TyTB
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2012
- Posts
- 140
- Likes
- 35
Hello again everyone.
First, let me thank you all very much for continuing to reply in my absence. Moneypit was right, I spent a full day at Bay Bloor Radio, my city's premier hi-fi audio store. (Also, gotta say, Moneypit is probably the single most accurate username I've seen on this forum.)
Also, a special thanks to Hyde00 for taking the time to catch up through 3 pages of posts, and for leaving such a detailed reply, responding to so many of my points.
As much as you all on Head-Fi like to poke fun at Reddit for being a sea of clowns, and as much as Reddit likes to poke fun at Head-Fi for being pretentious, to me, both forums seem to be in agreement with recommendations and advice. Head-Fi and Reddit have been saying mostly the same stuff, which is good! That lends great credibility to it.
For what it's worth, I am not a gearhead. I will never be the type of person who buys multiple headphones to use different ones for different genres of music, and I will never be the type to sell off my old, perfectly-good headphones just to chase the newest, shiniest one that just came out. I am the type of person who will buy the one product, and will use it forever, only replacing it if and when it breaks. 10+ years is my expectation at a minimum. So this might shed some light as to why I'm giving this so much thought, and am fretting over every detail. Whichever headphone I buy next will be the only headphone I use for the next ten years.
Let me wind back the clock about 7 years. I was using a pair of $50 sennheiser on-ear headphones that are so old and cheap, I cannot seem to find them anywhere on the internet. They look like the PX-100's, but had more oval earcups. Anyways, as you can imagine, they sounded better than the $3 airport headphones of 2005, but they were still crappy headphones.
I then, at the age of 22, finally had enough money to buy something better. I think my budget was like $300-500. I did a lot of research, I watched many hours of reviews, and read lots of articles here and on other sites, and eventually settled on the 6XX's, because everyone at the time was saying they are the 600's, but cheaper. This made sense, as that was the entire raison-d'être for Massdrop -- bulk purchasing leading to discounts.
What only became apparent to me over time was that Drop actually changed the tuning of the headphones a bit, but ah well, the 6XX's as still regarded well today.
Purchasing them was a transformative experience, because they took every song I had ever known, and made them new again. New instruments, new words, new content I had never been able to hear before, but it was still a far cry from the experience I had listening to some Denon AH-D2000's at Bay Bloor Radio. The music there sounded damn-near transcendental. I had never heard music like that.
I always held on to that experience, and measured it against my 6XX's. They were good -- hell, they were transformative compared to the $50 headphones that came before them, but the experience I had with the Denons was just as transformative AGAIN, beyond the 6XX's. I figured this must be because I was just running the headphones directly off my PC, no DAC or amplification. So, I saved money for the past 6 years to one day get some good audio equipment to better-drive the 6XX's. Maybe that would get me back to that transformative experience. I eventually settled on Schitt, in part because I know they're considered respectably-good, and in part because I really love how they look.
Finally, I have enough money for the Modius and Lyr, a roughly $1000 CAD combination. Then I made the mistake of posting about it to Head-Fi and Reddit.... and now here we are, with the consensus being that yes, the Amp and Dac are an essential part of the chain, but I really do first need to get better headphones -- they will yield a better return-on-investment. So I headed to music stores and started listening.
--
I realize now, after my time at these stores, that the transformative experience I had all those years ago with the Denons was a combination of many factors, the biggest of which simply being that the music available for listening at the store was mostly very well-produced music, with grand sound stages and terrific imaging. All of it was unknown to me, and all of it sounded great. I now know, from having done this direct A/B Testing that I can have a similar experience with my 6XX's, but it requires chasing down that kind of well-produced music. Top-100 pop songs just don't have the quality in them. That's fine, I listen to classical too. Oh wait, Youtube classical music doesn't have the quality in it, either. Okay, now I'm chasing .flac files from 7digital.ca, but it's impossible to know before purchasing whether the song is going to sound any better than it's youtube version or not.
Anyways, all of this is to say that I now have a better sense of what is and is not possible with hi-fi audio playback. On good gear, with good tracks, my 6XX's are better than the Denon's in some ways, and worse in others. I have, in a sense, reached the level playing field where the differences between sound signatures that people talk about when reviewing headphones becomes audible -- something that isn't true on poorly-produced music, where most headphones sound more or less the same, plus or minus 10%.
So, now that I have this level, non-bottlenecked playing field, I can see that, when compared to pretty much any of the even-higher-fidelity headphones, the veiling and muffled-ness of the 6XX becomes noticeable. Not transformative, but noticeable. The songs still sound the same, they still evoke the same emotions, there's no difference in detail or imaging to my ears, but there is that difference in clarity, and tonality.
--
Now, I am still completely and totally lost on what to do now. I know that if I get better DAC/Amp gear right now, my 6XX's won't sound any different to me (as they did not sound any different even when playing on $4000 of gear, be it solid-state or tube). I also now know that if I buy better headphones, the differences will be only in terms of clarity, open-ness, and tonality. There won't be any transformation of my music. We're talking 10% changes here. The real transformation comes from just listening to "better" music.
Now, I have another entire write-up of my experience and findings doing one last round of non-bottlenecked testing at Bay-Bloor Radio. I don't really know if you folks on Head-Fi prefer that I just post that all here, within this thread, or create a new thread, but, given what I know from other forums, and some stuff that has to do with search-engine optimization and retrievability for future readers, I've decided to make it a new thread. I welcome you all to join me in it
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lon...-thoughts-for-others-in-the-same-boat.972235/
Thank you again for all your time and help, I know it takes a lot to read and write so much, so I hope you know I really appreciate it.
First, let me thank you all very much for continuing to reply in my absence. Moneypit was right, I spent a full day at Bay Bloor Radio, my city's premier hi-fi audio store. (Also, gotta say, Moneypit is probably the single most accurate username I've seen on this forum.)
Also, a special thanks to Hyde00 for taking the time to catch up through 3 pages of posts, and for leaving such a detailed reply, responding to so many of my points.
As much as you all on Head-Fi like to poke fun at Reddit for being a sea of clowns, and as much as Reddit likes to poke fun at Head-Fi for being pretentious, to me, both forums seem to be in agreement with recommendations and advice. Head-Fi and Reddit have been saying mostly the same stuff, which is good! That lends great credibility to it.
For what it's worth, I am not a gearhead. I will never be the type of person who buys multiple headphones to use different ones for different genres of music, and I will never be the type to sell off my old, perfectly-good headphones just to chase the newest, shiniest one that just came out. I am the type of person who will buy the one product, and will use it forever, only replacing it if and when it breaks. 10+ years is my expectation at a minimum. So this might shed some light as to why I'm giving this so much thought, and am fretting over every detail. Whichever headphone I buy next will be the only headphone I use for the next ten years.
Let me wind back the clock about 7 years. I was using a pair of $50 sennheiser on-ear headphones that are so old and cheap, I cannot seem to find them anywhere on the internet. They look like the PX-100's, but had more oval earcups. Anyways, as you can imagine, they sounded better than the $3 airport headphones of 2005, but they were still crappy headphones.
I then, at the age of 22, finally had enough money to buy something better. I think my budget was like $300-500. I did a lot of research, I watched many hours of reviews, and read lots of articles here and on other sites, and eventually settled on the 6XX's, because everyone at the time was saying they are the 600's, but cheaper. This made sense, as that was the entire raison-d'être for Massdrop -- bulk purchasing leading to discounts.
What only became apparent to me over time was that Drop actually changed the tuning of the headphones a bit, but ah well, the 6XX's as still regarded well today.
Purchasing them was a transformative experience, because they took every song I had ever known, and made them new again. New instruments, new words, new content I had never been able to hear before, but it was still a far cry from the experience I had listening to some Denon AH-D2000's at Bay Bloor Radio. The music there sounded damn-near transcendental. I had never heard music like that.
I always held on to that experience, and measured it against my 6XX's. They were good -- hell, they were transformative compared to the $50 headphones that came before them, but the experience I had with the Denons was just as transformative AGAIN, beyond the 6XX's. I figured this must be because I was just running the headphones directly off my PC, no DAC or amplification. So, I saved money for the past 6 years to one day get some good audio equipment to better-drive the 6XX's. Maybe that would get me back to that transformative experience. I eventually settled on Schitt, in part because I know they're considered respectably-good, and in part because I really love how they look.
Finally, I have enough money for the Modius and Lyr, a roughly $1000 CAD combination. Then I made the mistake of posting about it to Head-Fi and Reddit.... and now here we are, with the consensus being that yes, the Amp and Dac are an essential part of the chain, but I really do first need to get better headphones -- they will yield a better return-on-investment. So I headed to music stores and started listening.
--
I realize now, after my time at these stores, that the transformative experience I had all those years ago with the Denons was a combination of many factors, the biggest of which simply being that the music available for listening at the store was mostly very well-produced music, with grand sound stages and terrific imaging. All of it was unknown to me, and all of it sounded great. I now know, from having done this direct A/B Testing that I can have a similar experience with my 6XX's, but it requires chasing down that kind of well-produced music. Top-100 pop songs just don't have the quality in them. That's fine, I listen to classical too. Oh wait, Youtube classical music doesn't have the quality in it, either. Okay, now I'm chasing .flac files from 7digital.ca, but it's impossible to know before purchasing whether the song is going to sound any better than it's youtube version or not.
Anyways, all of this is to say that I now have a better sense of what is and is not possible with hi-fi audio playback. On good gear, with good tracks, my 6XX's are better than the Denon's in some ways, and worse in others. I have, in a sense, reached the level playing field where the differences between sound signatures that people talk about when reviewing headphones becomes audible -- something that isn't true on poorly-produced music, where most headphones sound more or less the same, plus or minus 10%.
So, now that I have this level, non-bottlenecked playing field, I can see that, when compared to pretty much any of the even-higher-fidelity headphones, the veiling and muffled-ness of the 6XX becomes noticeable. Not transformative, but noticeable. The songs still sound the same, they still evoke the same emotions, there's no difference in detail or imaging to my ears, but there is that difference in clarity, and tonality.
--
Now, I am still completely and totally lost on what to do now. I know that if I get better DAC/Amp gear right now, my 6XX's won't sound any different to me (as they did not sound any different even when playing on $4000 of gear, be it solid-state or tube). I also now know that if I buy better headphones, the differences will be only in terms of clarity, open-ness, and tonality. There won't be any transformation of my music. We're talking 10% changes here. The real transformation comes from just listening to "better" music.
Now, I have another entire write-up of my experience and findings doing one last round of non-bottlenecked testing at Bay-Bloor Radio. I don't really know if you folks on Head-Fi prefer that I just post that all here, within this thread, or create a new thread, but, given what I know from other forums, and some stuff that has to do with search-engine optimization and retrievability for future readers, I've decided to make it a new thread. I welcome you all to join me in it
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lon...-thoughts-for-others-in-the-same-boat.972235/
Thank you again for all your time and help, I know it takes a lot to read and write so much, so I hope you know I really appreciate it.
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