[plainsong]

Hey, how did I suddenly get suckered into hosting a head-fi meet again??

This one happened so quickly, that we didn't have time to post a thread or anything. It started like this: luukas missed the last head-fi meet, and wanted to ...well, what did he want? I forget, but I think it had something to do with headphones.

Anyway, we kept trying to get together for a few Fridays in a row, but finally we settled on this week.

Then, the new Head-fi member Kryft (who's getting heavy in the game, but more on that later) PM'd me a desperate plea for information on portable amps in Helsinki. And he lives like 5 minutes away. There's nothing better than using your own ears, so I say I have a mint vibe he can have if he wants, but to come on over and hear for himself.

Hence, a quickly-formed mini-meet.

Firstly, my impressions of the people. Once again, like the last meet, we didn't do much listening. There's too much to talk about. I've met Luukas once before, and he's a very quiet guy, but friendly, and as headphone-crazy as the rest of us. Oh, and my dog loves him.

When he left, she sniffed at the door and whined a little bit.

Then there's Kryft. Now Kryft and I have something in common in that we're both classically trained singers. He's just starting out, and I've been out of it for some time, only singing for fun. So he and I talked shop a lot, and I think we may have bored luukas to tears. But at least he had stuff to listen to.

He's a friendly guy with a big booming voice. He made my dog a little nervous at first with that voice, but she came around and decided to keep him. For her, these meets are mostly about her anyway.

Now then, in this meet we focused mainly on portable goodness. Luukas brought over his HD25-1's with the velour pads, and Kryft brought his HD280 pros. They both use little flash mp3 players. They can each post more on what they thought, but Luukas is going to have a heck of a time replacing his little generic flash mp3 player. It has a very powerful headphone-out. It seems to be able to drive anything to satisfying sound levels and quality. Ok, my ipod is a tad more refined, but that little mp3 player is just powerful. It reminds you of those old pcdp's with their powerful headphone outputs.

My impressions of the HD25-1's were fun unamped from the 4g ipod. But fuuuun when hooked to the porta corda II. Very bassy, and a cool sound for portable use. I don't think I'd use this as a home headphone, but it sounds like portable fun to me.

We never did get around to plugging the Oehlbach Senn 600 cable into them though.

Now then, onto Kryft's mission. He has the HD280's and wanted to hear what an amp would do, if anything. He has this little flash player that has a thin bass-light kind of sound. The 280's sound rather anemic from them. I didn't get to test this, but he did lots of A/Bing, as did Luukas, and apparently a head-fi newbie discovered two rules for himself. 1 - source matters. 2 - amp matters. And the happy ending to that story is that a head-fier now has his first set of good cans, and his first amp, and is already planning future upgrades.

Sorry about your wallet.

My impressions of the HD280's is that they are monitors. They strive for two things, isolation, and to be as honest as they can. This means that source does matter. I don't mean you have to have the best stuff, but they seem to appreciate subtle differences between mp3 players, and they do benefit from amping, as I heard myself. Bass-light?? I don't think so.

I think these are "right down the middle" kind of cans and an excellent purchase if you need isolation, especially considering price.

I already had a negative impression of those headphones, and was surprised. I only wish I still had my trackmasters to A/B.

Luukas had this cool THX bass test mp3, and it got sent to all the mp3 players from my Mac. This is also where we found out a pc-formatted ipod will still work with Mac iTunes. I've heard it doesn't.

We talked about a lot of things, politics, the military, music, audio, cute little dachshunds, and oh yeah, headphones. This is the second meet where we hardly listened to any music at all, but I don't regret that for anything. I think we Finnish-headfiers are a tightly knit group, and I look forward to the next meet where we can get more of us in the same place.

 

[luukas]

I'll just post short (very) impressions, as I wouldn't go and make a full statement before listening to a pair for at least two weeks constantly. Please note that I'm quite the basshead, and found the NAD CDP + HA2-combo to be detailed, but weak in the lower end - instead of wham I heard thud.

Also, since I was familiar with the sound of my MP3 player, which also drove almost all of the headphones decently as Plainsong mentioned, I used it as a source for the most part. I think the DT531's required the highest volume setting, which was 25/40 or so.

DT770: I sold this very pair to Plainsong, but just had to try it from my MP3. Not bad... bass is present and no sibilance. Using the NAD CDP+HA2, the highs really jumped on me. Detail galore, but very shrill sounding somehow. Oh well, they are still the best movie/gaming cans that I've tried.

DT531: Airy, somewhat dry and recessed midrange (blame the MP3?), bass was enveloping somehow. Very comfortable. Need a powerful amp.

HD600: Balanced, not at all boring as they are made out to be sometimes. Also detailed, yet they didn't sound fatiguing at all. I can see why people like them.

HD595: Interesting case. The angled drivers propably are one reason why they sound so... gentle? Not very engaging, the music just flows through and does not cause foot-tapping, at least not when using a low-moderate volume. They did sound quite balanced otherwise.

HD280: Well! The first thing I did was try the THX test track, using my MP3. And OhMyGawd! The bass is very powerful and goes reaaally deep, yet lacks impact (less headaches maybe?). Detailed and quite balanced, and they isolate well. I can see why they are used as studio monitors.

SR125/MS1: I didn't A/B them, but if I remember correctly Plainsong tried both briefly and said they sounded very similar. Don't take my word for it though.

A shame about the Etys though, just after I got home I realized I never did try them, 'doh.

All in all, the meeting was, for me at least, a "success" if I may say so. I still like the HD25's, and noticed an amp doesn't do much for them, so I'm left to do something about my hideous source. Ugh...

 

[plainsong]

yeah, I already had a preconcieved idea that the HD280's weren't all that great, and I was pleasently proved wrong. These are excellent headphones that are good at what they do. They try for honesty, they work unamped, but appreciate upgrades, they're comfy, and most of importantly, they isolate. I'm not saying they're the best thing in the world, but they certainly don't suck either.

No, these are an excellent base point to start this headphone hobby.

It was tough to do a straight comparison of the Sr125 to the ms-1. The 125s had well-worn bowl pads and the ms-1s had flats. So the 125s were pretty much circumaural on me. Having said that, I found them just a tad more aggressive. Otherwise, it would be hard to pick between them blindfolded.