[Erlend]

Hello all!
 
Been stalking the forums for a few months reading about what decent IEM's I should be looking for, and I figured I would pop my head in the door and say hi... HI!
 
Short about me..
29 year old male currently living in Norway, formerly living in San Diego CA. Always kinda wanted to be an audiophile, but never really found the time, or the real interest honestly, to get involved. Lately been more and more interested in getting the most I can out of my free time, yeah... got a kid recently , and as a large company already coined... "Life is too short to listen to bad headphones".
 
Currently my rig consists of:
Source: Iphone 3GS
IEM's: Monster Turbine w/ Control talk
 
Music preference at the moment..
Electronic music with heavy bass emphasis. 
I try to only use 320 bit rate, but yeah... sometimes you just cant find the songs you want at that rate. 
 
This site has soooo much great info that I am somewhat of a loss as where to start my journey towards knowing more about how to setup my listening experience. To that end I was wondering if someone could do me a soild and throw me some links to threads that they found especially helpful for someone starting out.
 
What I would be interested in learning more about would be:
Equalizing... pros and cons not to mention should I bother?
Amps... I hear a lot of talk about people using amps and getting a large improvement on their SQ, are my Turbines really going to benefit that much from an amp?
In general I would be interested in anything that people would deem interesting / worth knowing for a beginning head-fi'er.
 
Thanks in advance for your replies, and thanks again for having a great knowledge-base already established. 
 
 
Erlend

 

[billybob_jcv]

Quote:

Hello all!
 
Been stalking the forums for a few months reading about what decent IEM's I should be looking for, and I figured I would pop my head in the door and say hi... HI!
 
Short about me..
29 year old male currently living in Norway, formerly living in San Diego CA. Always kinda wanted to be an audiophile, but never really found the time, or the real interest honestly, to get involved. Lately been more and more interested in getting the most I can out of my free time, yeah... got a kid recently , and as a large company already coined... "Life is too short to listen to bad headphones".
 
Currently my rig consists of:
Source: Iphone 3GS
IEM's: Monster Turbine w/ Control talk
 
Music preference at the moment..
Electronic music with heavy bass emphasis. 
I try to only use 320 bit rate, but yeah... sometimes you just cant find the songs you want at that rate. 
 
This site has soooo much great info that I am somewhat of a loss as where to start my journey towards knowing more about how to setup my listening experience. To that end I was wondering if someone could do me a soild and throw me some links to threads that they found especially helpful for someone starting out.
 
What I would be interested in learning more about would be:
Equalizing... pros and cons not to mention should I bother?
Amps... I hear a lot of talk about people using amps and getting a large improvement on their SQ, are my Turbines really going to benefit that much from an amp?
In general I would be interested in anything that people would deem interesting / worth knowing for a beginning head-fi'er.
 
Thanks in advance for your replies, and thanks again for having a great knowledge-base already established. 
 
 
Erlend

 
First the traditional welcome:  
 
Welcome to head-fi, sorry about your wallet!
 
IMHO, EQ is very much a personal decision.  If it sounds better to you when you boost or cut a section of the frequency response, then who am I to tell you not to do it?  "Coloring" the sound can be done in many different ways - EQ at the source, using an amp with a bass boost or a non-flat response, or selecting a headphone with a particular sound signature that you prefer.  
 
I think the decision to use an amp has more to do with the specific headphones you are trying to drive, and whether they would benefit from more voltage or current than your source can provide.  In general, IEMs are easier to drive than full-size headphones, but it really depends on the impedance and efficiency of the headphones.  I'm not familiar with Turbines, but I'm sure if you find some of the reviews, someone will have commented on whether they benefit from an amp.  You should also note that there is a difference between putting an amp on the headphone out jack of your portable MP3 player, and having a source with a proper line-out that bypasses the built-in amp of the source.  For example, using a line-out dock cable on an ipod/iphone to your amp  is usually recommended so that the ipod/iphone built-in amp is (mostly) bypassed.  
 
However, putting an amp with a high gain on sensitive headphones can make the sound much, much worse.  You can overdrive the 'phones and cause distortion - that's why some amps have a gain switch and you generally want to use the lowest gain you can that still provides you the volume range you desire.
 
If I have said anything grossly wrong (or even slightly wrong) I have NO DOUBT one of my fellow head-fi'ers will quickly point out my stupidity...