[Beagle]

Quote:

Originally posted by Hirsch So do transistors. So do op amps. Some people prefer tubes because the distortion is less objectionable than that produced by solid state devices. A good tube amp does NOT necessarily have midrange coloration, nor does it necessarily match your preconceptions of what a tube amp sounds like.

Tubes often measure quite badly and are not the most reliable things to use. Check some of the measurements on the pricy Cary tube amps and you will be in for a shock. Tubes are actually a form of distortion, albeit a pleasant, often musical one. Tubes are often said to be better at low level detail but in my experience it is that they act as a form of compression that brings low level detail up to the fore, consequently changing the 'mix' of a recording. Of course, if you ignore all of this and simply focus on the music, you will usually find yourself quite satisfied. I don't believe that music is about measurements, it's about how you feel when you listen to it. Sound through tubes reminds me of how I enjoyed music when I was very young, when I was happy just to hear the song.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally posted by Beagle Sound through tubes reminds me of how I enjoyed music when I was very young, when I was happy just to hear the song.

Nicely said!

And so true.
Quote:

Tubes are often said to be better at low level detail but in my experience it is that they act as a form of compression that brings low level detail up to the fore...

This is a possible theory. But I'm not sure that it's the real explanation for the most important aspect of tube sound which could be expressed as «naturalness». O.k., dynamic compression and distortion go hand in hand, and the latter is also suspected to contribute to the smoothness and colorfulness. But as stated in this article, tubes obviously don't distort more than transistors, just differently: with less higher-order harmonics, which according to this theory make solid-state amps sound as such – less natural and less convenient than tube amps.

I really don't know which is the truth (I guess nobody knows). All I can say is that I love (good) tube sound, and there's nothing wrong or artificial about it, to my ears. Why is there such a common sense that transistors do all things right? I've tested several amps – SS, tube, hybrid – using the direct path as a benchmark and came to the conclusion that my EMP is closest to the «truth». Besides: the sonic differences among SS amps are by no means smaller than those among tube amps. So how could they be more true than the latter? And again: colorfulness isn't identical with coloration – don't let you mislead by the beauty of the tube sound to suspect it's an artificial ingredient, while the drier SS sound seems to correspond more to a reasonable, rational technocratic view. But isn't the reality in fact beautiful? (I'm speaking of music!) Isn't a concert as stirring and magical as the reproduction from good tube equipment? (I don't deny that SS equipment can sound very good and lifelike, too.)

JaZZ

 

[Tomcat]

Quote:

Originally posted by JaZZ And again: colorfulness isn't identical with coloration – don't let you mislead by the beauty of the tube sound to suspect it's an artificial ingredient, while the drier SS sound seems to correspond more to a reasonable, rational technocratic view. But isn't the reality in fact beautiful? (I'm speaking of music!) Isn't a concert as stirring and magical as the reproduction from good tube equipment? (I don't deny that SS equipment can sound very good and lifelike, too.)

JaZZ,
Excellent points!

 

[beastie]

okay, you guys lost me. so from what i can gather of the discussion, here are some points i believe are important.

1) musical preference vary from person to person, no single headphone can cover all the bases. people claim certain phones are absolutely the bomb because for their musical preference such phones do the job better than every other phone they have tried.
2) headphones on the most part are not too much different from one another, argueably the most expensive headphone is probably not 2 times better than a cheap pair of stock sony earbuds. the marginal improvement decrease dramatically as you pay more for cans. (eg. grado sr-60 may be 50% better, grado sr-80 may be 60% better, grado sr-325 may be 75% better, rs-1 may be 80% better, even the "best" orpheus may only be 95% better than stock at the most). price/performance ratio dramatically decrease when buying higher end phones.
3) almost everyone is convinced for the price they pay, the phones MUST be better or at least as good as the cheaper cans. or that if the peer unanimously rate a pair favourably, one must go with the crowd on such opinion or risk being degraded with remarks such as hearing must be impaired, amp was not strong enough, do not appreciate music, blah blah blah.
4) people almost completely agree on the usage of amp to improve sound quality on any phones.

i want to touch on the last point. i don't know what the big deal is about amps. from a pure technical standpoint, the sole job of an amplifier is to boost the amplitude of sound wave without messing with the frequency of the wave. some amplifier may do better job in boosting at certain frequencies, when paired with phones that lack efficiency in certain frequencies the outputed sound may be characterized as enjoyable. clearly, amplifiers are needed to power massive home theater speakers since output sound must fill a whole room. but i do not understand the need for companies to produce very inefficient headphones that REQUIRE amps to output music.

looking at headphones produced by most japanese companies, every single headphone from the most basic to the most expensive have very efficient drivers that can easily be powered by portable and high end sourse alike. Is sony cd-3000 any worse than the top of the line senn and beyers? totally up for debate with no clear winner. okay, are all open headphones have to be totally inefficient (AKG 1000) to reproduce music? i don't think so. just look at the grado lineup. there's simply no need for amps in my opinion. for true lover of music who choose to use headphones to enjoy music, all you need is a very very good source and a very efficient and sensitive pair of cans.

to maintain highest fidelity, one would think that the shortest distance that can be achieved from the source to the output device will reproduce the most accurate sound since longer the distance sound wave have to travel more losses in sound fidelity will result. this is assuming of course that we are using a very good source (not portable, duh) and a very efficient headphone (those top of the line grados or equivalent)

anyway, this is just based on my limited knowlege of physics from first year. i'd be happy for anyone to point me wrong in my reasoning.

 

[Jin]

Everybody is talking about colored and noncolored. At first I thought you guys were talking about the color of your headphones but obviusly you're not. What does colored and noncolored mean?

 

[ooheadsoo]

Quote:

Originally posted by beastie i want to touch on the last point. i don't know what the big deal is about amps. from a pure technical standpoint, the sole job of an amplifier is to boost the amplitude of sound wave without messing with the frequency of the wave. some amplifier may do better job in boosting at certain frequencies, when paired with phones that lack efficiency in certain frequencies the outputed sound may be characterized as enjoyable. clearly, amplifiers are needed to power massive home theater speakers since output sound must fill a whole room. but i do not understand the need for companies to produce very inefficient headphones that REQUIRE amps to output music.

Since when have you ever used any sound reproduction equipment that didn't have an amp besides headphones? Even cheap computer speakers have amps. If you hooked up your headphones directly to the RCA outs on your cd player, how would you control the volume? If you plug it into the headphone jack on your cd player or receiver, then you are using an amp. Ineffiecient headphones can lower the noise floor. Given the same components and volume level, you will more likely hear noise on a 16 or 32 ohm phone than on a 300 ohm phone. Also, without sufficient power, the sound will distort as you turn up the volume (say if you're using a portable or a soundcard with a crappy preamp.) There are plenty of good reasons why you need an amp. I don't think you'll find ANYONE on this board who would buy a CD3000 and not use an amp with it if they had the choice.

 

[JaZZ]

beasty...

As ooheadsoo has stated, all high-level sources are equipped with an amp – the output stage –, and headphone jacks are additional amps dedicated to drive headphones and provide volume control. Since no amp sounds perfect, you can't expect perfect sound from a cheap (portable) device. It's not just the frequency response that counts – even very cheap components offer flat responses –, but a complex variety of factors, including harmonic distortion and dynamic behavior, and it's even unclear which measurings have which effect on the sound.

A good amp improves the sound significantly compared to the headphone jacks of most components. Apart from effectively better signal processing there are also synergetic and euphonic effects. Even amplifying the signal from a headphone jack may «improve» the sound that way. Generally speaking the signal of a line out amp is capable of driving most headphones adequately and to decent levels. In the case of a computer soundcard you even have a digital volume control at your disposal, so that there's no obvious need for an additional amplification in most cases.

But note: I'm not speaking of headphone jacks. A decent headphone amp usually provides clearly better and more musical sound than the cheap built-in headphone amp. But again: every amp has its own sonic signature, thus characteristic colorations, although not in the same measure as sound transducers such as headphones.
Quote:

...headphones on the most part are not too much different from one another, argueably the most expensive headphone is probably not 2 times better than a cheap pair of stock sony earbuds. the marginal improvement decrease dramatically as you pay more for cans. (eg. grado sr-60 may be 50% better, grado sr-80 may be 60% better, grado sr-325 may be 75% better, rs-1 may be 80% better, even the "best" orpheus may only be 95% better than stock at the most). price/performance ratio dramatically decrease when buying higher end phones.

Except for the last sentence I don't subscribe this. There are dramatic differences between cheap stock headphones (which often sound ridiculously bad for the demands of a music lover) and the best available ones. Of course the numbers you want to use to describe the ratings are individual. But yours seem inadequate to me.

JaZZ

 

[JaZZ]

Jin...

...a «coloration» is a deviation from neutral sound, e.g. too loud or too low mids (...or highs...), a hollow coloration due to internal reflections/resonances – there is an immeasurable number of possible colorations.

The perception of such colorations with headphones is individual – due to anatomic differences as well as different psychoacoustic interpretations and finally different tastes with the rating of flaws – which every headphone has to a certain degree.

 

[Geek]

This is in response to Beastie,

Amplifiers are CRITICAL when using a high-quality CD player which produces a near-perfect signal, and headphones with VERY VAST transient response. If you pair some of the world's best cans up with a $200 amp then the headphones' transient response is so good that all you hear after a while are the grainy flaws of the amplifier and how it fails to produce quality signal at both frequency extremes, or has a confused midrange, or is too harsh, a bad soundstage, bad imaging (even for cans), no rear imaging, blurred voices, lack of detail, lack of dynamics at any volume, distortion of bottom end, harmonic distortion, signal noise, and the list goes ON and ON and ON.

Bad amplification results in a sound that is less than satisfactory. It is best to balance the "class" of your gear: Everything should be about the same quality level. I know that I personally failed doing so. I grabbed the 600s, sacrificing the cable that I so badly need, the amp to properly power the 600s (there is a mind blowing difference between an airhead and a blockhead, the amp matters man), the CD player, the interconnects, and the recordings.

I KNOW I AM NOT UP TO A BALANCED QUALITY LEVEL. Why buy the 600s? They are still an improvement over the other cans I have, a vast improvement in fact, and I eventually intend to buy top notch gear. Over time.

Beastie, you were wondering about my standard for electronic and rock, genres which really don't have a good middle-point like classical, a real-life reference point.

All I care about is getting sound fidelity for electronic and rock to surpass the unreliable fidelity of live performances, which are quite horrible.
It's rather impossible to reproduce the impact of a live performance, given that most are 110+ dBa with peaks of 140 in some cases. Minus the visceral impact, the Sennheisers can sound "live" in a technoish sense: Just crank the knob and feed the amp enough voltage so it produces a clean signal. Audiophiledom goes smack out of the window at around 95dB for me because of the inability of my ears to listen to detail at such volumes.

I can sum it up: Rock and electronic is less "audiophile." I care about 1. Pure frequency extension, strong midrange, bass, treble. 2. Detail - yes, I love detail even in this genre! And no, most recordings aren't up to spec. 3. Fatigue - I like nonfatiguing rock and techno, so I never push the dial above a "loud" point of mabye 80dB or so.

I don't really feel picky about this genre, because there is no golden reference as you stated. Classical is a different story and I have already talked a lot about it in detail (no pun intended) earlier in this thread.

Excellent posts, everyone! I will reply later when I have the time an energy to do so in a satisfactory manner.

Cheers,
Geek

 

[Mike Scarpitti]

Quote:

Originally posted by beastie Hi all, this week i've received two pairs of headphones. the AKG 300 and Denon 750. i fell in love with the denons instantly. but as for the AKG's, well i wasn't impressed. i gave the pair fair chance. i listened to them for the past 3 nights with a variety of music from jazz, techno, to classical. but i'm disspointed. first of all. i dislike open phones. the problem is they are open! i can hear everything that goes on around. just like speakers. when studying, i get distracted from listening, every time i turn over a page. i just don't understand the point of open phones. if i want a wide soundstage, i'll just listen to my speakers. anyway, to music reproduction. everyone seems to praise phones that are not coloured and complain of bloated bass. listening to the AKGs, these phones are so neutral and bass lacking that i find them totally boring to listen to. the music feels so distant that i think i can fall asleep to rap with these cans. even listening to classical music, the merriment and tempo of songs such as blue danube by Strauss and air by Bach. i'm wondering why some people like these type of phones? everything i listen to are apathetic. the Denon 750 are a different story. i guess i really prefer closed cans over open. due to the reason they are closed, they bring intimacy to music. they are very smooth and very good bass responce. i used it on my e10 md player and the sound is very very good. i played dave seaman's Melbourne. this album has some highs that always distort my other soundsystems, but with the 750, the sound was improved greatly. one feature i dislike about both of the phones is the damn long cable they have. they are so long that i'm cautious that i don't trip over them whenever i need to leave my desk to do something. i wish the companies would make the cables coiled, it would make life much easier. okay i haven't had the chance to listen to other higher quality headphones. but based on my reading of the forum, it seems like many of the open phones like the AKG and Senns share the same characteristic as my 300. so i'm just wondering what some of you senn 600 are looking for? do you guys like to listen to music that won't bring your excitement and transform you to an state of mind where you can feel what the artists were feeling when they were creating the music?

Because colored sound is a bad thing.

 

[Xplo]

Quote:

argueably the most expensive headphone is probably not 2 times better than a cheap pair of stock sony earbuds.

It depends on your argument. If you're going to say that anything that makes noise is as good as anything else that makes noise, then you'll be right as far as you go.. but you'll also be saying (albeit unwittingly) that that cheap pair of stock sony earbuds doesn't really sound much better than listening to a friend's radio over the telephone, which is clearly not the case.

If, on the other hand, quality sound reproduction matters to you at all, then you would be wrong. My mom's V6 (one of the cheaper good models out there, at < $100) doesn't outperform generic cheapo cans by a small margin; it totally destroys them.