[WalkingCarpet]

Like say from a Logitech Z5500 sub??

 

[KG Jag]

No.  Bass from speakers and subs is felt (e.g. in your chest) as much as it is heard.

 

[manbear]

Of course not. The sound waves from headphones are louder at your ears than your gut.

 

[WalkingCarpet]

So when the reviews say 'the headphone has amazing bass', means bass that cannot be felt? IS that real bass??

 

[Lorspeaker]

sometimes the drivers will lightly massage your ears....a rummmble;
and at times, dried up earwax might get dislodged ;p

 

[manbear]

Headphone bass can be felt on the side of your head, maybe inside your head or your throat. It can't be gut thumping. 
 
I don't know if that's "real" bass. It's up to you to decide if you like headphone bass. 

 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by WalkingCarpet /img/forum/go_quote.gif

Can you get gut thumping bass from a headphone?

Like say from a Logitech Z5500 sub??

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by WalkingCarpet /img/forum/go_quote.gif

So when the reviews say 'the headphone has amazing bass', means bass that cannot be felt? IS that real bass??

 

Here's the thing - when you have a real, serious subwoofer (more along the lines of REL or Velodyne, and less along that Logitech), and you compare that to a headphone, the delivery of the sound alone is very different. The headphone (much less IEMs) sends sound waves out more directly towards your ears, while the soundwaves emanating from a subwoofer permeates the room and your entire body is exposed to it. The entire surface area of your body can get hit by the subwoofer's soundwaves  and you 'feel' the bass -  everything from pounding bass drum kicks on classic rock (heck, 3-way tower speakers with 6in midbass drivers each can do this) to rumbling bass on an epic action movie.

 

Another problem is the placement of the drivers producing the bass plus the response can have adverse effects on the soundstage. Having a dedicated subwoofer, like say a home audio set-up where you have a sub with a higher low pass cut off to reinforce the monitors, allows you to send more of the upper bass that sounds and feels like a really solid "thump" of bass drums (think ACDC, Deftones, etc) and it already has the low bass as well that makes it sound deep (natural, actually). Since it's not simply reinforcing the mains' upper bass with lower bass tones and more of the other frequencies that crawl/creep but actually produces the upper bass as well, you can just position it a bit farther back and provided that room modes are managed well, your bass drum will stay behind the vocalist where the other drums are.

By contrast, if you're relying on just the 2.0 set-up whether it's tower speakers that can actually reach down low (and then maybe you EQ it somehow) or headphones, in which case you're already dealing with the problematic placement of the headphone drivers that either do not follow the natural relative positions of speakers (smack on top of your ears, when no one places speakers firing perpendicularly from the flanks of the listener; some headphones get around this with angled earpads for example) plus the problem with left ear not hearing the right channel and vice versa, what you will get is the bass moved too far forward where it doesn't belong. Unless of course the band hired Mr. Fantastic, and he stretches out his feet to kick the pedal and hit the bass drum sitting in front of the vocalist instead of where the rest of his drums are.

 

----

 

That said I have seen someone listening to an LCD-2 and I can see the earcups pounding off his ears as well as his cheeks vibrating. Kind of unsettling though, and that still depends on what you're listening to. I have no idea what he was listening to at the time.

 

[KG Jag]

  So when the reviews say 'the headphone has amazing bass', means bass that cannot be felt? IS that real bass??

Marketing.
 
I have even seen similar claims for mid-centric cans.