[Former_iBud_User]

Quote:

Originally Posted by A.Thorsen I guess if you're in a drug induced haze, you could believe that. Anything can sound good at that point.

He is right. Metal has some of the best vocalists in the world. Ever heard of Rob Halford?

The only type of music that has the grunting is Death Metal, which I don't listen to, but I don't mock it or consider it any less of an art form.

Thrash metal, on the other hand, does have singing and some very great vocalists such as Tom Araya, Dave Mustaine, James Hetfield, and many others.

I would suggest you just get Grados. I boguth the SR60's, but with yoir budget you can obviously go higher up on the Grado scale.

I listen to Thrash Metal, the Grados have been great. I've had them for about one month now and I have nothing but great things to say. I'm glad I bought them!

 

[Skrying]

Even Death Metal has some truely amazing singers, Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt has one of the devastingly beautiful voices in all of music. He simply keeps improving too, and he's not the only one.

 

[Drag0n]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Former_iBud_User He is right. Metal has some of the best vocalists in the world. Ever heard of Rob Halford? The only type of music that has the grunting is Death Metal, which I don't listen to, but I don't mock it or consider it any less of an art form. Thrash metal, on the other hand, does have singing and some very great vocalists such as Tom Araya, Dave Mustaine, James Hetfield, and many others. I would suggest you just get Grados. I boguth the SR60's, but with yoir budget you can obviously go higher up on the Grado scale. I listen to Thrash Metal, the Grados have been great. I've had them for about one month now and I have nothing but great things to say. I'm glad I bought them!

Im not into Merciful Fate,but have you ever heard King Diamonds vocal range? Its something like 6 or 7 octaves i think someone said. Its crazy! He goes eeerily LOW,,,then Screeches up like scary high!
And Rob Halford is good too. So is Geof Tate from Queensryche. He practices opera to do that. There are some good voices in rock music,and theres some crap also.
Well recorded stuff for Audiophile listening (yes i said audiophile) in the rock genra (metal,southern rock,classic rock,etc) is bands like:

Primus, Korn, VNV Nation, Pink Floyd, Allman Brothers,Peter Gabriel,STYX, Alan Parsons Project, Linkin Park, Tool, A Perfect Circle, ............just to name a few that i use to test my system with.

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skrying Even Death Metal has some truely amazing singers, Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt has one of the devastingly beautiful voices in all of music. He simply keeps improving too, and he's not the only one.

Same with Orphaned Land and a lot of other melodeath bands (which is why I specifically differentiated between pure death and melodeath). Ghost Reveries features his best vocal work yet, though Deliverance has some insane crazy growls due to the processing used.

And to the guy suggesting people check out Korn, Linkin Park, et. al. for audiophile quality metal...

They are neither metal, nor audiophile-quality. If Linkin Park, for example, were to have a spot on the Sounds of the Underground tour, they would not only be booed off the stage, but probably molested and/or murdered by certain zealous metalheads as well. Just sayin'.

 

[Drag0n]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotJeffBuckley Same with Orphaned Land and a lot of other melodeath bands (which is why I specifically differentiated between pure death and melodeath). Ghost Reveries features his best vocal work yet, though Deliverance has some insane crazy growls due to the processing used. And to the guy suggesting people check out Korn, Linkin Park, et. al. for audiophile quality metal... They are neither metal, nor audiophile-quality. If Linkin Park, for example, were to have a spot on the Sounds of the Underground tour, they would not only be booed off the stage, but probably molested and/or murdered by certain zealous metalheads as well. Just sayin'.

Did you read what i wrote? I said a few genres of rock,,not just metal. It was a mixed bag. And yes Linkin Park....i test bass with some of their songs,so dont give me that reverse-discrimination now, just because its not death metal and screaming from the pit of hell,etc. And yes,some of Korns stuff is recorded pretty well. Im not a Korn fan,but a friend of mine is ,and ive heard some of it while he was at my house,on my own system. It doesnt mean every song of every band i mentioned is great quality,but they have some good recordings. And why would Linkin Park be molested? I dont even want to know,forget it. Oh,,and "the guy" has a name.

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drag0n Oh,,and "the guy" has a name.

Not to me, he doesn't.

Soon, I will have amassed an army of rolleyes, with which I can conquer the world. Soon.

Edit: Allow me to explicate, though, because I think you misunderstand me. Linkin Park has long been a trend-hopping band (remember the emo period and My December, etc? Yeah, they don't want you to) with no artistic merit whatsoever. That's somewhat of an offense to many listeners who come to see bands like Opeth and Strapping Young Lad play, trendstarters themselves. The molestation/murder was a joke, and I thought it was made pretty obvious by the

, but I digress.

As to the recording quality of Korn's stuff, frankly they rely strictly on overcompression and -0.05dB normalization for my tastes. If you run a waveform sample of any given 10 seconds of their last three CDs, you'll see over 200 instances of digital clipping. That's not my bag, mang.

 

[darkninja67]

Sheesh, you guys need to step away from the computer and go listen to some music.

 

[jimmyjames8]

Late to this party (as usual) but for younger ears, probably the Grado 225's or the Alessandro MS-2. All my cans are listed below in my signature. Can't say I like one over the other for METAL but the MS-2's bother me a bit with their brightness and in your face presentation. I have been listening a lot lately to my AKG271s sealed cans. They ROCK. All my cans ROCK. What made more of a difference to me was getting a TOOB amp. The Woo 3 ROCKS. Forget THRASHING out w/o an amp with lots of power and big caps. For the record, Children of Bodom...Hate Crew Death Roll is awesome to these almost 47 year old ears. Just rediscovered Slayer as well. Thanks to all the bangers who gave reference to some melodometal. Not really into the demon voice growling stuff. And for what it's worth BLACK SABBATH gets inducted into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of fame Tuesday night.

 

[darkninja67]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimmyjames8 Late to this party (as usual) but for younger ears, probably the Grado 225's or the Alessandro MS-2. All my cans are listed below in my signature. Can't say I like one over the other for METAL but the MS-2's bother me a bit with their brightness and in your face presentation. I have been listening a lot lately to my AKG271s sealed cans. They ROCK. All my cans ROCK. What made more of a difference to me was getting a TOOB amp. The Woo 3 ROCKS. Forget THRASHING out w/o an amp with lots of power and big caps. For the record, Children of Bodom...Hate Crew Death Roll is awesome to these almost 47 year old ears. Just rediscovered Slayer as well. Thanks to all the bangers who gave reference to some melodometal. Not really into the demon voice growling stuff. And for what it's worth BLACK SABBATH gets inducted into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of fame Tuesday night.

It seems I am going down the road you have taken. My musical tastes have never wavered. Still love Slayer, CoB, In Flames, Shadows Fall, Metallica (pre Black) etc. I just hope my ears can take it for 20 more years or so.

 

[Leopold]

Great idea to include some examples! Here are my impressions from Dell D410 w/ integrated soundcard => PA2v2 => Beyerdynamics DT250-80 (which are closed back cans). The source is the weak link here, but not too bad for me to enjoy greatly.

#1: Great gore factor. I got the impression the singer had half his throat cut off, gushing blood all over the place. About a third into the song I noticed that my body went cold, and I started to coldsweat on palms and feet. Heart rate went up to about 150 bps towards the latter third, reminding very much of what happens to me with far too much coffee. Guess I got the message from the music then, this is certainly no lullaby…

#2: This is more “wicked” evil. Better SQ than the first one, here the percussions are strong, energetic, more fluid. The midbass energy reverberates through my body, incredible energy levels. Here the blood pressure was raised considerably, heart rate more normal and no caffeine effect. Smooth, powerful, wicked.

#3: This piece had no impact at all on me so I skip judgement here. Also too low bitrate for my ears, I had to stop the auditioning.

I did a comparison later with my Koss Portapros just to check what the difference could be in this type of music. Here the portas are far too polite IMO, protecting me from its energy and razor sharp edges. They sound "good" but the music needs much more for the message to be delivered, higher resolution all over the spectrum.

DT250 is a little to the warm side without losing detail and impact on mids and highs, quite flat monitor-like response. This helps delivering the intimidating core of this type of music at rather high listening levels without causing harshness and ear fatigue. You should have in mind that it is the first time I listened to these genres, I don't really know how it is supposed to sound. I got some kind of "body fatigue" from it, maybe I'm just not seasoned enough.

Good luck and as always, don’t forget to audition whatever candidates you think would be the best for you before buying!

 

[Rickio]

I didn't see anyone mention DT990, which I think are excellent.

I have SR225, MS1, DT880 and DT990 as well as HD580 and like them all for metal but am leaning more and more to DT990. It has a gorgeous sound. To me it has all the advantages of the grados and senns all in one.

I am curious about the new version but mine is the previous version and I think it's the best metal can I got

 

[fierce_freak]

yeah, I can't imagine Linkin Park at a Sounds of the Underground tour, haha. Did you go to a show on last year's tour? Some good stuff.

I never hear Hardcore discussed for cans, but I guess if it'd work for metal it'd work well for 'core. I currently have MS1s...they're great, but I'm getting to the point where I feel fatigued after listening to them for to long...hence my looking to the DT 880 or K701 for possible relief (and a step up, too)

 

[MaZa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamP Personally, I wouldn't spend $500+ dollars so that I could listen some dude gurgling/yelling/farting into a microphone in high fidelity.

Metal, a genre with so many subgenres... More subgenres than any other music i can think of ATM. (except rock, metal is subgenre of rock afterall

) Everyo style sounds different and every genre has different goal.
Vocals depend on what style singer represents and what kind atmosphere he wants to create, be it ghastlyness of blackmetal with all its shrieks and ghostlike wavering, animalism of deathmetal or epic opera of powermetal... ICS Vortex has simply awesome, "majestic" opera type voice.

 

[Solude]

Beyer 990 + HeadAmp Lite

That's all it's going to take to get you where you want to go. Avoid the Beyer 880 at all costs for metal, the Grado 325 is probably too bright for you too.

Other than the Beyer 990, there is Grado 225, Senn 650.

 

[Purgatos]

I honestly can't help at all, but I'd like to note that metal seems to have some of the silliest subgenre names ever. I mean, gore? Melodeath? What were these guys thinking?