I've heard that audiophools like balanced because it has superb noise rejection for their super long 2 m cables where noise is such a big influence on the signal. Don't question their logic, they know better than you. XD
But yeah, I'm curious to hear it myself. The Pulse X is fully balanced from the USB input to the 4-pin XLR output. The singe-ended output just uses the + signals from the left and right channels of the amp's differential signal pathways, so in theory the two outputs should sound identical albeit more power output through the XLR output.
I've heard that audiophools like balanced because it has superb noise rejection for their super long 2 m cables where noise is such a big influence on the signal. XD
and you know what? I've seen so many "balanced" amps that doesn't actually have a balanced receiver..... they are simply 2 amps that provide zero noise rejection.
you will get double the distortion though.
I've heard that audiophools like balanced because it has superb noise rejection for their super long 2 m cables where noise is such a big influence on the signal. Don't question their logic, they know better than you. XD
Dunno. I'm in constant (online) contact with some MtFs and they don't mind, or even use the word themselves. Might be because most -if not all- are Chan people, though. I've been talking (or lurking, since it's an IRC channel) there long before I joined GAF, so it influenced me more in that regard.
I think that might be it. I've got a friend who's always referring to me as his "ni99a" (we're both Asian), and I find that off putting and disturbing too, so what the hell do I know.
I'm not quite sure what the intended point for "traps" even is in Japan, since I suppose you'd have to get it straight from the horse's mouth rather than have it be interpreted by fans. I wouldn't doubt if there were inherent sexist reasons behind the whole "trap" thing in anime though, seeing how racially tone deaf stuff like Terra Formars exists. I think the thing that bothers me about the term "trap" is that it suggests that you're tricked into being attracted to a person. It's a semantic issue that I take offense to more than anything.
I don't know, it's a highly contentious topic if you even run a cursory search and a lot of anime fans don't seem to find the word offensive. I think its use has transcended the anime community at this point.
You can find it listed at GLAAD as a defamatory term:
http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender
I personally think it's kind of a ****ty term, so I won't be using it, kinda like how I've grown out of saying "that **** is gay"
In other news I did get to audition the HE1000 yesterday driven by the ASUS Essence III. I was pretty damn impressed by it. At $2,000 I'd be pretty tempted, but I wouldn't give it a moment's thought at $3K. Interestingly enough, the tour pairs seem to be priced at $2,200... which I could probably swing if I were to sell some stuff... Still, it's a monstrously sized HP and I actually needed a wad of paper towels sitting on my head to even achieve a comfy fit as even on the lowest setting on the sliders, the phone was just too damned big.
In other news I did get to audition the HE1000 yesterday driven by the ASUS Essence III. I was pretty damn impressed by it. At $2,000 I'd be pretty tempted, but I wouldn't give it a moment's thought at $3K. Interestingly enough, the tour pairs seem to be priced at $2,200... which I could probably swing if I were to sell some stuff... Still, it's a monstrously sized HP and I actually needed a wad of paper towels sitting on my head to even achieve a comfy fit as even on the lowest setting on the sliders, the phone was just too damned big.
I'm surprised you liked it com from an SRS-2170. XD
Don't mind the piss poor formatting below. Working with formatting on mobile is a biach.
Well I don't know where to put these other than in a text file and I don't want to post it yet, so I might as well post them here since this PM isn't likely going to get deleted and you'd likely be curious anyway.
I've been listening to the HE1000 for about 30 minutes now since it came out of the box.
Typical gut-hitting bass that planar magnetic headphones tend to have
Lower-mids have decent timbre and weight, but sound a bit uneven
Upper-mids have too much energy on the upper-frequencies and seem a bit subdued in the lower area
Treble most definitely seems grainy
Peak in the treble before 9 kHz, but after 6 kHz that makes things sound fatiguing to me
Great instrument separation
Pretty good imaging
Not so great at rendering of soundstage height, but good depth and decent width
Overall slight J-shaped sound signature to me (warm bass, laid-back mids, boosted upper-mids/treble)
Reminder for what playlist I'm using:
Chesky - Drum Kit Dynamic Range (soundstage, center imaging, treble, bass, transparency, fatigue)
I Ching - Gadamaylin (upper-mid timbre, bass speed, instrument separation, imaging)
John Hammondd - Get Behind the Mule (lower-mid timbre, texture, imaging)
Hoff Ensemble - Dele alle og tanker (imaging, instrument separation, timbre, detail retrieval, soundstage)
Jan Gunnar Hoff - Living (piano timbre)
Mongo Santamaría - Azteca (upper-mid timbre, texture, instrument separation, imaging)
Lenny White - Stank [Binaural] (instrument separation, imaging, soundstage)
Sixto Sounds - The Skull Fortress (compressed modern music, instrument separation)
Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World [HD Tracks tape rip] (dynamic pop music, midrange timbre, dynamic range)
Seal - Kiss From a Rose [HD Tracks] (midrange timbre, instrument separation)
Seal - Crazy [HD Tracks] (midrange timbre, dynamic range, instrument separation)
Peggy Hsu - The Fallen Aristocrat (upper-mid timbre, instrument separation, dynamic range)
Harmen Fraanje Quartet - Paris Song (midrange timbre, instrument separation)
A Far Cry - The Origin of Fire [Binarual] (upper-mid timbre)
Zhang Hong Yan - High Spring and Pure Snow (upper-mid timbre)
John Adams Advance Vocal Ensemble - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (imaging)
David Elias - Morning Light/Western Town (imaging, midrange timbre, bass)
Using the Geek Out 1000 on the Frequency Response Mode digital filter, Audirvana Plus no upsampling and hog mode.
Not really liking it right now; too much upper-mid/treble energy for me. The SR-207 is definitely faster than the HE1000 in the bass to me, no questions asked. It also holds up the treble much better without it sounding grainy.
I added some of Daft Punk's RAM songs on the playlist for imaging and bass. I'm also using the same playlist for burning in the drivers, minus the last 5 songs since they're DSD tracks and that tends to make the Geek Out choke up after a few hours of use for some reason. I added a few pink noise tracks as well to work the entire 8-65,000 Hz.
From Innerfidelity's measurements, I use the raw (grey coloured lines) for analysis since the red/blue ones are a different compensation curve that I don't understand.
Basically the raw measurements take the shape of the diffuse-field Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) because Tyll's measurement rig is a Head And Torso Simulator (HATS).
HATS measuring rigs take into account the acoustic response that would occur as a result of your head, ears, and torso when speakers are played at your head. Speakers that measure flat with a standard microphone won't measure flat on a HATS system because of the various reflective, amplifying, and absorbing factors of the head, ears, and torso.
I posted this in a different PM about how to interpret the Innerfidelity measurements of the HE1000 but I thought I'd post them here too
Quote:
From Innerfidelity's measurements, I use the raw (grey coloured lines) for analysis since the red/blue ones are a different compensation curve that I don't understand.
Basically the raw measurements take the shape of the diffuse-field Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) because Tyll's measurement rig is a Head And Torso Simulator (HATS).
HATS measuring rigs take into account the acoustic response that would occur as a result of your head, ears, and torso when speakers are played at your head. Speakers that measure flat with a standard microphone won't measure flat on a HATS system because of the various reflective, amplifying, and absorbing factors of the head, ears, and torso.
The diffuse-field HRTF is the response a HATS system would measure when speakers (measuring flat relative to a standard microphone) are played in an anechoic chamber and moved around the HATS system, simulating music from different angles around the head.
The green line in my screenshot represents this response and it's been used in acoustic research for decades. STAX electrostatic earspeakers and the AKG K1000 have been known to generally follow this curve pretty well and have been amongst the well-regarded headphones throughout the decades.
The black line in the plot represents a newly developed target curve for headphones made by Harman. Harman has been doing research for the past 5-ish years now for creating a new target response for headphones. Instead of speakers being measured by a HATS system in a diffuse-field situation within an anechoic chamber, Harman hypothesises that a headphone should sound like good speakers in a room. Their target response has a boosted bass and lowered treble response from the diffuse-field HRTF because of bass gain due to the room acoustics and treble loss due to diminished power output and off-axis high-frequency effects. Instead of a HATS system, they used subjective impressions from people around the world to create this response.
Regardless of what the two lines mean though, I think a headphone that has a raw frequency response between the two is generally a good headphone. Depending on your preferences you may prefer one or the other, or maybe somewhere in-between. I tend to like diffuse-field HRTF headphones better than ones that follow the Harman target in terms of the bass response, but that's just me and I'm sure many like the Harman one more.
For the HE1000 specifically, it generally follows the two curves, but so do many headphones. The HE-560 did so pretty well as well. I haven't posted my impressions of the HE1000 yet, but I find it to be a bit warm-sounding in the midrange; indeed the raw measurements have a bit of presence above the two targets at 100-400 Hz. As I mentioned earlier, I tend to prefer headphones that follow the diffuse-field HRTF for the bass. I find the HE1000 to have too much bass for my personal preferences for a reference headphone, and indeed the raw measurements are above the green line by a couple of decibels. What frequency response measurements do not show is how quick the driver is. Having a waterfall plot can aid in this though since it shows the driver decay over time for the measured frequencies. I hear the HE1000 to have a much slower bass response than that of the SR-207.
I also find the midrange/upper-midrange area to sound laid-back, not unlike that of the HE-560; indeed the raw measurements have a huge recession from the target at around 1-3 kHz, but the rest of the upper-midrange seems to be on-target. If you turn up the volume to get the midrange/upper-midrange area to sound to the level you're interested in, the rest of the upper-midrange will probably sound too bright.
The treble is a bit trickier to correlate since your ear shape affects those frequencies the most. For a HATS system, small pinnae simulators will pick up more high-frequencies than larger ones for example. For my ears, I don't hear the 9 khz peak as suggested by the measurements. Usually the 9-10 kHz peaks are trouble points for me like in the HE-500, but in the case of the HE1000 for me, I don't hear it too much. I do hear the peak at around 6-7 kHz though and that bugs me a bit. The high frequency measurements after 10 kHz suggest that the treble is above the target curves, and I usually hear that as a grainy sound. Indeed, I find the HE1000 to sound grainy next to the SR-207.
Overall, I find the HE1000 to sound good. However, at its $3000 price point....I'd much rather stick to the STAX SRS-2170 at 1/6 the price and I feel that it's a better reference headphone overall. I can see why people like the HE1000 though; the bass is pretty addicting, as with many planar magnetic headphones.
I don't like the soundstage of the HE1000 either. The HD800 sounds artificial to me, way too large, but the HE1000 sounds even weirder. Someone in the impressions thread mentioned soundstage blobs, or something like that and that's what I hear too.
Blob 1: very wide soundstage, which is what I was hearing at the Seattle mini-meet
Blob 2: very deep and tall soundstage, which is what I was hearing in my pre-burn-in impressions
Listening to the HE1000 as a whole, it sounds really weird to me to have the two blobs and it makes the music seem unfocused.
That's why I brought up trying the HE1000 backwards earlier in the thread because to me, the two soundstage blobs become more like one when worn backwards. I get a similar effect with the SR-207 but in the opposite sense: from a cohesive soundstage normally, to a really wide blob and a center blob.
My impressions reflect yours almost exactly.
The HE1000 sounded its best with pretty acoustic music, though I suppose that is true for any headphone. With more energetic music, it did not perform nearly as well. Too warm and subdued, smoothing over detail, and despite this, there were some annoying treble peaks, though not painful like the HD 800.
Oddly enough, I didn't have any problems with the sound of the Abyss...but it didn't sound special to me either. I preferred the HE1000 quite a bit, and the HE1000 is still nowhere good enough for me. And I could not get the Abyss to fit me at all either. And you know how obsessed I have been in the past about that headphone, so I'm sure you know that I tried everything. I think my head is too small.
So yeah...after hearing all the non-electrostatic flagships and not being impressed, I've naturally narrowed down my choices to STAX.
I didn't hear it for more than maybe 20 combined minutes since I was talking to some other people who were there and hopping back and forth between other phones such as the UM Maverick/Mason, PM3 and HE560. I also didn't listen to anything that I actually recognized since I didn't have my own music to listen with. I think the only track that I tested it with that I knew well was Paranoid Android. Didn't note any issues with that track TBH in terms of midrange weirdness or harshess. The other tracks I tested were electronic tracks like stuff by Flying Lotus and Liars. Very impressive sounding presentation and bass reproduction was what I took away from it, but again, I hardly tested but a handful of tracks across two genres.
How big are your project mat thingies, and do you like working on them?
I can send you some fancy pants 'industry standard' rubber ESD matting, real quality stuff, you don't really have to worry melting it with an iron or anything.
The top layer is static dissipative and is fairly durable, you might mark it if you stab it with probes but it's hard to pierce through to the bottom conductive layer without a blade, so you can power circuits on it no worries. It's sold in 10M rolls, I'm bringing it out of storage soonish to cut up for another table, let me know if you want a little bit to play with (my roll was ~90cm wide).
My mats are A3 size and I have two of them. I actually don't do much soldering directly on the mat, pretty much all boards I work with are insulated from the mat by air. I prefer the centimeter grid anyway, so thanks for the offer but I can make do
I actually find the whole "trap" terminology to be demeaning/dehumanizing. One of my least favorite aspects of the anime fandom, I dont mean this in a so-called "SJW" manner either, since I actually got to know two transgender M->F individuals on a personal level since we were part of a short lived online project on GAF. Their struggles aren't something to be made light of.
^This. And often it is not a personal choice of the character nor an issue of a self-identifying gender. It is either unintentional or forced upon them by another character. Besides, crossdressing is a more appropriate term.
I'm surprised you liked it com from an SRS-2170. XD
Don't mind the piss poor formatting below. Working with formatting on mobile is a biach.
Well I don't know where to put these other than in a text file and I don't want to post it yet, so I might as well post them here since this PM isn't likely going to get deleted and you'd likely be curious anyway.
I've been listening to the HE1000 for about 30 minutes now since it came out of the box.
Typical gut-hitting bass that planar magnetic headphones tend to have
Lower-mids have decent timbre and weight, but sound a bit uneven
Upper-mids have too much energy on the upper-frequencies and seem a bit subdued in the lower area
Treble most definitely seems grainy
Peak in the treble before 9 kHz, but after 6 kHz that makes things sound fatiguing to me
Great instrument separation
Pretty good imaging
Not so great at rendering of soundstage height, but good depth and decent width
Overall slight J-shaped sound signature to me (warm bass, laid-back mids, boosted upper-mids/treble)
Reminder for what playlist I'm using:
Chesky - Drum Kit Dynamic Range (soundstage, center imaging, treble, bass, transparency, fatigue)
I Ching - Gadamaylin (upper-mid timbre, bass speed, instrument separation, imaging)
John Hammondd - Get Behind the Mule (lower-mid timbre, texture, imaging)
Hoff Ensemble - Dele alle og tanker (imaging, instrument separation, timbre, detail retrieval, soundstage)
Jan Gunnar Hoff - Living (piano timbre)
Mongo Santamaría - Azteca (upper-mid timbre, texture, instrument separation, imaging)
Lenny White - Stank [Binaural] (instrument separation, imaging, soundstage)
Sixto Sounds - The Skull Fortress (compressed modern music, instrument separation)
Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World [HD Tracks tape rip] (dynamic pop music, midrange timbre, dynamic range)
Seal - Kiss From a Rose [HD Tracks] (midrange timbre, instrument separation)
Seal - Crazy [HD Tracks] (midrange timbre, dynamic range, instrument separation)
Peggy Hsu - The Fallen Aristocrat (upper-mid timbre, instrument separation, dynamic range)
Harmen Fraanje Quartet - Paris Song (midrange timbre, instrument separation)
A Far Cry - The Origin of Fire [Binarual] (upper-mid timbre)
Zhang Hong Yan - High Spring and Pure Snow (upper-mid timbre)
John Adams Advance Vocal Ensemble - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (imaging)
David Elias - Morning Light/Western Town (imaging, midrange timbre, bass)
Using the Geek Out 1000 on the Frequency Response Mode digital filter, Audirvana Plus no upsampling and hog mode.
Not really liking it right now; too much upper-mid/treble energy for me. The SR-207 is definitely faster than the HE1000 in the bass to me, no questions asked. It also holds up the treble much better without it sounding grainy.
I added some of Daft Punk's RAM songs on the playlist for imaging and bass. I'm also using the same playlist for burning in the drivers, minus the last 5 songs since they're DSD tracks and that tends to make the Geek Out choke up after a few hours of use for some reason. I added a few pink noise tracks as well to work the entire 8-65,000 Hz.
From Innerfidelity's measurements, I use the raw (grey coloured lines) for analysis since the red/blue ones are a different compensation curve that I don't understand.
Basically the raw measurements take the shape of the diffuse-field Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) because Tyll's measurement rig is a Head And Torso Simulator (HATS).
HATS measuring rigs take into account the acoustic response that would occur as a result of your head, ears, and torso when speakers are played at your head. Speakers that measure flat with a standard microphone won't measure flat on a HATS system because of the various reflective, amplifying, and absorbing factors of the head, ears, and torso.
I posted this in a different PM about how to interpret the Innerfidelity measurements of the HE1000 but I thought I'd post them here too
Quote:
From Innerfidelity's measurements, I use the raw (grey coloured lines) for analysis since the red/blue ones are a different compensation curve that I don't understand.
Basically the raw measurements take the shape of the diffuse-field Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) because Tyll's measurement rig is a Head And Torso Simulator (HATS).
HATS measuring rigs take into account the acoustic response that would occur as a result of your head, ears, and torso when speakers are played at your head. Speakers that measure flat with a standard microphone won't measure flat on a HATS system because of the various reflective, amplifying, and absorbing factors of the head, ears, and torso.
The diffuse-field HRTF is the response a HATS system would measure when speakers (measuring flat relative to a standard microphone) are played in an anechoic chamber and moved around the HATS system, simulating music from different angles around the head.
The green line in my screenshot represents this response and it's been used in acoustic research for decades. STAX electrostatic earspeakers and the AKG K1000 have been known to generally follow this curve pretty well and have been amongst the well-regarded headphones throughout the decades.
The black line in the plot represents a newly developed target curve for headphones made by Harman. Harman has been doing research for the past 5-ish years now for creating a new target response for headphones. Instead of speakers being measured by a HATS system in a diffuse-field situation within an anechoic chamber, Harman hypothesises that a headphone should sound like good speakers in a room. Their target response has a boosted bass and lowered treble response from the diffuse-field HRTF because of bass gain due to the room acoustics and treble loss due to diminished power output and off-axis high-frequency effects. Instead of a HATS system, they used subjective impressions from people around the world to create this response.
Regardless of what the two lines mean though, I think a headphone that has a raw frequency response between the two is generally a good headphone. Depending on your preferences you may prefer one or the other, or maybe somewhere in-between. I tend to like diffuse-field HRTF headphones better than ones that follow the Harman target in terms of the bass response, but that's just me and I'm sure many like the Harman one more.
For the HE1000 specifically, it generally follows the two curves, but so do many headphones. The HE-560 did so pretty well as well. I haven't posted my impressions of the HE1000 yet, but I find it to be a bit warm-sounding in the midrange; indeed the raw measurements have a bit of presence above the two targets at 100-400 Hz. As I mentioned earlier, I tend to prefer headphones that follow the diffuse-field HRTF for the bass. I find the HE1000 to have too much bass for my personal preferences for a reference headphone, and indeed the raw measurements are above the green line by a couple of decibels. What frequency response measurements do not show is how quick the driver is. Having a waterfall plot can aid in this though since it shows the driver decay over time for the measured frequencies. I hear the HE1000 to have a much slower bass response than that of the SR-207.
I also find the midrange/upper-midrange area to sound laid-back, not unlike that of the HE-560; indeed the raw measurements have a huge recession from the target at around 1-3 kHz, but the rest of the upper-midrange seems to be on-target. If you turn up the volume to get the midrange/upper-midrange area to sound to the level you're interested in, the rest of the upper-midrange will probably sound too bright.
The treble is a bit trickier to correlate since your ear shape affects those frequencies the most. For a HATS system, small pinnae simulators will pick up more high-frequencies than larger ones for example. For my ears, I don't hear the 9 khz peak as suggested by the measurements. Usually the 9-10 kHz peaks are trouble points for me like in the HE-500, but in the case of the HE1000 for me, I don't hear it too much. I do hear the peak at around 6-7 kHz though and that bugs me a bit. The high frequency measurements after 10 kHz suggest that the treble is above the target curves, and I usually hear that as a grainy sound. Indeed, I find the HE1000 to sound grainy next to the SR-207.
Overall, I find the HE1000 to sound good. However, at its $3000 price point....I'd much rather stick to the STAX SRS-2170 at 1/6 the price and I feel that it's a better reference headphone overall. I can see why people like the HE1000 though; the bass is pretty addicting, as with many planar magnetic headphones.
I don't like the soundstage of the HE1000 either. The HD800 sounds artificial to me, way too large, but the HE1000 sounds even weirder. Someone in the impressions thread mentioned soundstage blobs, or something like that and that's what I hear too.
Blob 1: very wide soundstage, which is what I was hearing at the Seattle mini-meet
Blob 2: very deep and tall soundstage, which is what I was hearing in my pre-burn-in impressions
Listening to the HE1000 as a whole, it sounds really weird to me to have the two blobs and it makes the music seem unfocused.
That's why I brought up trying the HE1000 backwards earlier in the thread because to me, the two soundstage blobs become more like one when worn backwards. I get a similar effect with the SR-207 but in the opposite sense: from a cohesive soundstage normally, to a really wide blob and a center blob.
My impressions reflect yours almost exactly.
The HE1000 sounded its best with pretty acoustic music, though I suppose that is true for any headphone. With more energetic music, it did not perform nearly as well. Too warm and subdued, smoothing over detail, and despite this, there were some annoying treble peaks, though not painful like the HD 800.
Oddly enough, I didn't have any problems with the sound of the Abyss...but it didn't sound special to me either. I preferred the HE1000 quite a bit, and the HE1000 is still nowhere good enough for me. And I could not get the Abyss to fit me at all either. And you know how obsessed I have been in the past about that headphone, so I'm sure you know that I tried everything. I think my head is too small.
So yeah...after hearing all the non-electrostatic flagships and not being impressed, I've naturally narrowed down my choices to STAX.
My mats are A3 size and I have two of them. I actually don't do much soldering directly on the mat, pretty much all boards I work with are insulated from the mat by air. I prefer the centimeter grid anyway, so thanks for the offer but I can make do
^This. And often it is not a personal choice of the character nor an issue of a self-identifying gender. It is either unintentional or forced upon them by another character. Besides, crossdressing is a more appropriate term.
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