fairwind
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2015
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Hi everyone!
As promised, below are my observations concerning RS 175. All but weight and dimensions is my subjective personal opinion.
Sound quality is rather good and quite enough IMO for movie watching. For music quality might be enough if one has no better phones or speakers. The phones fall to my “category 3”. I have 5 my personal subjective quality “categories” for phones:
1. If you put them on and try, the sound does not seem to be normal from the start. It has something from the list: too much/less bass, middle, tremble; distortions, voice is not natural and a bit difficult to comprehend, so you do not want to listen to them further. But if you would listen to them you can be used to them only to some extend, but even so, you understand that the sound is not normal. Practically: better not to use.
2. The difference from first group is that after some time you can be used to them, but even after some accommodation time you understand that sound is not quite normal. Phones with “sound improvement” - trying to make sound better for listener than it originally is also fall to the category, because the “improvement” “works” only on some type of input material making it “sound better” but other material is getting worse after such change. Reason to make sound better could be either: to make it “special”, “impressing”, “unusual” or to mask problems of non-natural sound reproduction by phones to make them less prominent. Practically: you can use them if it is needed for some reason.
3. These phones have quite good impression from the start. Problems are not so evident and after using them for some time your brain will be accommodated to its sound and will consider it to be good enough. Here starts some pleasure therefore. But it is only if you have nothing better to compare with. After comparing to better ones it will be evident that sound could be better. Practically: you can use them, but for music it is better to use better ones.
4. These phones are undoubtedly good, real pleasure in music and sound is very natural. There is something small you might not like in them, but they are good in spite of that. Brain does not need to accommodate to them (again IMO that’s where come pleasure from) and likes them from the start. If you have a few such ones, you can compare them and you have to try different music types switching test phones back and forth many times before you will understand the difference between the phones. And the difference will be very small. Each such headphone will be good its own way. HD650 level is here.
5. These phones are really good. You are satisfied completely from the start hearing till the end. If you are lucky to have a few such ones to compare you will find no difference because it will be very small, almost undetectable or could only be told on sub consciousness level only.
I have weighted the headset:
With two accumulator cells: 327 gr. (promised value is “approx. 310 gr.”)
Without the accumulator cells: 302 gr.
This also means that 2 accumulators have weight 25 gr.
When I bought RS 175 I have measured distance between ear pads (if place them in parallel), it was less then 4 centimeters (~1.5 inch) and I wanted to make it bigger so it would not give too much pressure to head. So I put it onto my ”stand” with width 205 mm (my PC case) and they are there now almost all the time.
If I take them off the distance now is ~7 centimeters which is much more better for head, but after an hour without the “stand” it gets back to ~5 centimeters (this is at least a bit bigger then in beginning) and pressure to head also gets bigger.
Will it be good enough after some time? I have the feeling that it will not.
Control in headset is quite convenient. I think it is much better then in old RS 170 model, but I cannot compare because don’t have the old one.
Power indicator brightness is very appropriate - not bright. When you turn them on it is a bit brighter, but is getting more dark after some time which is IMO very though-out idea. Other indicators are also not bright which is good.
Loudness is more then enough especially in analog input which has ALC system - it amplifies low level input signal to be “louder”. But the ALC does not have low level cut-off mechanism. What I mean here is that when you have “silence” in input signal, in some circumstances (you can avoid them actually) you will hear some small noise. I can hear my PC’s hard disk is talking to me for example. If source is a TV - I cannot hear any noise in my case. So, the behavior is also source-dependant. It might be good for ALC system to understand that there is no signal (because with such low signal even if ALC will amplify it, still it will be not loud enough), but the idea is still doubtful because the cut-off should be very fast and I am not aware of correct implementation of it. Anyway, it is not a problem if you will set output level on your source loud enough (just like advised to do for RS 170 model) then you will not hear any noise in pause. But not overdo it - otherwise loud output would be clipped and sound would be distorted. From that perspective RS 185 has a useful feature - manual level adjustment. I have not tried it but think that having it one can get rid of noise even not setting so loud output level in sound source.
Comparing sound quality for analog and digital input I can tell that there is a small difference in my case, but there is nothing to worry about (such difference could play some role only for betters phones IMO). When digital signal goes through digital input it goes practically unchanged to phones’ receiver which have a DAC inside. When one uses analog input the digital signal goes through DAC in source (i.e. TV) than goes via amplifier and ALC in phones’ transmitter, and then goes back to digital signal through ADC in phones’ transmitter and then to analog one via DAC in phones. Even in theory: the more processing - the more changes are there. The changes when using analog input could not always be unpleasant i.e. you could (theoretically) use bulb phones amplifier in between to have a “warm” sound, or equalizer, but you will get not quite what it was originally. Also noise level is a bit higher in analog input, but IMO still low enough.
Features like surround and extra bass are completely useless for me, because they make the changes at the cost of sound fidelity. But I suppose someone might like it at least sometimes. I mean here the following: equalizer is intended to be used in studio by specialists to make proper “sound picture” and by users who have poor sound reproduction devices (like headphones, speakers) to make them sound more “equal” in all frequency range (here is what word “equalizer” means). But some people like not “equal” sound i.e. “powerful bass” etc. rather then natural sound, so the feature is for them.
I confirm observation of other people who wrote that the phones have slightly more loud middle range (which is good for voice comprehension) and very slightly more loud bass which might be also good for some movies for example. TV is actually the best usage for them.
Concerning to loss of signal, in my flat 2 walls is no problem, 3 walls could cause partial signal loss which is good enough for me.
Sorry for too long explanations. I hope the information will be helpful for someone who is deciding now what to buy.
