[cosmopragma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 003 It would greatly help to tell us what type of music you listen to.

Well, .... Quote:

I listen to pop, rock, and orchestral mostly

 

[003]

I'm on a role arn't I.

Just got back from my long trip yesterday, a 7 hour drive and I got back at 12:30 AM, went to bed around 2:00 and woke up unable to go back to sleep at 7:30. I wont say anything else for fear of making another mistake.

 

[Valaire]

LoL, thanks for backing me up there cosmo. Sorry I have been away all day baking in the sun at Six Flags.

Anyways, yes, I do have a budget, I was merely saying that I can afford an HD650, so I -could- get something around that quality in terms of audiophile headphones. Or I could spend some of that money on an amp.

As for the amp and the whole headphoes-and-speakers-plugged-in-at-same-time dilemma, so you are saying if I get a dedicated amp I can just use a gold-plated splitter to split and it won't hurt the audio quality too much?

The legality of the jhymn thing is a moot point as it does not work with Itunes6. I don't believe anything specific has been decided in a court of law regarding that particular issue. I just find it really annoying that Itunes restricts me playing songs in Itunes which I refuse to do. You can burn the songs to a cd within itunes then rip then back out in foobar. It's tedious and sucks.

Are there any particular recommendations as to a price/performance cutoff in the sub $150 range for a dedicated amp and if this is the sort of thing I should definitely buy used in these forums?

Thanks for the replies!

 

[russdog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valaire I just find it really annoying that Itunes restricts me playing songs in Itunes which I refuse to do. You can burn the songs to a cd within itunes then rip then back out in foobar. It's tedious and sucks.

To me, iTunes is the exemplar of fascist software. I hate it. I didn't start out hating it. I started out expecting to like it. It taught me to hate it. I wanted to be its friend, and it made me an enemy. I'm not an enemy of very many things. By creating an enemy out of me, iTunes did something that's hard to do.

 

[Meyvn]

My vote is, get the AKG K701 + Electric Avenues PA2V2 amp (Pocket Amp 2, Version 2). The K701s are around 300 or less, and the PA2V2 is $60. If you're not comfortable with AKG because you're more familiar with Sennheiser, I'd recommend going with the HD600 if you're willing to buy an amp, and maybe buying a Little Dot Micro+; it's known for being brighter. If you don't want an amp at all, get the HD595 50 ohm version (there's also a 120 ohm version; don't get this one unless you want to buy an amp). Should do you just fine. Either way I wouldn't get the HD650. I definitely prefer the HD600. I should add that in none of these configurations did I find lower bitrates "unlistenable," or even much different. I have a hard time telling 192 kbps from CD quality if it's ripped well, and in VBR.

 

[pbalcer]

I am not going to tell you which headphones are better - it is a mater of taste. I can only tell you about my experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valaire 1. Source: As I've said, my source is an X-Fi and the music is 128-192 kbps MP3's for the most part and as for games, FPS, MMORPG, etc. I play CS1.6 a lot so positional audio is important. I was looking at the HD600 vs the HD650. The 650 is $349, HD600 is $265, and HD595 is $200 (at Newegg). I'm concerned about buying headphones that people say are too sensitive to poorly coded MP3's.

I had HD600 and HD650. I sold HD600. I like HD650 so much better and right now they are my main headphones.

A thing to consider: all high-quality headphones are very revealing - otherwise they wouldn't be high-quality. It just happens that different headphones have different sound signatures (Grado, AKG, Sennheiser, etc.). But any top-end headphone will show you are the flaws of the poorly encoded MP3s.

If you want to "hide"/mask the imperfections of MP3s, you might want to consider headphones like AKG K240S (very plesant to listen to and one of my favourites), K271S (more neutral than K240S), etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valaire 2. Buying better songs: I use Itunes now to buy songs, and it's a huge pain because I use Foobar and Foobar won't play Itunes formatted songs so I have to burn them to a CD and re-rip them, I'm sure wasting more quality. Is there any plans for an Itunes type service that allows to buy songs in a Lossless format? I would be more than happy to purchase better versions of most of my songs if they were easily available in a song-by-song purchase format like Itunes.

I find the quality of MP3s to be much lower than CD. I have no experience with lossless formats. I buy CDs to get the best sound quality.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valaire 3. Amplifier: Of the three HD's, assuming let's say having a max of $350 to spend, what amplifiers do you recommend for the HD595 or the HD600 versus buying the HD650 without an amp. I'm assuming the amp on my Klipsch headphone jack is a craptastic solution. I'm a little confused by the whole amplifier market, as I'm not interested in a super expensive one. I've heard names thrown around like PiMeta, Micro -something- Plus, and CMoy. In that market what is a good amplifier to get and where do I purchase one (I think some of them are DIY consumer-to-consumer?).

The headphone amp is a must if you decide to pursue the high quality of sound. Sooner or later you will end up buying one. Therefore maybe you should go for the best headphones you can afford right now - the HD650? This way you won't be kicking yourself later (after buying an amp) for not getting "the best" headphones.

BTW, few weeks ago I had a chance to listen to Little Dot II amplifier and compare it to other amps (Hamilton meet). And I really liked the sound. The amp is very inexpensive (considering the sound quality)... I ordered one for myself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valaire 4. How to plug in: I have my speakers hooked up to my X-Fi's three line out's, one of which doubles as a headphone out. How would I go about having both of them hooked up or am I screwed because I don't have the X-Fi Platinum? I'm assuming hooking the headphones to the Klipsch jack through an amplifier is a no no as well. Any thoughts?

Have you tried M-Audio Delta 66 Pro card? It has digital I/O (I hooked it up to my HT receiver) and comes with a box with 4 ins and 4 outs (2 stereo ins and 2 stereo outs). The sound quality is almost as good as my dedicated CD player.


Good luck with your quest!
Peter

 

[Valaire]

I'm leaning towards the HD600 with an amp. I just have to figure out the best way to wire it since I want to have the Klipsch set still plugged into my line outs. If I split the cable, I'll have sound coming out of both. I can power off my Klipsch speakers from control pod but does headphones have an off switch? Can someone link me to what they consider to be a good splitter to buy that will not reduce quality?

As for the amp, I've noticed a lot of the sub $130 amps are portable. I personally have no intention of ever using these headphones outside my home so if there are desktop solutions that are more bang for your buck, please let me know. Otherwise, the LDM+ is what I am considering.

As for break in, do I literally just leave the headphones on playing music when I go to work? Is there a certain volume level?

Thank you.

 

[Dash]

Well, in true Head-Fi fashion I have another suggestion. You can snag a pair of AudioTechnica A500s for 100 bux. They come recommended as a good gaming can with good SQ and are easily driven. Then snag a MS1 from Alessandro for 100 bux. Two house sounds, two hundred dollars and nice little combo.
D

 

[Valaire]

I forgot I had one more question:

For gaming, I need a microphone. I know Zalman makes a clip-on microphone for headphones. Is that the end all be all or is there something else? Don't want to pay anymore than $30 for that.

Desktop mics don't seem to good for gaming. Not sure how lapel mics work with headsets.

 

[Valaire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dash Well, in true Head-Fi fashion I have another suggestion. You can snag a pair of AudioTechnica A500s for 100 bux. They come recommended as a good gaming can with good SQ and are easily driven. Then snag a MS1 from Alessandro for 100 bux. Two house sounds, two hundred dollars and nice little combo. D

That is an interesting proposal but I am much too lazy for that.

 

[crazyhatusc]

For $350 you could get a used HD-600 and a Little Dot II, a used HD-580 and a Corda Headfive, or a used HD-580, Alessandro MS-1, and the Little Dot II. All 3 would be really good for the $$$.

 

[slunk007]

A lot of good comments here for you to consider. Good job guys!

I think if you want good sound quality, the thing you will either simply put up with or get fed up with are the mp3s. Hopefully the majority of them are at least 192 bit-rate. However if you have a lot of 128 bit-rate mp3s you're really gonna wanna upgrade those before you consider upgrading to a headphone with a dedicated amp. Since you have encoded your own rips as FLAC, you have probably already assessed the bit-rate quality of the rest of your library. Either you can live with it, or you can't and then you have to go and find better quality ones.

I think the x-fi will do you fine for music and gaming. There are certainly better sound cards for music listening, but the x-fi seems like a great balance of gaming 3d effects and music sound quality. I have read that you should leave the music crystalizer thing (is that what its called?) turned off though. People didn't really think it made their crap mp3s sound all that much better.

Next is headphones. A lot of the listed ones here would do you well. But I'm sure you won't take their word for it and just get one of the ones listed. When you narrow it down to a few, read up and find which one matches your listening preferences (and requirements) the best. Look for the ones that have good positional cues in gaming while keeping with your ideal sound signature (not too much bass, nice and balanced from low to high) and works best with the type of music you listen to. One thing about CS while wearing my headphones is that the AWP scares the poop outta me if I have the volume up too high... You've been warned!

Finally depending on what 'phone you go with you are presented with the amp question. Buy one or don't bother? Some headphones simply require it to be amped in order to really make them shine. Others, although benefit from an amp, have diminishing returns when using one. The value to you is low since it might only improve the sound a little compared to the $$$ it cost you. If you do decide to get an amp, be sure to read up on which amps are best suited for your 'phone. You wouldn't want to buy a cmoy or mint amp for something that demands more power.

As for burn in, there are many threads (and a stickied one too) that discuss this process/phenomenon. Most people around here tend to think that it does indeed help in breaking-in your headphones. I seem to think so too. You can just leave your headphones plugged-in listening to music at moderate levels to break them in. Or you can leave it on with white noise playing through them (like on a dead tv channel or radio signal). Check in on them (give a listen to some tunes) every 5-10 hours or so to see if you notice a difference.
Or... you can simply listen to them and let them burn-in gradually and experience their transformation.

My Computer Rig isn't great and although my card is an audiophile, I wouldn't consider my setup to be audiophile quality... very good quality, but not audiophile quality.

I have a gaming configuration and a music configuration.

Gaming Config = Onboard SB Live! 24-Bit on my K8N Neo4 Platinum mobo => Monsoon Audio Planar Media 14 2.1 speakers headphone out => Audio Technica A900

Music Config = Foobar2000 => M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcard => JMT PIMETA amp => ATH A900s.

I simply plug my headphones into either the headphone out on my speakers or the amp I bought for my headphones.

In all honesty though. Unless you are planning on eventually upgrading (it happens to us all here) a few components in your computer rig (getting rid of those mp3s, upgrading soundcard, cables, amp, etc) asking for an "audiophile grade" setup right off the bat is silly. It's like going swimming in a cold lake. Do you jump in (and possibly regret it), or do you ease yourself into the water a little bit at a time when you're good and ready?