[TigzStudio]

I have been actually playing with the Bias setting in my Roc amp and testing this track to see what happens.
 
when I do 12.0v bias the sound is more tube like, and as you go up to the max of 17.0v it becomes more solid stateish
 
I noticed that at the tube end you can barely hear the distortion, but at 17v you hear it plain as day with the LCD-2's!

 

[Nebby]

I did a quick waterfall capture of the first two minutes of Angel, this may be of interest to folks in this thread. Capture was NOT bit-perfect as it was reading off the wav-out, but I think it's good enough for general use Didn't turn on the time code labels for the capture and forgot to reset it as you see the 11:28 down in bottom
 

 

[Shahrose]

I hear no distortion on Angel with any of my cans.

 

[immtbiker]

One of my favorite tracks (especially in that awesome Nomad fight scene in the re-make of "Flight of the Phoenix").
 
When I turn my sub off and just listen through my Vienna Acoustic Strauss', the distortion is next to null. Add in a 1350
watt peaked Class D Velodyne HGS-10, and the only distortion that I hear is the cracks forming on my walls. 
One thing to be taken into consideration, is that this cut is mostly electronica and a real bass at 20-50 Htz. would probably
not create any distortion at all.
When, in spin class, we all brought in music to spin by, and I thought that Angel and Teardrop (theme from House) would be perfect,
I gave it to my instructor in .flac and she dumbed it down to 128 and played it on a Coby system, then I heard massive
amounts of distortion. 
 
Massive Attack...Massive Distortion 

 

[Todd R]

Just checked it with my JH16 Pro's and RSA Protector (balanced cable).
Not hearing any distortion, only the slightest bit of "fuzz" on the bass.

 

[BlackbeardBen]

Quote:

Just checked it with my JH16 Pro's and RSA Protector (balanced cable).
Not hearing any distortion, only the slightest bit of "fuzz" on the bass.

That's pretty much what I hear.  Some fuzz in the bass line from the beginning - and I can hear it coming from my planar mid and mid-bass coupler.  There's no real distortion per se, like you'd hear from over-driven drivers.
 
I'm having a hard time hearing the other, fainter constant buzz that I reported.  I can hear it with the HD-600s but not at all with the Renaissance 90's under normal conditions.
 
Question: Is "Unemployment capitol of the country" (actually it should be capital instead, capitol refers to the building) code for Detroit?  I figure as much...
 
Also, I'd like to report that in the process of listening I compared my NAD 5325 CD player (their first budget model) with upgraded caps to my laptop playing FLAC files through my uDAC, and it was no contest - the NAD is much better.  The bass was a little muddy and the soundstage wasn't as defined with the uDAC.  The NAD is great - especially for the $60 I paid.  I just wish I had a remote for it.... :/

 

[Todd R]

Quote:

That's pretty much what I hear.  Some fuzz in the bass line from the beginning - and I can hear it coming from my planar mid and mid-bass coupler.  There's no real distortion per se, like you'd hear from over-driven drivers.  
Question: Is "Unemployment capitol of the country" (actually it should be capital instead, capitol refers to the building) code for Detroit?  I figure as much...
 
Also, I'd like to report that in the process of listening I compared my NAD 5325 CD player (their first budget model) with upgraded caps to my laptop playing FLAC files through my uDAC, and it was no contest - the NAD is much better.  The bass was a little muddy and the soundstage wasn't as defined with the uDAC.  The NAD is great - especially for the $60 I paid.  I just wish I had a remote for it.... :/

I think it's in the recording and there is probably nothing wrong with anyone's system.
 
"Unemployment capital of the country" (Thanks for the spelling correction).
I am in Michigan but just barely (3.5 hrs from Detroit). Good guess.
I live a few minutes North of Elkhart, IN which until last week had the "honor" of having the highest unemployment in the country. Elkhart was/is the RV capital of the country, but very few of the companies survived the disaster of the last couple years. On top of that, we have always felt the fallout when the automakers in Detroit did poorly. 
I can't wait to move away from here

 

[immtbiker]

"Mezzanine" is a great album, no matter what "capitol" your listening to it from. 
 
If you think Detroit is bad, don't move to Spain.

 

[Todd R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by immtbiker /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
If you think Detroit is bad, don't move to Spain.

Been there. Nice place to visit, but....

 

[ph0rk]

The track has vinyl pops in the background when the drumbeat gets trip-hoppy, and the bassline is sawtoothy, so I'd expect any buzzyness you're hearing is intended.

 

[immtbiker]

Quote:

Been there. Nice place to visit, but....

So is Brooklyn...it says it right there on the sign. But then again, on the way out, it also says "Leaving Brooklyn, Fuhgettahboutit. 

 

 

[yashu]

I listen to a lot of different genres, and I can say that digitally produced, mastered, and distributed IDM are going to give you clean harmonics to work with. If you must use physical media, get some krautrock like Harmonia or something.
 
Angel was recorded when electronic music production still involved racks, and patching things in the analog domain for real. It was very possible to overdrive something. Hell, even in all digital, if you master without truly full range equipment, you may find stuff down there you weren't expecting, such as I learned when I played one song I wrote on the PC using nearfield monitors to put it together. They just could not dip low enough, and on my main system you could hear a bass crunch. MY headphones hobby began as a way for me to better produce music, first v700DJs and a set of HD555s to cover opposing ends of the spectrum of sound. I largly forgot about headphone listening beyond something for the office until I had something happen that wasn't going to give me the time to sit at the console and listen like I enjoyed doing. I managed to pit the v700s together with zip ties and glue, but they were a lost cause, and the senns, they were beginning to have the pads wear out. I bought a set of, well, most of the better cans that guitar center sold. I bought from craigslist, and hit up Frys for a couple pairs they carry from sony and denon.
 
This site will get you. I am enjoying the freedom within the constraints of headphones, and also the sound that would have cost me many times more than I spent to get close with speakers in terms of detail and enjoyment. I moved a lot of my source components to the back room where I have my headphone stuff, because I see no reason for my good source gear should colllect dust. I use a laptop to go bit-perfect ASIO out to a cakewalk pro for an interface, then a monarchy DIP to control jitter since I use a NOS DAC. and access all my material in here over remote network.
 
I never thought of it, but angel would be a great measure of a system's bass performance, as well as how it can handle all that cone movement but still produce her voice without distortion. (I will play teardrop just cause I love the song).
 
I use Billy Cobham's album Spectrum to test the quality of HF response. There is one track, the name I forget, but he hits a certain cymbol type hard, and only the best speakers and headphones can reproduce it without it grating the ears. If it sounds natural and non-fatiguing while still keeping to the same effect, then I know the HF is not going to rip my ears to shreds, and generally be what I want in the HF band, a natural non-fatiguing sound. Now who has the mids, we have the bass, the HF now we need a good mids track/album.  

 

[BlackbeardBen]

I have a few recordings I use to test the mids and midbass on speakers, and I think the same applies to headphones as well.
 
Craig Klein's Trombonisms is excellent in all aspects of sound quality.  The album focuses mostly on trombone (of course), tuba/sousaphone, trumpet, piano, and male vocals - which are in the absolute meat of the midrange.  The first two songs in particular are excellent tracks for testing.  The first one has solos by pretty much everything, and on the best speakers enough of the ambiance of the recording space is revealed to make them virtually disappear (I'm speaking about the EMIMs on my Renaissance 90s here).  For the most part, I don't think the midrange ever gets that harsh on this album - or any recording really, for that matter.  At the heart of the tonal range that we hear, it's not particularly demanding in terms of harshness/difficulty to drive.  But the level of detail in brass and vocals, and apparent realism, is heavily affected by the quality of the midrange.
 
Julie London - the songs Cry Me A River and Blue Moon are excellent on her extended greatest hits compilation the Ultimate Collection.  As you would expect for such an old recording, it's noisy and the stereo separation isn't done very well.  It's not mixed very well for headphones, with a few songs that have no crossbleed between the channels for some of the instruments.  But oh, the vocals and the instruments!  Her voice is amazing - and if you thought you didn't need a good system to reveal all the details on an older/noisier recording, this proves otherwise.  The level of detail and the soundstage is profoundly affected by the quality of the playback equipment.
 
I'm also a big fan of Bjork.  Her voice and her music is very different from anything else out there - and it's all recorded extremely well.  Her voice is either edgy (grainy, bordering on harsh) or lacking in detail in all but the best systems.  My favorites for testing the midrange is Aeroplane on Debut - her voice and the saxophone in the beginning in particular.  The jungle noises in the beginning and the cymbals are great for judging the highs, and the bass line takes a whole lot of control to sound good.  It's probably my single favorite test track - and I really like the song too.
 
A lot of her other songs are excellent for critical testing as well.  The enveloping soundstange (for speakers anyway) on Venus As A Boy is crazy.  Pretty much every track on Debut is excellent - although Human Behavior has some noise in one of the samples used that you may find annoying.  I like the song though.  A couple other favorites for testing are Hidden Place and Unison from Vespertine - which again have awesome soundstages on speakers.  I can't really say I've experienced the same with headphones.  Her voice (and the bass) is demanding in all of them though.
 
The last one I like for testing the midrange/soundstage (they really go hand in hand) is the new album Go Away White by Bauhaus.  Peter Murphy's voice in Saved is extremely demanding (very harsh on inferior speakers), and Mirror Remains is similar but with the whole band accompanying.  Like the other artists/albums/songs I mentioned, when listening through an excellent system the speakers just disappear.  Again, I can't say what a world-class headphone setup would sound like - just speakers.  The best headphone system I've heard is my HD-600s powered by a uDAC, Marantz integrated, or Carver pre.

 

[Smoke]

The first part is a real good reference point for the low frequencies imo. I do think that there's a bit of distortion but it's still an excellent way to check out how your system handles the heavy-bass.
 
Also check out the at 6:00-6:20 bit. Is it me or is it heavier, but at the same time clearer, than the first part between 0:10-0:20?

 

[MayaTlab]

I also hear the same thing as you. I feel the last part of the song has an even weightier bass section, and lacks the sort of "buzz" I mentioned in the first post. Actually, I only hear the buzz clearly during the first moments of the song. Once the instruments / other sounds kick in, it lessens / disappears. 
 
EDIT : the buzz I mentioned is mostly present between 0.06 minutes and 0.20.