[Hi-Finthen]

Thank you Dave...

 

[Davesrose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quint /img/forum/go_quote.gif You're right, of course, but each phone had well over 500 hours on it. I know that because they're my friends' cans. FWIW, I borrowed my friend's RSA Stealth to audition them. Don't know what 'phones it was a particularly good or bad match with, but I just reported what I heard. I listened to each 'phone at length--about an hour each. I'm aware of the perils of short auditions, and my friends were very accommodating in this regard. Sure, there are drawbacks to such an audition method, but it was the best I could manage.

It sounds like you made quite an effort to audition and make up your mind Quint. That's an admirable thing to do. Especially if you're looking for a headphone to be neutral, you can pick any of the current greats (k701,HD650,DT990,GS1000) and build a system around it. Hence my point about any headphone being "natural". At the particular time that you could listen to the k701 and Senns, for a number of factors the k701 sounded most natural to you. No need trying to argue, was a personal experience. We'll just be in endless loops here about whether the k701 or HD650 is more "natural" because of all the stated conditions.

 

[Snacks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by spike33 /img/forum/go_quote.gif The headroom graphs are accurate. K701 is perceived to have less bass because it has a peak in the upper mids (~2.5 kHz). Human hearing is very sensitive to this region so people tend to listen to K701 at low volume. HD650 doesn't have this peak so people can and want to turn it up, thus more bass.

This makes a lot of sense, good analogy spike!

 

[Albert]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hi-Finthen /img/forum/go_quote.gif The Senns line is geared toward covering the sins of gears and the recorded material downstream. And there is a price to be paid for that presentation. As there is with a more revealing headphone, one chooses and pays the price for the benifits of either. There is nothing less intimate between these two phones as an objective quality, other than preferance and blatent defensiveness by exclusive fanboyism IME ;-} I'm sure other people are sincere in relating their experience, however it is NOT an either or propisition except for the owner of both who sells one of the two IME ;-}

Again. Different perceptions/turns of mind about the same reality for different people. :>)


Whose fanboyism, by the way?

 

[Albert]

In my perception many AKG users in this forum tend to make great fanboys. There just seems to be something peculiar about AKG's products that seems to appeal or seduce the kind of people who have this inclination for themselves. I would diagnose some sort of shallowness of perception, or something. No offense meant, just speculating.

 

[Davesrose]

Don't read too much into Hi-Finthen's comments.....he's admitted to dismissing the Senns early into his ventures into Head-fi, so how would he know if "The Senns line is geared toward covering the sins of gears and the recorded material downstream"? I can make the same arguement about the k501 on my system. The mids are colored, so I hear more tape hiss and unnatural timbre of a classical performance (so it can emphasize high pitched tape, while having recessed decay on a "neutral" system). With the HD650 on my system, I can still hear limitations of a recording (hiss, compression, mike placement, etc). And to my ears/ system, it has a natural decay and timbre. But I don't go making generalizations that the whole AKG series is always inferior.

 

[Albert]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Davesrose /img/forum/go_quote.gif But I don't go making generalizations that the whole AKG series is always inferior.

No, no, me neither. That would certainly make a fanboy of me. :^)

AKG has some very competitive headphones, starting probably with the K601 rather than the K701. Also their low/mid range is pretty interesting.

 

[slindeman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hi-Finthen /img/forum/go_quote.gif The Senns line is geared toward covering the sins of gears and the recorded material downstream. And there is a price to be paid for that presentation. As there is with a more revealing headphone, one chooses and pays the price for the benifits of either. There is nothing less intimate between these two phones as an objective quality, other than preferance and blatent defensiveness by exclusive fanboyism IME ;-} I'm sure other people are sincere in relating their experience, however it is NOT an either or propisition except for the owner of both who sells one of the two IME ;-}

See, I don't understand comments like this. The only headphone I've found more revealing or detailed than HD650 in its price range is the SR404. As my profile reveals, I've owned nearly every well regarded headphone in the price range. I don't understand why people call HD650 veiled or less detailed than Grados/AKG/Beyer because that is not what I hear. Many headphones have peaks in the upper-midrange / treble that give fake detail, but only SR404 had more real detail in my system. And I'm no fanboy of any headpone. I've owned too many headphones (and heard many more) and found good things about all of them, but when it comes down to it you've got to go with what makes you enjoy music the most.

Anyway, with regards the original topic of this thread, my theory is that outer ear shapes and head shapes must play into shaping the frequency response we hear, because I don't find HD650 bass-heavy, and yet at the same time I don't find IEM's like ER6i and ER4P bass-light

 

[cotdt]

their frequency response is not accurate, because others who have measured it got a very different response. others have verified that the HD650 has more bass by the frequency response. in general, the frequency response DOES tell you the tonal balance, especially in headphones where the harmonic distortion is pretty low. but you need the unsmoothed high resolution frequency response graphs to tell timbre, which is determined by local variations in the frequency response. such is not easy to measure.

 

[Albert]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cotdt /img/forum/go_quote.gif their frequency response is not accurate, because others who have measured it got a very different response. others have verified that the HD650 has more bass by the frequency response. in general, the frequency response DOES tell you the tonal balance, especially in headphones where the harmonic distortion is pretty low. but you need the unsmoothed high resolution frequency response graphs to tell timbre, which is determined by local variations in the frequency response. such is not easy to measure.

Actually all Headroom's measurements on the Sennheisers over the time show that the measured responses are very constant and consistent (showing a fine L-R driver matching too), with just small local variations which are about always for the better in the newer models (see the flattened lower treble & the optimised dips at 5 and 16 KHz on the HD650 over the HD600).

 

[Davesrose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slindeman /img/forum/go_quote.gif Anyway, with regards the original topic of this thread, my theory is that outer ear shapes and head shapes must play into shaping the frequency response we hear, because I don't find HD650 bass-heavy, and yet at the same time I don't find IEM's like ER6i and ER4P bass-light

That must have something to do with it too. I don't think FRGs can take a headphone's enclosure to account. The FRGs of the HD600 and HD595 are nearly identical, but no one says they sound similar. Placement and angle of driver in relationship to helix of ear is a big factor in perception.

 

[rsaavedra]

Quote:

Originally Posted by spike33 /img/forum/go_quote.gif K701 is perceived to have less bass because it has a peak in the upper mids (~2.5 kHz). Human hearing is very sensitive to this region so people tend to listen to K701 at low volume. HD650 doesn't have this peak so people can and want to turn it up, thus more bass.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeagramSeven /img/forum/go_quote.gif Many of the K701's upper frequencies are 5-8dB louder than the 650's. The K701's bass region however is only 1-3dB louder. The result of that when presented in a song is simple---bass sounds louder on the 650. If you are going to use the graph as your reference---you must take the entire graph into account, not simply the bass region.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Davesrose /img/forum/go_quote.gif The overall treble of the HD650 is softer, so bass can be more pronounced then other headphones.

I believe all of the above posts got it right. It´s the ratios between bass/mids/treble in one given headphone what makes it bassy vs. bright, not a particular absolute value in any give region of the audible spectrum.

Bass might look higher in headphone X´s frequency response chart than in headphone Y, yet headphone Y might sound bassier because it has less treble emphasis with respect to its own bass than X's treble vs its own bass. That is exactly the case between the 701 and the 650. You can´t compare them by comparing absolute measurements of specific ranges in their frequency response graphs.

Besides Headroom's graphs you might find interesting the graphs I created from those a while ago, showing the average amplitude per region within the freq. spectrum:

If you compute the ratio (Lower+Upper Treble) / (Lower+Upper bass) it gives a higher value in the 701 than in the 650, hence the 701 is slightly brighter/lighter, or the 650 is bassier/darker, whichever way you might want to express it. Here the approximate values:

Code:

[left] Avg. Measured Amplitude K701 HD650 Lower Bass 3.5 1 Upper Bass 4.5 4 Lower Treble -1 -4 Upper Treble -12 -9 Treble/Bass Ratio -1.6 -2.6[/left]

In fact the ratio could be computed just using Lower Treble / Upper Bass, since the outermost extremes are less frequent in most music. The brightness vs. bassy impression can probably be already infered from the relationship between Lower Treble vs. Upper Bass. This other ratio for these headphones has the values: -0.2 the K701 vs. -1.0 for the HD650, consistent with the other one.

 

[humanflyz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Albert /img/forum/go_quote.gif In my perception many AKG users in this forum tend to make great fanboys. There just seems to be something peculiar about AKG's products that seems to appeal or seduce the kind of people who have this inclination for themselves. I would diagnose some sort of shallowness of perception, or something. No offense meant, just speculating.

I would have to take exception to this claim, because if anything, Sennheiser makes great fanboys--just look at every single thread in which someone complains that they don't like the HD-series. You will see instantly that people will jump-in and say that the phones are not properly amped. And what is the solution: $$$$ tube/ss balanced rigs costing in the 5 to 6 digits range.

The point is, no particular brand of headphone is more likely than any other to generate fanboyism. Every brand has its own advocates, and what you count as fanboyism may simply be another man's passion. I have my own problems with the HD650, even though I own a pair, but I never just jump in a HD650 thread for the sake of airing those problems.

 

[Davesrose]

I've got to listen to a k701 dangit!

Because these FRGs and computations are always interesting. Even based on your graphs, if I'm reading them right rsaavedra, is that the HD650 has a more even tonality of its treble (while it's mids are softer then the k701 there's more evenness in treble to upper treble). IMO, whatever emphasis in mids seems what the major difference in headphones are; perceptually.

 

[Davesrose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by humanflyz /img/forum/go_quote.gif I would have to take exception to this claim, because if anything, Sennheiser makes great fanboys--just look at every single thread in which someone complains that they don't like the HD-series. You will see instantly that people will jump-in and say that the phones are not properly amped. And what is the solution: $$$$ tube/ss balanced rigs costing in the 5 to 6 digits range.

That's the problem of this forum.....we believe in hype that in order to balance out a headphone, we need expensive cables/amps/sources. We don't first look at what the person's source and amp is. Even with less expensive rigs, some are ripe for the Senn series, AKG series, Beyer series, or Grado series. Yes, I have an expensive rig now.....to me it's worth it to make everything more intimate. But I realize not everyone is looking to spend tons of money, and are looking for the cheapest solution: be it a change in headphone, source, or amp. All of these should be weighed equally.