[FritosOrLays]

Okay, my old headphones, Koss Portapro, just broke. It's gonna be a while before I can get a new set of headphones. I'm thinking of either buying the same set, or buying an entirely new set. I'm also using a Cowon S9 MP3 player. So these questions are mostly for portable listening.
 
I've never used a set of headphones that costed more than 50 dollars, mostly because I've never had the chance to sample anything, so I didn't want to buy anything online for more than 50 in case it turned out I really didn't like it. I also live in a pretty rural place, so there aren't any audio stores around here - an electronic store with pretty shoddy iPod headphones at best.
 
My question is, to you experienced audiophiles, is there generally a price range where it becomes obvious how dramatic the sound quality is? As in maybe not 90 dollars to 30 it's meh, but at 150 dollars to 30, the difference is quite clear. Also, in your experience, how was your perception of the quality when you began? Was it something acquired, or was it something noticeable from the start? Have you ever had friends who you shared your equipment with, and they couldn't hear a difference even though it was really clear to you? I mean, I can tell when I hear the scratchy quality of 10 dollar headphones or 30 dollar speakers, but I'm not sure if I'll pick up more quality sounds. 
 
I think the obvious answer would be to sample some more expensive headphones, but closest store is 2 hours away, so I just want to get some feedback on what I should do.

 

[desirephone]

I  found some people just can not tell the quality of sound or they just do not care? For example, my wife.

 

[Darkblade48]

It is hard to say if there is a certain price range where the sound quality becomes better; certainly though, my pair of Denon D2000 sound better than (say) the iPhone stock earbuds.
 
Of course, how well you can perceive differences in sound quality plays a role as well.
 
Because I have been playing piano for over 20 years now, I can hear differences in headphones quite quickly; for obvious extremes such as the D2000 and the iPhone earbuds, the difference is like night and day for me.

 

[telecaster]

I wasn't an audiophile when I was a kid, in the 80's CD was just becoming consumer affordable, and my dad had a low end philips CD player, he also was into HIFI and bought a nice Sennheiser to go with his nice set. When I heard it, it was so good I felt in love with those! Don't remember the reference but I remembered that when I increased the pressure on my ear the bass was considerably better. The sound was obviously good, and you'll experience it first hand when you see it.
Audiophiles always search for better sound subjectively. There is no objective things in human perception, what sounds best is what you decide will.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,
 
I definitely think training your ear(s) is important. If you take something extremely high end and put it next to a few bassy beaters and ignore how they look, and take 100 people randomly to listen to them, most of them are going to say the better sounding headphone is the loudest one with the most bass (at least from the current generation). Folk from the 70's for example may not like the bassy stuff and really just like the more netural/mid-forward sounding ones. The audiophile in the bunch will be listening for balance. It takes time to train yourself to listen to a audio equipment and understand what you're listening for. There's nothing wrong with loving bass, yours truly loves bass big time, but when it comes to spending bundles of money on high end resolving headphone gear, it's rather pointless unless the person listening really is listening. I don't grab my HE-500's when I'm cranking dub for example, I grab my Denons.
 
Hifi can go from $30 to $1300 really fast. And honestly, some will say there's a night & day difference, I'll say there's a marginal 1~10% difference. You pay dearly for those last few 1~2% that make up what high-ends do.
 
I find the $400 arena right now to be the sweet spot, in the form of the Denon D5000 and Hifiman HE-400.
 
But really, there's a reason I have a $30 pair of Panasonic HTF600's right next to some Hifiman HE-500's and a bunch of other headphones. You can get great sound for a dime. Appreciating a high-end takes a trained ear (and very specific source).
 
Very best,

 

[catscratch]

I think there are 2 issues here: first is diminishing marginal returns, and then there's the correlation between price and quality. Not everything in high-end-land is created equal, and there are plenty of headphones that carry a high-end price tag but don't give you high-end sound. In fact performance in general is so variable, that when you factor in how much personal preference - in terms of sound signature - affects listening enjoyment, it becomes very easy to make the argument that it's all subjective and price has little to do with performance to begin with. Mind you, the argument is wrong (IMO), but that's a different story.

The PortaPros definitely give great performance for the dollar, and going from them to something that's mediocre and overpriced is not going to give a huge perceived benefit. However going to something that's genuinely high-end will be as much of a shock to the senses as going from something that's garbage to the PortaPros. Probably more so.

Ear training certainly has a lot to do with it. A lot of the gains at the upper end of the market are in relatively subtle things - imaging, tonality, microdetail, transients - things that a lot of people that have no idea what to listen for will miss. Innate hearing also matters here - I certainly can relate to stories where people give a high-end system to a friend who can't tell it apart from a cheap one. I have friends like that, but I also have friends with inherently amazing ears who can hear things that I have to really struggle to pick up, and hear them immediately and with surprising accuracy.

Musical training certainly helps - I've played piano for 13 years - but my experience with musicians generally tells me that most musicians know how to listen to an instrument, but don't really understand fidelity or know how to listen to gear. They can tell the nuances of a performance, but understanding nuances in audio reproduction is a completely different thing.

I think the best move is to not skip the learning phase, and instead just get your hands on as much different gear as you can, then keep what you like and return/sell what you don't. There's no substitute for experience, and you also can't really say what your listening preferences are going to be down the line. When I started I liked brighter stuff, initially equating brightness with detail, then later shifted to things that get midrange tonality right even at the expense of everything else, and now want something that generally does it all, which unfortunately necessitates a pretty high-end system.

High-end rigs, however, can pull off a neat trick that no low-end rig can: immersion. The old phrase "you feel like you can almost reach out and touch the instruments" is not just a reviewing cliche, or rather it's a reviewing cliche for a reason. Really high-end rigs - we're talking top-tier electrostatics with high-end sources and good amplification - give you an incredible sense of realism and musical coherence. At this level, there still are differences in sound signature, but outright problems are so minor that they don't really detract from the sonic illusion. It doesn't necessarily mean that these rigs all sound real, but they do at the very least sound believable - you could close your eyes and think that a real performance could actually sound like that, and it's easier to believe that you're at a real performance in the first place. Generally, for me the average reaction to a serious, high-end rig has been been one of amazement, even out of untrained listeners. And mine's not even all that crazy in the realm of high-end stuff. My source could certainly use a lot of work.

So, get a bunch of different stuff, and see for yourself. The F/S forum is a good place, and if you treat your gear well, you can usually resell with little to no loss. Get different brands, and get different driver technologies as well. Electrostatics, planar magnetics, dynamics, balanced armatures, they all have a different sound and it's something you need to hear firsthand. Obviously, it will take time, but being in a rush is best left for more serious things.

 

[TWIFOSP]

As an engineering rule, price does not affect quality.  Quality, on the other hand, takes time, and time is money.

 

[Radioking59]

Koss headphones have a lifetime warranty. No need to buy a new pair of Portapros.
 
http://www.koss.com/en/support/warranty_and_repair

 

[RayleighSilvers]

Really good question. I was actually going to ask this question myself. I'm wondering how much I should actually bee spending. This site is terrible in the sense that it tempts you to blow big money on desirable gear. I think Malveaux explained it correctly. I'm definitely in the camp where I can't see what exactly high end gear offers to warrant the price. I've tried a lot of recommended headphones that go up to the £250 mark, including ones that are constantly recommended such as the D2000, and have walked away wondering "what's all the fuss about". When reading reviews of headphones that cost a LOT more than my $30 panasonics, I read that those headphones are still colored in some way. They still have either recessed mids, shrill highs or weak bass. What exactly are audiophiles looking for? If you want a balanced headphone theres the Fischer 003. For detail monsters you can get the Shure 940. What do headphones higher than this offer over these headphones, I have yet to find out. IF the difference really is only ~10% then I don't think I will be in this hobby for long.

 

[catscratch]

As an engineering rule, price does not affect quality.  Quality, on the other hand, takes time, and time is money.

This.

I'd paraphrase it a bit: "if it's expensive, that doesn't mean it's really good. However if it's really good, it's going to be expensive." Of course used and vintage gear kinda skews the value equation, since there's a lot of relatively rare stuff that's fantastic but doesn't carry a huge pricetag the few times that it does come up for sale.

Really good question. I was actually going to ask this question myself. I'm wondering how much I should actually bee spending. This site is terrible in the sense that it tempts you to blow big money on desirable gear. I think Malveaux explained it correctly. I'm definitely in the camp where I can't see what exactly high end gear offers to warrant the price. I've tried a lot of recommended headphones that go up to the £250 mark, including ones that are constantly recommended such as the D2000, and have walked away wondering "what's all the fuss about". When reading reviews of headphones that cost a LOT more than my $30 panasonics, I read that those headphones are still colored in some way. They still have either recessed mids, shrill highs or weak bass. What exactly are audiophiles looking for? If you want a balanced headphone theres the Fischer 003. For detail monsters you can get the Shure 940. What do headphones higher than this offer over these headphones, I have yet to find out. IF the difference really is only ~10% then I don't think I will be in this hobby for long.

You should spend money when what you have isn't giving you any musical enjoyment. If you already like what you have, stick with it, unless of course getting something better is pocket change. A good general rule of spending is: if a purchase negatively affects your life financially in any way, you can't afford it. That's pretty easy to ignore when you get into hi-fi mind you, especially if you're young.

If you don't know what the high-end fuss is all about, go to a meet, and listen to an Orpheus rig, or something similar. I'm pretty sure it will quickly tell you what's what.

 

[desirephone]

 
Quote:

This.
I'd paraphrase it a bit: "if it's expensive, that doesn't mean it's really good. However if it's really good, it's going to be expensive." Of course used and vintage gear kinda skews the value equation, since there's a lot of relatively rare stuff that's fantastic but doesn't carry a huge pricetag the few times that it does come up for sale.
You should spend money when what you have isn't giving you any musical enjoyment. If you already like what you have, stick with it, unless of course getting something better is pocket change. A good general rule of spending is: if a purchase negatively affects your life financially in any way, you can't afford it. That's pretty easy to ignore when you get into hi-fi mind you, especially if you're young.
If you don't know what the high-end fuss is all about, go to a meet, and listen to an Orpheus rig, or something similar. I'm pretty sure it will quickly tell you what's what.

 
Some superior equipment with little investment to start with Koss 75 ( might be with a little bit Kramer mod, very easy), porta pro, creative auvana live! (Denon 1001).

 

[RayleighSilvers]

Would've thought this topic would get more attention. I'd definitely like some replies to the post I made.

 

[kmj2587]

How does price affect quality?
As has been said, high price does not indicate quality, but quality going to come at a price.
 
Does hearing that quality require a trained ear?
Yes and no.  Many people have an initial "Wow!" moment during their first experience with quality audio gear.  They hear a lot more, and they can certainly tell that what they are hearing is an improvement, but they don't necessarily know how to describe it.  From there it's a lot of experience and tinkering to train yourself to hear things, and to learn what you enjoy hearing.  The first step is picking up the vocabulary to describe what you hear.  If you can't put it in words, you'll never get further than guessing and trial and error.  This does not necessarily entail using a lot of audiophile buzzwords like PRaT, musicality and whatever else.
 
The experience and tinkering is where a trained ear comes in.  A large part of having a "trained ear" for audiophile purposes is simply discovering over time what the actual difference is between high and low quality audio gear and listening for these differences once you have noticed them.  The first things I picked up were bass notes that sounded like musical notes rather than noise that causes vibrations, and instrument separation in the treble range.  These things then became part of my listening routine and I began to notice when they were not present on lower quality gear.  I have a set of polk tower speakers that I use with my TV that always remind me why I enjoy my headphones because they lack that separation in the upper registers.  You can pick this up naturally over time, or you can actively train yourself to do it.  Personally, I picked up a text book and CD for would be recording engineers to train myself to hear things like frequency response differences and relatively small volume changes.
 
An important thing to keep in mind here is that these issues of detail are a matter of making adjustments around the edges.  Your first priority should be finding a sound signature you enjoy.  You can't train yourself to enjoy a sound signature that bothers you, even if you learn enough to respect it for what it does well.  Rather than ask for a price range, you may be better served asking which headphones handle your preferred style of music well and why.
 
 
Quote:

Really good question. I was actually going to ask this question myself. I'm wondering how much I should actually bee spending. This site is terrible in the sense that it tempts you to blow big money on desirable gear. I think Malveaux explained it correctly. I'm definitely in the camp where I can't see what exactly high end gear offers to warrant the price. I've tried a lot of recommended headphones that go up to the £250 mark, including ones that are constantly recommended such as the D2000, and have walked away wondering "what's all the fuss about". When reading reviews of headphones that cost a LOT more than my $30 panasonics, I read that those headphones are still colored in some way. They still have either recessed mids, shrill highs or weak bass. What exactly are audiophiles looking for? If you want a balanced headphone theres the Fischer 003. For detail monsters you can get the Shure 940. What do headphones higher than this offer over these headphones, I have yet to find out. IF the difference really is only ~10% then I don't think I will be in this hobby for long.

 
"Audiophiles" are not all looking for the same thing.  Part of this is preferences, part of it is that the only qualification needed to be an audiophile is to identify as one.  There is no hard and fast rule for everyone as to where diminishing returns cause the price/performance ratio to become unfavorable.  The best thing you could probably do is find some environment, such as a Head-Fi meet, where you can listen to setups that move up the price chain and find the point at which you stop being impressed by the performance and start fearing the price tag.  This is what I did and I found that while LCD 2s did in fact sound better than my HD 650s, I was not bothered nearly enough about it to actually want to buy them.  I went to a meet expecting to come out wanting to buy everything and instead came out more confident that I had found my preferred price/performance range.  Ultimately, it's not about what you spend on your gear, but how much you enjoy it.

 

[Makiah S]

I with you there, experince pays off BIG time in this department and it depends to on how well your ears are trained and natrual ability as well. Some people are hard wired to hear the difference some aren't, either way the more you listen actively thinking about what you hearing and comparing it to how other things sound, like listening to the sound of a bird chirp in nature as compared to listening to the same bird though Head Phones... little details and what not
 
And with regards to price more $ doesn't mean better sound, for example a buddy of mine has $150 Bose Headphones... my $80 Sony's have more bass BY far but his are a much brighter than mine and have a better isolation. Mine Has better seperation of instruments where as his has a more "fun" sound and isn't as dark as mine. So he paid twice as much for his and they aren't nessicarly better, just different, although mine where a little better over all :3 we both agreed on that
 
And as kmj says, how much you enjoy your gear means more than what you pay for it!

 

[atomiccow]

The greatest jump I had was going from generic in ears to my first set of IEMs which was a Westone UM1. This was the only time I could really say I heard an improvement in every aspect possible. It wasn't until later when I upgraded to a UE Superfi.5.pro that I realized how completely mid biased the UM1 was. That was something I never thought when I used the UM1. From then on it was onto my first desktop rig which was the HD650. I used this as my main only phone for four years. I knew it wasn't perfect but I never thought it had any glaring flaws. Last year I upgraded to the LCD-2 and that again exposed all the flaws in the HD650. I had never thought of dynamic drivers as being "grainy" until I heard the pristine clarity of the LCD-2's planar drivers. I still use and cherish my HD650 but I find I reach for the LCD-2 most the time now.
 
I think one can say they are at least a little experienced and deserve the title of "audiophile" when they first reach a point of satisfaction. That is not to say that you reach a point where you can't justify spending more money because that exists for everyone. What I mean is that you know there are more expensive phones out there, you've heard these more expensive phones, and you'd rather listen to the one you have than the others. The time I spent with the HD650 taught me this. Back then the only phones more expensive were some Denon's, Grado's, and Audio Technicas. I listened to them and I knew without a doubt I liked the HD650 more. When the HD800 came out I listened to that too and again I knew I liked the HD650 more. The HD800 was spectacular in every way but for the music I listened to, it just wouldn't do. It wasn't until the LCD-2 came out that I decided to a phone existed that I would prefer of the HD650 so I bought one.
 
Experience comes with time, not always analytical listening. Training yourself to hear the difference between different bit rate recordings on the cheapest of earphones won't make you an audiophile. Though an audiophile would perform well at this, that's not what makes them an audiophile. Gradually raising your standards through upgrades is what makes most audiophiles. You know you're doing it right when start keeping your old equipment instead of selling it off to fund the next purchase and the time between your upgrades keeps growing. 
 
 
As for price scaling with quality, I find this is generally true. For laughs me and my friend tried this distortion listening test:
http://www.klippel.de/listeningtest/lt/
We used every piece of equipment we had and surprisingly the trend between price and our results was strictly positive. My M-audio monitor speakers and superfi.5.pros scored equally abysmally, his triplefi and a pair of borrowed IE8s scored marginally better, my HD650 reached slightly below 3/4 of the highest possible mark, and both my LCD-2 and his HD800 reached the highest possible mark. As expected getting to the highest mark with his HD800 was much easier than doing so on my LCD-2.