Xevion
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2001
- Posts
- 654
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- 0
I would just like to say thank you all for your advice, I had lurked on occasion over the past year or so at Headwize, and without the knowledge I have learned, I would have never known much about real decent headphones. A couple years ago I got some HD500s at Circut City, as I wanted something "really nice", and I was happy, but then I realized what I was comparing them to. When I went shopping for speakers, I made a quick audition of the HD600s at Tweeter before I went home, and I tried to make a comparison, and it at least showed me how muffled the 500s sounded in comparison.
In fact, I was so used to the HD500s when I got the 600s that they immedately sounded very bright to my ears. Believe it or not the HD500s sounded bright to me when I got them (Previous ehadphones were Sony V-200s, which I contend as the worst headphones ever).
I now own some HD600s, thanks to flashbak
, and I am very pleased with them. They don't sound nearly as bad as I expected out of a portable, and out of my reciever, they sound excellent (Akai AA-R40, it is older then me), also they sound fine, if grainy on my Live Platinum.
And soon enough, I will need an amplifier for my new HD600s, and after that a good CDP (The cheap NAD one).
As for a quickie on the HD600s, I know they have been overdone, but I will let my impressions out.
Despite what I have heard people say about their neutrality, they still sound a tad bright to me. This is probably because my speakers (Celestion F1s) are a tad on the dark side along with my old HD500s.
Also, I am doing most of my casual listening on my PC, which has an SB Live Platinum, and I use the headphone output on it. It seems to have a better then portable quality output, and sounds good, but not great to my ears. One major problem is that MP3s are a lot more clearly distorted then before, and I can hear more quantization noises. A good 192k rip of Rhapsody in Blue no longer sounds good, but merely acceptable.
Soundstage/imaging is incredible. The HD500s imaged fairly well, and were well suited for computer games, but the HD600s are amazing in comparison. Many sounds actually sound like they are coming from beyond where the headphones are. This is amazing to me, and nothing compares to the ambient feel I get when watching a movie - American Beauty has a very well done soundtrack, as does Fargo, and when something was in a room, the echoes were more apparent, and it sounded as if the space was smaller, and outside it sounds bigger and more distant. Absolutely incredible. (Although the connections in the HT setup are horrible and I need to turn the high pass filter on to get rid of the hissing - I have the DVD player running through the TV into the VCR and then into the reciever. Yuck.)
Despite the fact that I can hear the problems with my crappy connections, I still love these headphones.
In fact, I was so used to the HD500s when I got the 600s that they immedately sounded very bright to my ears. Believe it or not the HD500s sounded bright to me when I got them (Previous ehadphones were Sony V-200s, which I contend as the worst headphones ever).
I now own some HD600s, thanks to flashbak
And soon enough, I will need an amplifier for my new HD600s, and after that a good CDP (The cheap NAD one).
As for a quickie on the HD600s, I know they have been overdone, but I will let my impressions out.
Despite what I have heard people say about their neutrality, they still sound a tad bright to me. This is probably because my speakers (Celestion F1s) are a tad on the dark side along with my old HD500s.
Also, I am doing most of my casual listening on my PC, which has an SB Live Platinum, and I use the headphone output on it. It seems to have a better then portable quality output, and sounds good, but not great to my ears. One major problem is that MP3s are a lot more clearly distorted then before, and I can hear more quantization noises. A good 192k rip of Rhapsody in Blue no longer sounds good, but merely acceptable.
Soundstage/imaging is incredible. The HD500s imaged fairly well, and were well suited for computer games, but the HD600s are amazing in comparison. Many sounds actually sound like they are coming from beyond where the headphones are. This is amazing to me, and nothing compares to the ambient feel I get when watching a movie - American Beauty has a very well done soundtrack, as does Fargo, and when something was in a room, the echoes were more apparent, and it sounded as if the space was smaller, and outside it sounds bigger and more distant. Absolutely incredible. (Although the connections in the HT setup are horrible and I need to turn the high pass filter on to get rid of the hissing - I have the DVD player running through the TV into the VCR and then into the reciever. Yuck.)
Despite the fact that I can hear the problems with my crappy connections, I still love these headphones.
