[maverickronin]

Quote:

Seems to imply that "hard to drive" and "hard to power" are two different things. (maverickronin, if I'm misinterpreting your words, feel free to correct me - I'm not particularly well-versed on the technical aspects of audiophilia.)

You could say it like that.
 
There are two issues - the quality of the sound and the volume of the sound.  Pretty much every amp in existence has better performance (THD, IMD, crosstalk, etc..) in to higher impedance loads.  On good amps, you'd never notice without test equipment.  On bad or marginal amps it can be quite noticeable.
 
The 600 ohm Beyers are high impedance and only slightly reactive (they don't "fight" against the amp) so they will sound pretty good out of many cheap HP outs.  The downside to that impedance is that unless its coupled with a very high efficiency (which it isn't in the Beyers) they may need more voltage than many cheap HP outs and nearly any DAP can provide in order to get decent volume.  I've owned both the DT770/600 and DT990/600.  Both of them sounded good but quiet straight from my D2+.  If you always listen quietly in a place with little to no background noise then you might not even need an amp.  That's hardly a common situation though.
 
The tl;dr is that while they probably need a stand alone amp it doesn't have to a monstrous beast in order for them to sound good.

 

[LizardKing1]

Quote:

I was walking down the street and saw one of my old friends who had beats studios on. I had my HD25 with cMoy BB amp. The bass on the studios sure won, but hell, he tried the 25's on, and today he called me to tell me he's returned the beats. 
 
Granted with all the funny posts I've read, a few stuck out in my head. One post in the beginning of the thread mentioned a guy having beats headphones and an ipad and "what a tool" he probably... and there are a few other posts similar like that. While I don't know the circumstances, isn't it a bit harsh to judge someone by just their phones? I remember one of my friends buying an ipad 2 recently without much thought simply because it's marketed as essentially "The Best tablet". And with so much money being poured into the marketing for ipads, who wouldn't be fooled? Granted, the ipads aren't bad, just like the Tours aren't horrendous, I introduced my buddy to the Asus Transformer and he's loving that more than he's ever liked the ipad 2. To him, after seeing all the commercials and seeing billboards everywhere for the ipad 2, why wouldn't he believe that the ipad was really the best? 
I mean he should have done some research and all... but..
I guess all I'm saying is that snap judgments based on a persons phones can be a little harsh, right? 
 

I'm sorry for being rude, but to me that's exactly what a 'tool' is: someone who puchases things because they are marketed heavily/look good, without much thought into how necessary that things really is, or how better some other brands might be. If I saw a guy with the Beats plugged into an iPad 2, I could assume 2 things:
 
1) He probably owns more than 4 pairs of Kanye West party sunglasses
 
2) He has way too much free time/money

 

[LizardKing1]

At first you were like:
Quote:

u people must be young.  im too old for this crap.

 
But then you were like:
Quote:

They are the coolest looking headphone in my opinion. 
...i can certainly see myself buying solos again in the future when prices go down and have them painted a different color. 

 
 
Bitch, please.

 

[justie]

I find it amusing how u guys have random people on the streets walking up to u to criticize ur headphones. If its me i'd juz give them the finger and tell em to piss off and mind their own business. I mean, what is it to u that im not an idiot who spends $500 to get overpriced junk from the Apple store? U don see me laughing at u do i? Anyway, I do have a few friends asking me why I didnt buy the beats when i told them the price of my headphones and i just told them straight on "No. I dont like the beats." They don say anymore after that.

 

[shamrock134]

Not everyone is as friendly as the Aussies! 
 
If you look at someone funny around here you could end up savagely beaten or left bleeding out in the gutter having been knifed and/or shot.

 
Wearing Beats would probably just lead to you being mugged for them and your wallet.

 

[justie]

u should read the wiki on apple ibuds. Apparently people believe the 'signature white earphones' attached to ur ears are clear signs of u owning an iphone or ipod making u very susceptible to mugging XD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_earbuds

 

[Alghazanth]

Quote:

u should read the wiki on apple ibuds. Apparently people believe the 'signature white earphones' attached to ur ears are clear signs of u owning an iphone or ipod making u very susceptible to mugging XD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_earbuds

I'd be more worried about going deaf with how loud you need to turn those up outside.

 

[mastershake2393]

Quote:

ok i can literally see why some people would think head-fi is full of little girls. lol
 

Pfft, everyone knows watching MLP makes you more masculine... No? Well, at least it has that effect on me 

 

 

[Insidious Meme]

Sweet, I'm rich! Hooray, tax breaks! Suck it, poor people!
 
-- Griffinhart
 

 

[crayonhead]

One of my friends stopped bugging me after he came over. He saw me with several disassembled headphones..and several headphones that are just hanging there (all generous donations)..dead..kinda reminded him why I can throw a pair of hp across the room at someone and not care. (all well built, well oiled machines they are)

 

[imdaffy]

Well it's true that it all depends. Lately I've been messing around with my beyers 880/600 on different weak sources and it's loud enough to make me deaf on pretty much anything, even an old cheap mp3 player from creative that hardly works anymore. I'm not saying anything about the sound quality because I have a lack of a decent source at this time to compare it with, all I have now is the x-fi titanium and the hp out of my asus p5k motherboard. I'm still saving up to buy a good dac so it'll be another few months or so before I'll comment on it because making assumptions is just plain useless when sq is pretty subjective to begin with. All in all the sound quality of my x-fi > little dot mk3 is barely better than straight from my hp out so I really wasted my money on the x-fi, the bass and a few other things just aren't very good. Oh well...
 
But anyway, my nokia xpress music 5800 is also more than loud enough at 60 percent or so and I'm currently charging my old zen stone mp3 player that I've just found back to see how well that goes. Pretty sure it hasn't been charged in a year so the battery might be quite dead but I'll let it load for a day and see whether it can make a comeback. Although I expect that this one will really be too silent anyway because it's just so damned small and the battery life was never impressive to begin with.
 
But at the end of the day the sq seems good enough, or I might just not be an audiophile yet because I listen more to the music than the sound. It's a new and confusing hobby at times ..
 
Quote:

You could say it like that.
 
There are two issues - the quality of the sound and the volume of the sound.  Pretty much every amp in existence has better performance (THD, IMD, crosstalk, etc..) in to higher impedance loads.  On good amps, you'd never notice without test equipment.  On bad or marginal amps it can be quite noticeable.
 
The 600 ohm Beyers are high impedance and only slightly reactive (they don't "fight" against the amp) so they will sound pretty good out of many cheap HP outs.  The downside to that impedance is that unless its coupled with a very high efficiency (which it isn't in the Beyers) they may need more voltage than many cheap HP outs and nearly any DAP can provide in order to get decent volume.  I've owned both the DT770/600 and DT990/600.  Both of them sounded good but quiet straight from my D2+.  If you always listen quietly in a place with little to no background noise then you might not even need an amp.  That's hardly a common situation though.
 
The tl;dr is that while they probably need a stand alone amp it doesn't have to a monstrous beast in order for them to sound good.

 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Well it's true that it all depends. Lately I've been messing around with my beyers 880/600 on different weak sources and it's loud enough to make me deaf on pretty much anything, even an old cheap mp3 player from creative that hardly works anymore. I'm not saying anything about the sound quality because I have a lack of a decent source at this time to compare it with, all I have now is the x-fi titanium and the hp out of my asus p5k motherboard. I'm still saving up to buy a good dac so it'll be another few months or so before I'll comment on it because making assumptions is just plain useless when sq is pretty subjective to begin with. All in all the sound quality of my x-fi > little dot mk3 is barely better than straight from my hp out so I really wasted my money on the x-fi, the bass and a few other things just aren't very good. Oh well...
 
But anyway, my nokia xpress music 5800 is also more than loud enough at 60 percent or so and I'm currently charging my old zen stone mp3 player that I've just found back to see how well that goes. Pretty sure it hasn't been charged in a year so the battery might be quite dead but I'll let it load for a day and see whether it can make a comeback. Although I expect that this one will really be too silent anyway because it's just so damned small and the battery life was never impressive to begin with.
 
But at the end of the day the sq seems good enough, or I might just not be an audiophile yet because I listen more to the music than the sound. It's a new and confusing hobby at times ..

Your ears will thank you in the long run for listening quietly.  I usually thought it got loud enough from most sources but I've learned from meets that most people listen way louder than I do so I usually give recommendations based on that.

 

[Griffinhart]

I don't think I've ever pushed my XM6 past 10 'o clock, and foobar stays at -10dB, so you're not alone on the whole "listening quietly" thing. Heck, for the most part, I leave the XM6 at just past the point where I get full sound into both ears (what with it not being a balanced amp and all), and somedays I find even that too loud.
 
-- Griffinhart

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I don't think I've ever pushed my XM6 past 10 'o clock, and foobar stays at -10dB, so you're not alone on the whole "listening quietly" thing. Heck, for the most part, I leave the XM6 at just past the point where I get full sound into both ears (what with it not being a balanced amp and all), and somedays I find even that too loud.

Yeah, its fairly strong.  If I'm using my D2+ as a source and my T50RPs or Yamaha YH-3 orthos my "crank it for one song" level is pretty much all the way up in high gain mode.
 
Those need some power...

 

[Butler]

Yeah... My fiance's brother called me out. Said my AT's looked dorky, and while he wouldn't admit that his sound worse he just kept going on about "swag" this and "swag" that...