A Concise View of Why The ATH-M50 is No Longer King

[streetdragon]

Quote:

Don't worry Zardak, I believe you!...well sorta anyways. I'm sure your sub 100 is good but it's hard to believe that it beats a planar magnet such as the abyss. Not that the Abyss is particularly excellent for the price anyways...you could probably get better SQ from those ridiculous looking electrostats from the 90s.

 

it was believable when it was still against the m50 and other similar offerings, but when he stretched it up to the flagships it definitely sounds like bullshet

Also earlier he stated that he has gone through every single headphone on earth in post 536. (which includes orhpeus, hd414, hd1000, HP2, MDR 1, Lamda and almost countless more el cheapos) which is clearly false.

 

[Magick Man]

I went through every headphone on the planet, ALL OF THEM, you name it i've listened to it, regardless of price

Horse ****, I'm convinced you haven't listened to much of anything at all.

I'm betting you're some former Head-Fier who was banned for trolling or ripping people off in trades (like swbf2cheater or someone similar). There's no such place in Melbourne that carries all the gear you've been talking about, not even close. :rolleyes:

 

[streetdragon]

Well jaben australlia has quite a lot of gear though. Seems to be significantly more than jaben malaysia. Though i'm pretty sure there is no stax, orpheous, abyss,k1000, and some other classics.

 

[Magick Man]

Well jaben australlia has quite a lot of gear though. Seems to be significantly more than jaben malaysia. Though i'm pretty sure there is no stax, orpheous, abyss,k1000, and some other classics.

They lack most high-end offerings and definitely don't stock any electrostats. Not to mention their source and amp display selection looks to be pretty limited. While a very good store, they don't have anything close to what he's claiming.

 

[gelocks]

Quote:

You only need to fly to Melbourne Australia, not to far from you at all cober, turn the shrimp over man! It's burning man, turn it over! LOL
 
I'm in Richmond Melbourne dude.
 
I went through every headphone on the planet, ALL OF THEM, you name it i've listened to it, regardless of price, and simply couldn't find an accurate headphone with full extension of all sonic frequencies, believe me, the Holy grail can be had for $200 all-up. The FiiO E12 and this sub $100 headphone, simple, and you don't even need a line-out adapter, i'm getting this performance directly from the ubiquitous 3.5mm jack on my HTC Smartphone plugged straight into the FiiO E12. GOD STRIKE ME DEAD IF I'M LYING, this headphone is the closest thing to perfection i've ever heard, and actually, as far as i can tell it is perfect, and i understand the meaning of perfect, nothing is, but damn this sub $100 headphone sounds like God made it with His own hands, simply astonishing, no hyped frequencies, no quirks in the headphone presentation and no bias from wishful thinking, just perfect sonic balance.

 
I remember seeing a couple of your reviews here at Head-Fi.
So, you finally found your "end game" headphones?!?
Will you post a review on them soon?
And seeing that you tried "every" headphone under the sun, would you do comparisons and add pictures and all that stuff (in order to see that you ACTUALLY tried them and are comparing them NOT only in sound characteristics, but BUILD and COMFORT too -- i.e. are the pads shallow, velour, leather, etc. etc.)
 
I'm very interested as I'm always in "buying mode".
 
Amp-wise, I already use a Schiit Magni so, no need for the FiiO...
 
Quote:

Don't worry Zardak, I believe you!...well sorta anyways. I'm sure your sub 100 is good but it's hard to believe that it beats a planar magnet such as the abyss. Not that the Abyss is particularly excellent for the price anyways...you could probably get better SQ from those ridiculous looking electrostats from the 90s.

 

 
Quote:

Horse ****, I'm convinced you haven't listened to much of anything at all.

I'm betting you're some former Head-Fier who was banned for trolling or ripping people off in trades (like swbf2cheater or someone similar). There's no such place in Melbourne that carries all the gear you've been talking about, not even close.

 
Yeah... it's hard to believe unless he lists his source... (pretty much doubt that he has bought all of them since it seems his most expensive buy were the M50s...)

 

[ssrock64]

I go away a few days and zardak throws my thread into chaos...

Thanks to Magick, Billybob, and others for the wit.

Let's move on now...

 

[jude]

Quote:

I go away a few days and zardak throws my thread into chaos...

Thanks to Magick, Billybob, and others for the wit.

Let's move on now...

 
ssrock64, I'm sorry for the turns it took.
 
At least one person has been restricted from accessing this thread, which I predict will help keep it more on topic.

 

[ssrock64]

It's not like the thread was really all that active anyways, but I'm glad the system worked and he's been taken away.

 

[wafflezz]

Nooo I liked that guy . He was entertaining.
Anyways, you all say that the m50 has been "dethroned". Are there any entry level/budget cans you guys think that clearly defeat the m50? I have one in mind but even then, there are things that the m50 does better.

 

[Argyris]

Reading the OP again (I seem to recall coming across it a while ago before the latest festivities), I'm reminded of my futile attempts to debunk the "White-box M50" myth. I'll try again one more time. I'm not picking on you, ssrock64. I'm just pointing this out because I actually know where the myth came from. I'd like everybody to take a look at this Headfonia article and read it very carefully. I'll quote the relevant portion here:
 
Quote:

Originally Written on Headfonia

The difference is very interesting, and me and Hadi thinks that the different production batches account for more difference between the two headphones than the burn-in did. Although the burn-in makes the new headphone smoother and improves the technicalities slightly, the different production batch literally gives us two slightly different versions of the M-50 sound. I asked some other enthusiasts to listen to the two fully burned M-50s. Some people can notice the difference, and some other cannot. So clearly, we’re talking about very subtle things here. And yet the difference due to the burn-in is even more marginal than the production batch difference.
 

 
They are not saying there are two consistently different versions of the M50 design. What they are saying is that the production batch, NOT a redesign or consistent manufacturing difference, produced a single sample that differed slightly from their existing single sample. Think about it. How difficult would it be to make sure every single product in every single production run sounded exactly the same? If it could be done at all (I'm not sure it could--just look at the trouble Audeze and Beyer have had in recent times), it would require a considerable amount of testing and very tight tolerances on production. All of this would be very expensive. Could Audio-Technica really be expected to put all that effort into a $150 mass market design? Certainly not! The "differences" mentioned are not the fundamental, instantly recognizable ones frequently cited on HF. The author makes it clear that if he didn't have both samples right next to one another, he probably couldn't tell the difference. This is consistent with expected differences between samples or production runs--small and subtle, not fundamental, differences.
 
Now look at the picture at the top of the article page. It's a white box. Search the page and you'll see no mention of "white." The author never made a point of it, and nobody in the comments did, either. What clearly happened is a Head-Fi'er (no clue who) skimmed the article, looked at that picture, and thought wow, the new one sounds different, and my M50 came in a blue box. The white box ones must be different! From there, it's easy enough to convince yourself that if you hear any difference at all, of course you hear the same difference everybody else did (confirmation bias). And, to be honest, until this whole business broke, how many people went around listening to lots of different M50s to see if they could spot a difference between them?
 
At the time I'm sure the author had no clue this paragraph would spawn a piece of heavily quoted M50 lore. There was no mention of white box M50s before or when this article was published because I remember reading it before ever coming across a mention of the issue. If the phenomenon were already attested, the picture would have jogged my memory and the first thing I would have thought was, "Hmm, I wonder if this supposed difference between box colors might have played a part in their testing." And if not me, somebody would have brought it up in the comments.
 
Hopefully all this didn't come across as irritable or condescending or anything like that. To be honest, I don't really care what people believe because I didn't like the M50 all that much to begin with. I'm just fascinated at how a chance paragraph could generate this whole mythos. In a way, it proves that our now-departed Z-man was right about us to an extent.

 

[gikigill]

The JVC S500 is a contender when properly amped. I still find it hard to believe how good it is for $50.

 

[Argyris]

As is the RP-HTF600-S. In fact, while I didn't have an M50 on hand to compare, the former sounded remarkably similar to how I remembered the M50 sounding. Both have deep, well-extended, slightly boosted bass; good top end extension, and somewhat recessed upper midrange. They both, incidentally, have angled drivers, though the RP-HTF600-S didn't have the problem producing a center image that I experienced with the M50.*
 
Build quality is nowhere near as good as with the M50, however. I was quite impressed with the latter on that front, though maybe at the time I just didn't have anything to compare it to since it was my first decent headphone.
 
*I fully submit that this might have been a problem with how the headphone interfaced with my ears, since I haven't read this complaint anywhere else for the M50, though I have read people saying it about the Beyer T1, which also has angled drivers.

 

[ssrock64]

I'll amend the original post to account for the white-box myth when I'm at a computer next , Argyrus. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Argyris]

Quote:

I'll amend the original post to account for the white-box myth when I'm at a computer next , Argyrus. Thanks for pointing that out.

 
No problem. 

 I'm glad you understand I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything. I find the whole thing interesting more than anything.
 
I also agree with most of the points in the original post, particularly the one about people with one headphone going around and recommending it above everything else. It's this kind of thing that resulted in me purchasing an M50 in the first place, before I was an active member at Head-Fi.

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

The JVC S500 is a contender when properly amped. I still find it hard to believe how good it is for $50.

 
I don't think the S500 even needs any extra amping. Clip Zip, iPod 5.5G , Cowon X9, even my Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (the lowest SQ of the group) power the S500's easily. They also respond well to EQ if the user is so inclined.