[Max F]

The sex pistols sound great on my system both cans and speakers. Nevermind the bullocks is a nice recording. Now, modern overly compressed stuff is more difficult to enjoy at house shaking levels.

Hifi does not need to mean you can't enjoy all your musical tastes. Set up you system for what you enjoy to listen too. It drives me nuts when I hear audiophiles that have their systems so tweeked that all they can stand to listen to is Diana Krall and Steely Dan - blah!! Wow listen to Diana breathing and the subtle hint of spit vibrating on her lower lip. Yeah!!

 

[Geruvah]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max F /img/forum/go_quote.gif It drives me nuts when I hear audiophiles that have their systems so tweeked that all they can stand to listen to is Diana Krall and Steely Dan - blah!! Wow listen to Diana breathing and the subtle hint of spit vibrating on her lower lip. Yeah!!

I always did laugh at how at times, people want to hear as if their ears are right between the singer/instrument and their microphone and describe it exactly like that. Makes it sound as if they're some creepy stalker.

 

[ph0rk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif It all depends on the music you listen to. Lo-fi or compressed rock sounds godawful on good equipment. But if you develop a taste for jazz or classical, the equipment will reward you.

I don't agree.
The Gun Club or Dead Kennedys sounds great on my crappy z-2300's and even better out of the k601 or the HD650. (In particular, Fresh Fruit and Fire Of Love)

Both go for a lofi sound, but the sound man wasn't out to lunch, is all.

 

[mrwinick]

Of the hundreds of albums I have I keep coming back to very few of them regularly because in addition to fantastic music the quality of the production is also fantastic. It bothers me to listen to poorly produced albums. That problem has become more significant as I've upgraded my rig. OP is right on target.

 

[jonathanjong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by panda /img/forum/go_quote.gif this is hogwash, crap recordings still sound better on better systems. i don't know what kind of denial you guys are in...

I has to disagrees. The lesson was brought home for me when I listened to some stuff an acquaintance recorded at home. I was playing it through iMac speakers and it was alright. But people came into the lab, and I had to plug in headphones. When I put on my D1001s, I thought, "Holy smokes...where did all that noise come from?" It wasn't that the Denons blocked out ambient noise that reduced my ability to hear the noise from the recording, I don't think, as the room was silent. It wasn't that the Denons made the music louder either, as far as I could tell. It seems like they just brought out more detail. I recently came across what seems like an analogous situation in digital photography. When comparing two cameras (or, in this case, camera phones), one camera sometimes seems to take "smoother" photos than the other. However, zooming in on the image, one discovered that the "smoothness" is caused (as least in part) by a lack of detail. Blurriness (for lack of a better word) sometimes looks like smoothness.

 

[iamoneagain]

I always stayed away from completely neutral headphones for this reason. I really enjoyed the RS-1 for rock and punk. I also thought the PS-1 were great at this. The GS1000 had the problem the OP has. It only sounded good with great recordings and I could no longer enjoy a lot of my 80's and punk stuff. I ended up selling them.

Now I have a really highend headphone, the L3000, and it sounds great with everything. I feel you can still move up the headphone ladder without having to give up any of your music collection. I didn't get into this hobby to become a music snob, I just wanted to get the most out of the music I already enjoyed.

 

[scytheavatar]

One thing I can't understand is why people act as if their whole collection is badly produced music and that their setup should be targeted at the badly produced music, at the expense of their well produced Pink Floyd or Porcupine Tree. Without any disrespect, I think all you 'forgiving' loving crowd should just stop listening to crappy produced music and learn to listen to well produced music. The rule in the audiophile world is very simple: garbage in, garbage out. Instead of complaining about your top-quality phones or amps, why not complain about the third-rate sound engineers or producers who don't give a damn about their music?

 

[Peter Pinna]

In other words, for you when listening through headphones if the music sounds good that's bad. But, if the music sounds bad that's also bad unless the way it sounds bad is good.

 

[WittyzTH]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iamoneagain /img/forum/go_quote.gif I always stayed away from completely neutral headphones for this reason. I really enjoyed the RS-1 for rock and punk. I also thought the PS-1 were great at this. The GS1000 had the problem the OP has. It only sounded good with great recordings and I could no longer enjoy a lot of my 80's and punk stuff. I ended up selling them. Now I have a really highend headphone, the L3000, and it sounds great with everything. I feel you can still move up the headphone ladder without having to give up any of your music collection. I didn't get into this hobby to become a music snob, I just wanted to get the most out of the music I already enjoyed.

x2

I don't like neutral can such as K701 for the same reason.

 

[sfmatt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkweg /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can hear too much of the distortion in crap recordings on the guitars on my DT990pro headphones. Ramones, Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, garage bands etc. sound better on lo-fi equipment.

Ramones live on my SR-80's feels like a drill in my head (anything on SR-80s does anyway after one hour max . It slightly better on my big monitors only because the sound is fatter but doesn't cut it with any of my headphones. I have maybe 70-80 mostly obscure punkrock CDs (from the late 80s early 80s, not remastered) and most of the recordings were below average to atrocious. Probably only the few known bands could afford decent studio recording sessions the others must have been recording themselves on their friends' TASCAMs. Vinyl was the end format anyway so I guess they must have pushed the highs and decreased the lows to compensate.
Interestingly enough I went to see an old friend a couple of years ago who was smart enough to have kept his vinyls. On his very decent speakers (JMLab) the same albums sounded much better than on mine (or any of my headphones). Maybe it was the beer that helped but with the vinyl shuffling and crackling we were in nostalgic bliss...

Forgot to mention: those punk oldies do sound really good on my GF's vintage car stereo. The speakers are so muddy I can barely understand the traffic report but for punkrock they're tops. Punk energy is so alive I have to watch the volume otherwise I'd either blow the engine or get myself rammed by the cops after a high-speed chase whichever comes first.

 

[Rarach]

I have to agree with OP. Yesterday I was listening Linking Park mp3s on my $20 Philips headphones and I found it as fun (if not more) as on my DT880s. Ofcourse sound was muddy and with almost nonexistant highs compared to Beyers but with less detail I also didn't hear all crappy agressive sounds that bothered me on Beyers.

It looks that you must really have ideal combination of source + amp + headphones + recording have to be neutral or colored in some way that your phones like, to enjoy them 100%.

 

[soundlogic]

Sometimes...the TRUTH hurts!

 

[Redcarmoose]

When they mix the tracks together sometimes they play the track back on many different types of monitors, some big, some small, and try to make it sound well balanced. It's easy to get everything to fit by compression, now the bass waves from the drums don't run together and the bass is low but the waves don't run together so they don't cancel each other out. The problem with that is that now everything is in connection with each other and even as the bass is low, to do it again and make it lower, we have to start all over again. Like a piece of plywood or layers of an onion. Now we hear of high resolution recordings, they are recorded in realtime with no compression and very little soundstage placement. This works well with jazz when all parts, drums, bass guitar, guitar, sax are in a perfect recording studio and have good tonal seperation from each other. The issue I guess is that most of our recordings are changed in the mix, then replaced in the sound spectrum, all in the ears of the producer, mixer and sound of studio monitors that are variables. How could every CD ever sound the same after that ? A sound recording of music is only an image of a real musical event not the event itself. It tricks us to think it's real but it's only as real as a photograph is real. When some one gets a clearer more perfect, less distorted music system, it's like seeing the fake thing from a more discerning stance. What your hearing is not real in the first place.

 

[Suntory_Times]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geruvah /img/forum/go_quote.gif I always did laugh at how at times, people want to hear as if their ears are right between the singer/instrument and their microphone and describe it exactly like that. Makes it sound as if they're some creepy stalker.

The spit part is kinda kreepy, but I can understand why bieng able to hear the breathing in such music adds alot to one's enjoyement of the music and helps one fell as if they where there listening to the musician live.

 

[Redcarmoose]

What about when you think you feel the headphone vibrations around the house even when no speakers are on? That freaks me out way more than spit or breaths do.