Citizen Zombie
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2015
- Posts
- 38
- Likes
- 53
I already wrote about the 1990 after my impressions I got at the CanJam Europe 2016 a few pages before. I liked them a lot and so I bought them even with all the other equipment already in the house.
I am mixing and mastering mostly soundscapes for a theatre nearby, record audiobooks with some authors I know well and music with a choir I am friendly with as well a bunch of bands mostly from a 50's background. I don't do that for a living, but I always give the finishing touch to a mix at a professional studio with the help of the owner who is a mastering engineer.
I have a Sennheiser HD 600 since its release and use it as my main headphone for this purpose. For this I even like it better than my HD 800 and Stax SR-007. Don't get me wrong, both are better headphones. To understand why I choose the HD 600 mostly I want to refer to a brilliant thread at gearslutz from the wonderful Audiovisjon about his search for a new near/midfield monitor. I came to a similar conclusion, there are exceptional loudspeakers out there like the Barefoot mm27 highlighting even the smallest nuances. But this may lead you to put hours of work into things nobody will recognise in the final mix. That's why I prefer a neutral and coherent speaker showing me the errors of a mix in a way I never lose track of the whole sound. I use Geithain RL944K1 as speakers because of their ability to bloom on a very short range. In the studio we have ATC SCM45A Pro, Geithain RL 901K among others, but these two are the workhorses.
As a music lover I clearly prefer the HD 800 and Stax. Both are measured and equalised with a head amp from HD Klassik's [size=small]Ingo Schmidt-Lucas (only available in Germany right now). But for mastering? Just too much info for my brain. The HD 600 is revealing, is neutral, is clear, but always with a, let's say it this way, a relaxed and laid back attitude. From my first hours of listening with the DT1990 Pro may be able to deliver what the HD 600 does, but with [/size]the tension of Usain Bolt in the starting block of the Olympic 100m final. I did not compare it directly to my HD 600 yet, but I know this headphone very well. What I did today was a comparison of the balanced and analytical earpads.
I listened to some great and some not-so-great recordings. Great recordings are wonderful to put a smile on your face if you are enjoying a new piece of equipment, but the faults of lesser efforts are more interesting if you want to know how the presentation of these weaknesses is. Take Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique, modern production with a difficult voice and lots of synths and effects. Some tracks work very well, the drum from Lose Control is brilliant, snappy AND bold, but others seems to be from another session or studio. Tell You (Today) sounds way flatter, the synthetic trumpets sound like a Cherry Coke Zero tastes. Overall the DT1990 still sounds enjoyable, these tracks are tough nuts with the Stax. With tracks like these it is easy to understand why many people will love the balance earpads more than the analytical. The added warmth is more than welcome here. A masterpiece of engineering is Massive Attack's Mezzanine. Tremendous and thunderous bass, superb rendering of the voices. With the balanced pads I come closer to sound I know from acquaintances with reasonable priced speakers placed a little too close to the wall. Nice, but slightly wrong. With narrators this gets even clearer, especially if you know the speaker personally. The lower registers are a bit fuller than they should be. I bet you can adapt to that so that your mix does not turn out to be a little bass shy, but I definitely will stick with the analytical. Way closer to the truth and easier to transfer to other systems.
What the Beyerdynamic does really well is telling me the "shape" of a sound. Engineers will know what I mean. If you are working on a mix you will often change certain aspects of a sound, like the attack, transients, compression, whatever. My RL944K1 are excellent in this regard. Many speakers I know are either dry or full sounding. Dry speakers have tremendous punch, but a double bass turns into a bit of an on/off thing. The Geithains have incredible control about how to start, accelerate and stop a sound. The DT1990 is good at this, I won't say similar, this is something time will tell. But I listened to an old Denon CD "National Percussion Group of Kenya - Roots!! African Drums". In one piece the group starts to jump and the bare feet land on a hard surface. The 1990 renders this very realistic. The small African drums have incredible attack, especially hit with a piece of wood. All well here. Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express - Junun has enormous drive, lots of fast percussion, horns and chanting. The 1990 delivers.
I did not listen to classical music today. I focused on the comparison of the two pads and thus used material with a focus in the lower octaves. I found the changing of the pads doable, but nothing I want to complete more often than necessary. For me as an engineer I clearly prefer the analytical pads, because I think the transfer of my mix to other systems will be easier with them. I will measure both in the future, but this is something for 2017. As an audio enthusiast I can understand everyone using the balanced pads, especially for friends of electronic music.
I am mixing and mastering mostly soundscapes for a theatre nearby, record audiobooks with some authors I know well and music with a choir I am friendly with as well a bunch of bands mostly from a 50's background. I don't do that for a living, but I always give the finishing touch to a mix at a professional studio with the help of the owner who is a mastering engineer.
I have a Sennheiser HD 600 since its release and use it as my main headphone for this purpose. For this I even like it better than my HD 800 and Stax SR-007. Don't get me wrong, both are better headphones. To understand why I choose the HD 600 mostly I want to refer to a brilliant thread at gearslutz from the wonderful Audiovisjon about his search for a new near/midfield monitor. I came to a similar conclusion, there are exceptional loudspeakers out there like the Barefoot mm27 highlighting even the smallest nuances. But this may lead you to put hours of work into things nobody will recognise in the final mix. That's why I prefer a neutral and coherent speaker showing me the errors of a mix in a way I never lose track of the whole sound. I use Geithain RL944K1 as speakers because of their ability to bloom on a very short range. In the studio we have ATC SCM45A Pro, Geithain RL 901K among others, but these two are the workhorses.
As a music lover I clearly prefer the HD 800 and Stax. Both are measured and equalised with a head amp from HD Klassik's [size=small]Ingo Schmidt-Lucas (only available in Germany right now). But for mastering? Just too much info for my brain. The HD 600 is revealing, is neutral, is clear, but always with a, let's say it this way, a relaxed and laid back attitude. From my first hours of listening with the DT1990 Pro may be able to deliver what the HD 600 does, but with [/size]the tension of Usain Bolt in the starting block of the Olympic 100m final. I did not compare it directly to my HD 600 yet, but I know this headphone very well. What I did today was a comparison of the balanced and analytical earpads.
I listened to some great and some not-so-great recordings. Great recordings are wonderful to put a smile on your face if you are enjoying a new piece of equipment, but the faults of lesser efforts are more interesting if you want to know how the presentation of these weaknesses is. Take Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique, modern production with a difficult voice and lots of synths and effects. Some tracks work very well, the drum from Lose Control is brilliant, snappy AND bold, but others seems to be from another session or studio. Tell You (Today) sounds way flatter, the synthetic trumpets sound like a Cherry Coke Zero tastes. Overall the DT1990 still sounds enjoyable, these tracks are tough nuts with the Stax. With tracks like these it is easy to understand why many people will love the balance earpads more than the analytical. The added warmth is more than welcome here. A masterpiece of engineering is Massive Attack's Mezzanine. Tremendous and thunderous bass, superb rendering of the voices. With the balanced pads I come closer to sound I know from acquaintances with reasonable priced speakers placed a little too close to the wall. Nice, but slightly wrong. With narrators this gets even clearer, especially if you know the speaker personally. The lower registers are a bit fuller than they should be. I bet you can adapt to that so that your mix does not turn out to be a little bass shy, but I definitely will stick with the analytical. Way closer to the truth and easier to transfer to other systems.
What the Beyerdynamic does really well is telling me the "shape" of a sound. Engineers will know what I mean. If you are working on a mix you will often change certain aspects of a sound, like the attack, transients, compression, whatever. My RL944K1 are excellent in this regard. Many speakers I know are either dry or full sounding. Dry speakers have tremendous punch, but a double bass turns into a bit of an on/off thing. The Geithains have incredible control about how to start, accelerate and stop a sound. The DT1990 is good at this, I won't say similar, this is something time will tell. But I listened to an old Denon CD "National Percussion Group of Kenya - Roots!! African Drums". In one piece the group starts to jump and the bare feet land on a hard surface. The 1990 renders this very realistic. The small African drums have incredible attack, especially hit with a piece of wood. All well here. Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express - Junun has enormous drive, lots of fast percussion, horns and chanting. The 1990 delivers.
I did not listen to classical music today. I focused on the comparison of the two pads and thus used material with a focus in the lower octaves. I found the changing of the pads doable, but nothing I want to complete more often than necessary. For me as an engineer I clearly prefer the analytical pads, because I think the transfer of my mix to other systems will be easier with them. I will measure both in the future, but this is something for 2017. As an audio enthusiast I can understand everyone using the balanced pads, especially for friends of electronic music.
