Head Injury
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Sep 11, 2009
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Quote:
That's a pretty hypocritical generalization.
You're better off saying all headphone preference, coloration and resolution both, is just preference.
In the quote above, I've marked all your comments related to sound signature in red, and comments related to quality/resolution in green (as far as I can tell). Whether coloration is good or bad is preference-dependent.
Higher quality/resolution sound is always better, independent of preference. I suppose that the problem is, aside from coloration, headphones have different degrees of quality/resolution across the spectrum.
So if you are correct that the Grados have really low resolution sound all around, then I'd say they are most certainly overpriced, except for the niche that really really wants the coloration so much that they don't care about sound quality/resolution. However if Grados have very high resolution mids and highs, then that's a different matter. In that case they legitimately do something well.
If on the other hand the Beats legitimately do bass (or treble, or mids, or anything!) really well in terms of resolution (really well = $400 well), I'll concede the argument.
That's a pretty hypocritical generalization.
- What is someone likes a congested, unresolving sound? It's as much a sound signature as coloration. Otherwise no one would buy distorted tube amps.
- A headphone that's truly "resolving" will present exactly what's on the recording as the recording intended. Coloration by its nature prevents that.
- A severe roll-off in the bass or treble is unresolving. Nothing at the extremes will be resolved. It's just missing.
- Grados don't have very high resolution mids and highs. It only seems that way because they're colored. Treble spike at 9kHz makes cymbals louder, which makes them sound more resolving at the same volume. Upper mid-range spikes at 2kHz and 4kHz make guitars and snare drums respectively bite harder, and appear sharper. Mid-bass hump at 100Hz that doesn't intrude much into the mid-range and zero sub-bass make kick drums and bass guitars punch harder without muddying everything. Their coloration is tailored to the illusion of resolution. All the important rock instruments are forward.
You're better off saying all headphone preference, coloration and resolution both, is just preference.