Think about it logically. Why do different people have so different opinions about the EQ, amps, headphones etc.?   It is because people's hearing systems are very different! Your best investment in the hobby could be buying, reading, and *understanding* a book written by a reputable sound...

The procedure in the first link makes a lot of sense, this is similar to what I do. The procedure in the second doesn't.   The first procedure equalizes away both headphones' and listener's frequency response curve peaks and valleys. Which makes the music sound very lifelike, or, to be more...

I echo that experience. Headphones are inherently peaky and dippy. And so is the individual hearing system frequency response curves, which are very genetics/age/history/loudness-dependent.   Personalized EQ using studio-grade hardware and/or software makes huge difference! Once you do the...

So far I equalized HD650, D5000, DT770, and HD380 using Cubase 5. The four curves are quite different yet resemble yours in the overall shape. Made huge difference.   To those who regard equalization as nonsense, I recommend reading Chapter 19 of this...

True, a low risk activity. Margins are high indeed. But what about the volume? I would expect it to be rather low. Anyone has concrete sales data?   Quote:

Sorry to disappoint you, but research shows that crime doesn't pay, on average. True, outstanding profits are possible, but risks are outstanding too.   Quote:

I meant that it appears to me that there could be plenty of vendors and intermediaries not identifying themselves as such in every post.   As far as I know, member accounts here are not linked to any verifiable ids. How do you know that a particular cable proponent is not a shill or sock...

Vendors selling the cables that fail to differentiate from stock ones stand to lose everything from DBT.   Quote:

We are in complete agreement then    Quote:

I disagree with the statement that the  aggregate transfer function between the waveform represented by the recording and the  waveform of the sound arriving to outer ear should be a simple gain function. At the very least, it needs to be adjusted for the personal preference in the...

I like this timeless classic: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Sound-Reproduction-John-Watkinson/dp/0240515129.

(1)Turn CRTs off. (2) With no input, keep turning the amp volume knob up until you hear the noise floor. (3) Turn CRTs on. (4) Do you hear anything in addition to what you've heard on step (2)? If you do, how significant is it?   After this little experiment, you'll have a better idea...

I agree with your first statement. As a matter of fact, the only record in my collection that I consider truly faithful to live performance on my speakers rig is Living Stereo SACD of Beethoven sonatas played by Rubinstein. This is a three-channel SACD of a grand piano performance recorded by...

Went to a classical music concert today. No amplification. Still, I believe the sound level was reaching 90 db at times at my seating position. So the equivalent Fletcher-Munson curve was pretty flat. The music sounded very natural to me, right from the outset.   I don't listen to headphones...

I think the explanation is in demographics. The majority of the USA highest-spending consumers are aging baby boomers now. They are gradually losing sensitivity to the higher frequency bands. In order to hear music the way it sounded to them when they were young, they need  gear with quite...

I feel I can answer this set of questions, but only this one, as it is of general nature and not specifically about HD800. I'm still on HD650.   Yes, it is indeed much harder to find the ideal sound through headphones than through speakers. I think the major reason it that most records were...

Used to have VLZ and agree with the term "serviceable", decent yet nothing to write home about, good for amplifying iPads/iPods perhaps.   Onyx 820i is in a different league.  You'd need to listen and compare for yourself though. To my ears Onyx sounds much like Benchmark DAC1 but with...

Didn't have good experience with Behringer gear headphone outputs. Their line-level signal path is usually decent, but they tend to skimp on power supplies and headphone amp stages.   I use Mackie Onyx 820i Firewire interface/mixer with HD650 and I'm pretty happy with it. IMHO Onyx beats...

Excellent reference to the 3-frequencies intermodulation distortion measurements. Thank you!   I looked at virtually all ryumatsuba measurements and mentally compared them to my impressions of the headphones I've heard. Not a very scientific conclusion, yet it appears that the flatter the...

I agree with about 90% of what you said in this thread .   The remaining 10% relate to the drastically changed rules of the game, the awareness of which is not yet universal among smaller manufacturers and retailers.   For instance, imagine someone considering buying Lexicon BluRay...

Here we disagree. For instance, I don't think that Harman/Lexicon was well served by the employee(s) responsible for this: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/blu-ray-maker-re-boxes-500-player-charges-3500/   The point is, whoever did that, didn't think through the longer-term...

Here's some food for thought on this subject: http://www.dandodiary.com/2007/04/articles/securities-litigation/counting-the-subprime-lender-lawsuits/. Note the recent update to this article. I agree that those who are really responsible for the bubble and profited most from it won't get...

I know  but as Andy Grove maintained, "Only Paranoid Survives"    On a more serious note, I've been advising colleagues, friends, and extended family members since 2002 to get out of the housing market as the signs of a fraudulent trap about to close were all too obvious to me. Needless to...

I think that's not the people discussing the issues scientifically, but those of the "audiophiles" who are in fact marketers or sellers of these cables who have real reason to fear becoming unsafe at some point in the future. I guess they don't understand that these discussions are not really...

Regrettably, I spent many years living the typical audiophile lifestyle, caught in the never-ending cycle of money-draining gear upgrades, trying to achieve the ultimate enjoyment. At some point I came to seriously considering very expensive gear, such as this one...