[halcyon]

I have compiled here perhaps more of an entertaining than actually useful ranking of headphones that have been reviewed by German magazines such as Audio and Stereoplay.

Only phones that they have tested and measured are listed. As it is a listing from the back of the magazine with no notes from the original reviews, it's not very informative.

The lists from these two magazines may hint at some patterns however and it's interesting what kind of comments these listings draw.

Don't take them too seriously though.

Unfortunately I have no idea with what kind of amps each phone was tested with (that should tell you something about how seriously to take the listings

)

AUDIO (GER) magazine ranking as of 12/2002

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Stereplay (GER) magazine headphone rankings as of 11/2002

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Comments?

regards,

Halcyon

 

[00940]

it is often said the hd497 and the sr60 have a pretty similar quality when driven by an amp. so if they say the porta pro = sr 60, it means porta pro = =/- hd497.

that's stupid.

that's all i can compare, but i'd certainly not take the rest seriously after such a crazy affirmation.

 

[sacd lover]

I certainly havent heard all these headphones but I love grado sr-225s. I like the 225 better than the 125 and 80, and the dt770pro, and the senn hd580/600; so from the few I am familiar with, thats how I would rank them. By the way, thanks for this post, this is quite intresting and surely will generate lots of imput.

 

[Mega Mee]

my ears must be wrong

how can they like the hp890's? i think they sound pretty average

 

[purk]

Beyer DT831 = Sony MDR-V700??? Senn HD-590 > HD - 580? They must love bright sounding can....Hint... SR-225

 

[wallijonn]

"carpet bombing" comes immediately to mind...

"Spitzenklasse","Oberklasse" and "Mittelklasse" but no lowenklassen?

i wonder what they were using as a reference. was a review by 5 members or only 1 man reviews? but hey, i'm cool. i don't own senns... i want my akg k1000 now! damnit.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally posted by purk Beyer DT831 = Sony MDR-V700??? Senn HD-590 > HD - 580? They must love bright sounding can....Hint... SR-225

Actually that review said Senn HD-590 > Sony MDR-CD580.

 

[Matthew-Spaltro]

They love the Sr 225. Bravo there. They do not seem to like the 770 pro. I have both phones and I am thinking about doing a comparson when my Meta42 arrives.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Not only that, Matthew-Spaltro, but Germany's Audio magazine actually ranked the Sony MDR-V700DJ above the Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro.

 

[Matthew-Spaltro]

Quote:

Originally posted by Eagle_Driver Not only that, Matthew-Spaltro, but Germany's Audio magazine actually ranked the Sony MDR-V700DJ above the Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro.

 

[Guyferd]

The reviewer sure has a craptastic taste.
I bet that he is using a lousy amp to audition each of them with. Or worst, no amp.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

More likely, a crappy amp with a crappy, relatively high output impedance - such as the "speaker-amp-filtered-with-a-cheap-resistor" type of headphone amp that's built into most integrated amps - is used in those reviews.

 

[Steve999]

Great post, halcyon. I think it drives home the point about how subjective judging headphone sound is. Compare audio magazine's rating of the porta pro with with stereplay's! If there were some more objective way to do it, these people would have figured it out, don't ya think?

That's why head-fi is so great, you really get into people's minds about why they feel how they feel about headphone sounds... it's fascinating. The moral I suppose: The ratings are great fun, but there's just no substitute for hearing for yourself.

 

[Flasken]

that list is sorted by PRICE not performance... those germans are NOOBZ!!

 

[halcyon]

I dug up some old back issues of both Audio and Stereoplay to find out what kind of amplification they had used in their testing.

It was not all, as Eagle_Driver suggested, crap "speaker-amp-filtered- with-a-cheap-resistor", although those played into the test as well

Some additional information about the amps used:

Stereoply has used Creek OBH 11 SE & OBH 2, Grado RA 1 and those "integrated amplifier headphone outputs"

Audio does not list amps used, unfortunately.


regards,
Halcyon