and habits to have a high end setup, as low end stuff that gets the basics right and doesn't expose flaws is just a lot more suitable for my listening tastes.
As such, I am thinking of going back to a "modest" pair of headphones like the DT531 or similar, and just retire from this game, as I think I am just chasing an impossible dream - its not been for a want of trying, but I genuinely believe that what I want probably isn't attainable.
I have owned dozens of different headphones, and that culminates with my latest purchase a Proline 2500.
The thing is, I think I am finally starting to realise what the problem is after all of these years.
I think its that headphones, or more specifically, mid - high end headphones are perhaps just too revealing. Let me elaborate on that and say that there are a few things going on here. First is that headphones are a compromise from the outset, having drivers placed right near your ears is not a natural presentation, and for me, it does not seem to matter what tricks are performed to try and overcome this, they can improve it, but never quite succeed to my ears. However, that is not a boundary to enjoying music I dont think. This leads me on to the second problem, and its the one I think I have personally. A lot of my music is electronic and trance. Some of it is very well recorded, and that can sound extremely nice on decent headphones. However, a lot of it really isn't that well recorded and I think a lot of headphones are just too matter of fact to really enjoy it, they reveal the flaws all too easily.
Now this is the part that might come as a surprise to a lot of headfiers, but in a headphone history that has involved such headphones as the HD650, DT880, CD3000, DT990, Proline 2500, and other similar tier headphones, the two headphones looking back that I enjoyed the most OVERALL are the Beyer DT531, and the Senn CX300!
Let me explain - the Beyers were what I think of as a kind of hybrid between entry level and more high end tier stuff. They just sounded sweet for everything. Sure, they werent the be-all-end-all in terms of technical ability - they didnt have the fastest or deepest bass, the most extended treble, or the most detail, but they did most things competently and did it without disecting your music and putting it under the microscope. They got across the musical message much better than most to my ears and they just made you forget about hifi, and just enjoy the music. With them, looking back, I rarely worried about slight flaws in the music, but with better equipment I'm always drawn to the flaws in the music. For me, what the 531 did was make well recorded stuff sound about 90% as good as what it can on the high end stuff, but made lesser material sound much more listenable.
The CX300, which to some people is probably quite a poor headphone, again to me, on the music I listen to, it communicates the musical message well. It has powerful, if somewhat boomy bass, and it sounds rather insistent, not particularly smooth or anything like that, but it just to my ear boogies particularly well, without ever sounding particularly high end, and as such, is enjoyable.
In a similar fashion, I am kind of finding a similar problem with my TV. I have a HD ready plasma TV that I use for blu-ray and such like. I now notice technical flaws a lot more in the picture and I am drawn to them in a similar way. When I had my old Sony Wega CRT, almost everything I put on it looked quite good. Again, a really good recording would, to my eyes, look possibly 90% as good as it does on my Plasma TV (a Panasonic Viera) but the lower stuff looked far better on the Sony.
I appreciate that we need to move things forward with audio and visual things, but I just find particularly with music but with a lesser extent also with video, the software we play on it is just not up to scratch, and the equipment we now use is capable of showing us everything, warts and all.
I can now see why I like my speakers because they make everything I play on them sound great, they might not be the very best you can get but they sure do make everything sound enjoyable.
Don't get me wrong, I am more than happy to accept that a lot of folks on here listen to totally different music to me, and that music may well be recorded much better on average than the music I listen to and as such, there is probably a lot more of a reason then to have high end stuff, particularly as said folks probably listen to a lot more music per week than I do. However for me, I am thinking its pointless given my music tastes and habits to have a high end setup, as low end stuff that gets the basics right and doesn't expose flaws is just a lot more suitable for my listening tastes.
As such, I am thinking of going back to a "modest" pair of headphones like the DT531 or similar, and just retire from this game, as I think I am just chasing an impossible dream - its not been for a want of trying, but I genuinely believe that what I want probably isn't attainable.
