[Bilavideo]

What brightness?

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

What brightness?

Agreed...none that my ears detect either.

 

[spahn_ranch]

 
Quote:

The RS1/RS1i are definitely one of my favourite cans for rock/hard rock/metal and hold a very special place (heck, I've even bought them twice)!

Somewhat intoxicated here; knowing I'd not talk air guitars without a drink, so out of respect and self-preservation I'll make this quick and to the point:
 
I have the HD800 and RS1. In this state of mild sobriety I can grab an air guitar while listening to the RS1. With the HD800... I don't see much air guitar happening. Ye olde RS1/RA1 can sure do it.
 
*) RA1 is IME not the final word in amping the 800's. I prefered the DNA Sonett with them. No cigar though, I mean geetar. G'night.

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

Agreed...none that my ears detect either.

Your sig says you are using a PS Audio DL III DAC.   Are you CD or computer based?  If computer based, what are you using as a transport?  If CD based, what player?  I'm still trying to understand why you're hearing one thing and I'm hearing another.....
 
USG

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

Your sig says you are using a PS Audio DL III DAC.   Are you CD or computer based?  If computer based, what are you using as a transport?  If CD based, what player?  I'm still trying to understand why you're hearing one thing and I'm hearing another.....
 
USG

 
My current setup is a Sony SACD player (toslink) to my DLIII and Laptop (USB) to my DLIII. I've also used my (now sold) DacMagic and NuForce uDac and even more recently my iBasso D10 (as a DAC) and all reveal the T1s as slightly warm with zero brightness.
 
Skylab, and Bilavideo, FrankI, musicman, baka1969 (and several more) hear it the exact same way as I do. I wonder if you've just got a "bright" and "slightly" defective pair? Several of us have all talked via PM about the T1s several times and can't reconcile what we are hearing to what you and Pataburd have reported.
 

 

[upstateguy]

 
Quote:

My current setup is a Sony SACD player (toslink) to my DLIII and Laptop (USB) to my DLIII. I've also used my (now sold) DacMagic and NuForce uDac and even more recently my iBasso D10 (as a DAC) and all reveal the T1s as slightly warm with zero brightness.
 
Skylab, and Bilavideo, FrankI, musicman, baka1969 (and several more) hear it the exact same way as I do. I wonder if you've just got a "bright" and "slightly" defective pair? Several of us have all talked via PM about the T1s several times and can't reconcile what we are hearing to what you and Pataburd have reported.
 

I've been concerned about that also. 
 
Here are some ideas off the top of my head in an attempt to logic this out.
 
The jittery toslink might also cause your set up to sound warm.  When I run things through my lower resolution and jittery Blue Circle Thingee (transport), the result is a warmer sound because some of the high resolution details are obscured by either jitter and/or a lower resolution.  When I compared the USB Thingee's coax or toslink outputs to the toslink from my dedicated music computer, they had the same warmer sound.  Not so with the asyc. HiFace, which has a noticeable increase in high frequency resolution and information than what is found with toslink.... So transports might be part of the reason.
 
I have also noticed a similar thing if I move down to a lower resolution DAC like my Constantine, Zhaolu or DAC-AH, from my North Star or Stello.The lower resolution sound always seems to sound warmer because there is less high frequency information.....  So DACs might be part of the reason.
 
The same sort of thing occurs with my amps.  As I go down in resolution from the GS-1 to the M^3, the T-1 becomes warmer sounding and when I add the tubes of the Woo 3, it is even warmer and bassier still....   So it's understandable if someone is listening through a lower resolution system, the T-1 might appear warm to them.....  so amps might play a part.
 
Another factor could be frame of reference.  When referring to set of headphones as warm, I usually use my 650s as the yardstick.  Many of us have compared the sound signature of the T-1 to the 880 series and those hea well known for being bright and bass light.  If I was comparing the T-1 to a 701 for instance, I would have little problem saying the T-1 was warmer than the 701.... in this case it would be semantics.
 
And still another interesting thing is, IIRC, that some people like musicman and slim.a described their T-1 as bright and/or grating as the primary reason for recabling, so Pataburd and I aren't the only ones who heard stock T-1s that way.  As an aside, it would then follow, that what you're hearing from your stock T-1, is not the same thing the recablers are hearing from theirs, if the improvements attributed to recabling are to believed. 
 
And yet another way of spinning this issue might be that that the warmish stock T-1s owned by Skylab and yourself, for instance, must have sounded inherently different from the (brighter) stock T-1s that needed recabling to cure their ills................
 
Just saying....................... 

 
USG

 

[MacedonianHero]

About the toslink...I'm using a pretty good glass Dayton cable. When I had my DacMagic, I was using a Toshiba CD player as my transport (now donated to my brother) and a good Kimber Coax cable to my DacMagic...still slightly warm with no brightness.
 
My friend baka1969 used Frank I's T1s via his setup (DacMagic - Gilmore Lite) and he also noted them slightly warm with zero brightness. I do agree that they sound warmest with tubes (and best)

.
 
Cheers.

 

[Shahrose]

Quote:

 

I've been concerned about that also. 
 
Here are some ideas off the top of my head in an attempt to logic this out.
 
The jittery toslink might also cause your set up to sound warm.  When I run things through my lower resolution and jittery Blue Circle Thingee (transport), the result is a warmer sound because some of the high resolution details are obscured by either jitter and/or a lower resolution.  When I compared the USB Thingee's coax or toslink outputs to the toslink from my dedicated music computer, they had the same warmer sound.  Not so with the asyc. HiFace, which has a noticeable increase in high frequency resolution and information than what is found with toslink.... So transports might be part of the reason.
 
I have also noticed a similar thing if I move down to a lower resolution DAC like my Constantine, Zhaolu or DAC-AH, from my North Star or Stello.The lower resolution sound always seems to sound warmer because there is less high frequency information.....  So DACs might be part of the reason.
 
The same sort of thing occurs with my amps.  As I go down in resolution from the GS-1 to the M^3, the T-1 becomes warmer sounding and when I add the tubes of the Woo 3, it is even warmer and bassier still....   So it's understandable if someone is listening through a lower resolution system, the T-1 might appear warm to them.....  so amps might play a part.
 
Another factor could be frame of reference.  When referring to set of headphones as warm, I usually use my 650s as the yardstick.  Many of us have compared the sound signature of the T-1 to the 880 series and those hea well known for being bright and bass light.  If I was comparing the T-1 to a 701 for instance, I would have little problem saying the T-1 was warmer than the 701.... in this case it would be semantics.
 
And still another interesting thing is, IIRC, that some people like musicman and slim.a described their T-1 as bright and/or grating as the primary reason for recabling, so Pataburd and I aren't the only ones who heard stock T-1s that way.  As an aside, it would then follow, that what you're hearing from your stock T-1, is not the same thing the recablers are hearing from theirs, if the improvements attributed to recabling are to believed. 
 
And yet another way of spinning this issue might be that that the warmish stock T-1s owned by Skylab and yourself, for instance, must have sounded inherently different from the (brighter) stock T-1s that needed recabling to cure their ills................
 
Just saying....................... 

 
USG

 
They're all valid points, but I feel this is the predominant factor here. Also, preferences/individual HRTF.
 

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

About the toslink...I'm using a pretty good glass Dayton cable. When I had my DacMagic, I was using a Toshiba CD player as my transport (now donated to my brother) and a good Kimber Coax cable to my DacMagic...still slightly warm with no brightness.
 
My friend baka1969 used Frank I's T1s via his setup (DacMagic - Gilmore Lite) and he also noted them slightly warm with zero brightness. I do agree that they sound warmest with tubes (and best)

.
 
Cheers.

 
How do you account for the descriptions of the stock T-1s given by the recablers? 
 
Wouldn't you agree that those descriptions are closer to mine and pataburd's than yours and skylab's?
 
USG
 
(I don't think I ever read about a T-1 recabling job which didn't tame the highs in one way or another)

 

[SP Wild]

If we draw comparisons with the K701 vs HD650 debate - from what I understand, T1 and HD800 are upgrade paths for K701 appreciators.  HD650 appreciators did not have an upgrade path...perhaps the LCD-2 will be the answer for HD650 lovers looking for upgrades?
 
Quote:

 
How do you account for the descriptions of the stock T-1s given by the recablers? 
 
Wouldn't you agree that those descriptions are closer to mine and pataburd's than yours and skylab's?
 
USG
 
(I don't think I ever read about a T-1 recabling job which didn't tame the highs in one way or another)

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

 
How do you account for the descriptions of the stock T-1s given by the recablers? 
 
Wouldn't you agree that those descriptions are closer to mine and pataburd's than yours and skylab's?
 
USG
 
(I don't think I ever read about a T-1 recabling job which didn't tame the highs in one way or another)

Personally, I don't see how a different set of copper and dielectric can change a headphone's signature that drastically (and I am speaking from experience in general...though not with the T1s).
 

 

[Skylab]

 
Quote:

 
How do you account for the descriptions of the stock T-1s given by the recablers? 
 
Wouldn't you agree that those descriptions are closer to mine and pataburd's than yours and skylab's?
 
USG
 
(I don't think I ever read about a T-1 recabling job which didn't tame the highs in one way or another)

Just to be clear - I have never expressed ANY opinion on recabled T1's sonically.  What I have said is that I like the sound with the stock cable, don't have any issues with the highs, and that I have no personal plans to recable them.  I also don;t believe you can generalize about what affect recabling would have - it would depend entirely on the specifics of the recable.

 

[musicman59]

I am not at a technical level to be able to explain why different wire may sound different. My guess is that it is a result of a combination of factors; quality of the material, resistance, inductance, etc. in addition to sincergy as a total system. But i can give you an example of a personal experience.
 
I have a priend that makes his own cables. We are not talking an amateur with a low level system. His system is all McIntosh based on the 501 monoblocks and 2 chassis pre-amp (don't remeber the model). One day he brought me 3 different pair of interconnects. All of them looking exactly the same just with a tag to identify them in 1, 2 or 3. He asked me to listen to them for some time to them classify them by my preference in sound.
I did some serious listening to the 3 of them for about 3 weeks. When he came back I gave him the order of my preference. My result was number 2 was my favorite sounding pair, number 1 was the second and number 3 the last.
 
After I told him my preference he smiled and said that I classified them exactly in the order of quality of the internal materilas used.
 
Again, I don't know technically how that works but that was a totally blind test and personnaly convinced me that design and quality of materials make a difference. Just my personal experience and opinion.

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

If we draw comparisons with the K701 vs HD650 debate - from what I understand, T1 and HD800 are upgrade paths for K701 appreciators.  HD650 appreciators did not have an upgrade path...perhaps the LCD-2 will be the answer for HD650 lovers looking for upgrades?
 

 
Hi SP
 
My impression is that the T-1 sounds more like an 880, than a 701. 
 
It's curious that Sennheiser felt it necessary to move away from their 650 house sound.
 
I had a few concerns about the LCD series which is why I bought the T-1s instead.
 
 
Quote:

Personally, I don't see how a different set of copper and dielectric can change a headphone's signature that drastically (and I am speaking from experience in general...though not with the T1s).
 

I agree with you. 
 
I'm just using the descriptions of the stock T-1s, given by the recablers, to illustrate that many people also reported that the T-1s were bright.

 
Quote:

Just to be clear - I have never expressed ANY opinion on recabled T1's sonically.  What I have said is that I like the sound with the stock cable, don't have any issues with the highs, and that I have no personal plans to recable them.  I also don;t believe you can generalize about what affect recabling would have - it would depend entirely on the specifics of the recable.

I'm only concerned with your appraisal of the stock T-1s.
 
I make no claim about the effect of recabling nor do I suggest that you have. 
 
I'm just citing the recablers initial impressions of the T-1 as examples of people who thought the T-1 was bright ........
 
Quote:

I am not at a technical level to be able to explain why different wire may sound different.
 

 
Again, I don't know technically how that works but that was a totally blind test and personnaly convinced me that design and quality of materials make a difference. Just my personal experience and opinion.

I'm not calling your recabling impressions into question.  I believe that you reported what you heard.

 
What I would like to do is use your and slim.a's initial descriptions of the stock T-1 as being bright, to support what pataburd, myself (and many others) have reported.

 
USG
 

 

[aimlink]

Quote:

I am not at a technical level to be able to explain why different wire may sound different. My guess is that it is a result of a combination of factors; quality of the material, resistance, inductance, etc. in addition to sincergy as a total system. But i can give you an example of a personal experience.
 
I have a priend that makes his own cables. We are not talking an amateur with a low level system. His system is all McIntosh based on the 501 monoblocks and 2 chassis pre-amp (don't remeber the model). One day he brought me 3 different pair of interconnects. All of them looking exactly the same just with a tag to identify them in 1, 2 or 3. He asked me to listen to them for some time to them classify them by my preference in sound.
I did some serious listening to the 3 of them for about 3 weeks. When he came back I gave him the order of my preference. My result was number 2 was my favorite sounding pair, number 1 was the second and number 3 the last.
 
After I told him my preference he smiled and said that I classified them exactly in the order of quality of the internal materilas used.
 
Again, I don't know technically how that works but that was a totally blind test and personnaly convinced me that design and quality of materials make a difference. Just my personal experience and opinion.

Wow.  Thanks for this testimonial.