[forna]

This is not so much to do with sound quality for once ( though i do want to address a little thingy about that too). and its not about a single pair of headphones. This is about issues across the board that I stugle with and have done so for years- given my sensitive nature to such things.:-

So i got me a pair of the DT990pro and yeah, they are nice*. And yeah, my last headphones have been £20 from amazon to get me though. And yup, I am an audiophile.

Spoiler: no need to point the obvious

before you shout at me- im not too much of an novice, just sadly deprived of much headphone experience. So I have powered them properly and have used an EQ to dull it a bit, but then the artists' aim for the music begins to lose its point.

* no surprise that I am bleeding from how high they are. I just didnt think it would be this extreme. 2min and I have to rip them off my head and im in so much paiiinnnn. Thats fixable by getting something less bright.. but what really REALLY gets me is this..

despite being openbacks, it does not take me long for my ears to feel fatigue <- this is with no sound at all: completely uplugged. They clamp hard, yeah, but im not bothered by it much. Its the "sealing" feeling of the cups, the fact that I cant feel the outside gets to me. My last headphones have all been on ear, and before that it was over ear but very small so its was sort of on ear, and even then the cups were made of friken paper..

I mean, my friend has the sony WH-1000XM3 and GOOD LORD thats a fat no. I feel like i am 50m down underwater or in a plane. and dont even get me started on the noise canceling: as cool as it is.

Spoiler: ..(starts on noise canceling anyway..)

.. well actaully yes ill start on that- i can hear high pitch whine when its on, i feel like my head will blow up already and when its on i get start to panic for some reason ngl its weird and its the same with apple pod thingys just what the heck reeeeeeeeeeee

so i think that over ear are not for me. maybe. I want them to be. Honestly its as if speakers are what i want but i get NOTHING from using speakers

honestly idk what i can do to be able to have good sound without suffering



as for the overkill on the high end on the dt990, it sucks that i cant deal with it because i make use of all that extra sound i can hear. Just, on my unnamed £12 sony's i can hear more of the mids and the base is quite clear, its really confusing. The base on these is nice, a boost from the amp and i get really clean immersive base that i looovee

anyway, the only things i dont like about these otherwise fine headphones is the highs and the fact that i can not use them without half dying. I want the details and properly done base for once but nothing doesnt hurt

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Spoiler: no need to point the obvious

before you shout at me- im not too much of an novice, just sadly deprived of much headphone experience. So I have powered them properly and have used an EQ to dull it a bit, but then the artists' aim for the music begins to lose its point.

Not sure what you mean here.

If you mean something like Diamond Audio's tagline - "listen, just as the artist intended" - then you have the DT990's treble peak getting in the way and the artist's point gets lost as you get spears in your ears instead of music. EQ is basically negating those spears. If the DT990 is MCU Hela then EQ is more like if Hulk jumped out of the spaceship to break the spears before they get skewered and stuck over the Bifrost.

* no surprise that I am bleeding from how high they are. I just didnt think it would be this extreme. 2min and I have to rip them off my head and im in so much paiiinnnn. Thats fixable by getting something less bright.. but what really REALLY gets me is this.

If we assume the point of the artist making music is for that music to be enjoyed, well, there's the DT990 losing the point of the artist making music.

EQ isn't changing what the artist did, even if it's digital. It's just compensating for what your headphones (or speakers) are changing in the music.

despite being openbacks, it does not take me long for my ears to feel fatigue <- this is with no sound at all: completely uplugged. They clamp hard, yeah, but im not bothered by it much. Its the "sealing" feeling of the cups, the fact that I cant feel the outside gets to me. My last headphones have all been on ear, and before that it was over ear but very small so its was sort of on ear, and even then the cups were made of friken paper..

I mean, my friend has the sony WH-1000XM3 and GOOD LORD thats a fat no. I feel like i am 50m down underwater or in a plane. and dont even get me started on the noise canceling: as cool as it is.

You misunderstand what open back headphones are for.

"Lack of isolation" just means "our drivers work best when soundwaves aren't bouncing off a closed cup back onto the driver, at all." It does not mean anything along the lines of "so much situational awareness is unhindered you can listen while fighting off 12 guys like Uma Thurman using a katana polished with a 12000grit compound as a mirror while wearing these headphones." In fact the whole point of the headphone - and for listening to music in general for an actual audiophile broadly defined ie it's not just somebody blowing their 401K on good gear but somebody who gets so lost in the music it usually results in something embarrassing when somebody walks in - is to stop being aware of everything other than the music.

That goal isn't just something you achieve by sealing the headphone or sealing off your ear canals. An open back headphone should be able to do that - kind of like how I needed a tap on the shoulder while my hands were strumming along to Kamelot with an HD600 on my head just as much as when I'm cooking and burst out dancing thanks to Westone2's jammed in my ears. It's like how you don't need to be in the dark cockpit of a Porsche GT3 cup car and can feel just as focused on driving in a 575 Barchetta even with the sun shining on you through the non-existent roof.

Granted, the DT990 is failing at that, but if you assume headphones are supposed to let you draw a katana and surprise somebody trying to surprise you, well, you're gonna get disappointed.

I mean, my friend has the sony WH-1000XM3 and GOOD LORD thats a fat no. I feel like i am 50m down underwater or in a plane. and dont even get me started on the noise canceling: as cool as it is.

Spoiler: ..(starts on noise canceling anyway..)

.. well actaully yes ill start on that- i can hear high pitch whine when its on, i feel like my head will blow up already and when its on i get start to panic for some reason ngl its weird and its the same with apple pod thingys just what the heck reeeeeeeeeeee

The likelihood of getting disappointed just gets worse if instead of just hyperacusis and expectations you might actually have some kind of medical condition that affects your balance in some way. Eardrums are part of most mammal's gyros, more so bipeds like humans.

To be perfectly clear, I mean this...



...although if that sensation of mild vertigo has something to do with hypoglycemia, feel free to treat it with this.


Kidding aside I'd really have that checked just to be sure.

so i think that over ear are not for me. maybe. I want them to be. Honestly its as if speakers are what i want but i get NOTHING from using speakers

Well you're practically getting nothing from using headphones either. Just that if room acoustics are an issue you're still better off with a headphone than a speaker that has the sound all over the place thanks to excessive reflections and ambient noise that drives you into a downward spiral towards getting a noise complaint.

honestly idk what i can do to be able to have good sound without suffering

Well I get asked why I eat miso ramen and jajangmyeon when they trigger my gout attacks, but they taste that good so I just embrace everything I learned from reading a book by, and watching movies inspired by, Clive Barker.

as for the overkill on the high end on the dt990, it sucks that i cant deal with it because i make use of all that extra sound i can hear. Just, on my unnamed £12 sony's i can hear more of the mids and the base is quite clear, its really confusing. The base on these is nice, a boost from the amp and i get really clean immersive base that i looovee

anyway, the only things i dont like about these otherwise fine headphones is the highs and the fact that i can not use them without half dying. I want the details and properly done base for once but nothing doesnt hurt

Everything above that green line will be more audible, and everything in the green box is what's stabbing your ears.


By contrast here's the LCD-2 Classic. Everything below the green line is harder to hear, but while that includes the bass, everything that is stabbing your ears is also below the green line now so they're also not going to cause - beyond stabbing your ears - auditory masking.


Contrast to that here's the HD650. There's a boost in the bass, just not as severe as the DT990, but then there are still some peaks up there in the green box, just that they look more like a few disparate hills than an entire mountain range (and may have more to do with driver manufacturing variance).

 

[forna]

thank you for such a happy reply <3
been smiling and laughing for ages with my partner so thanks again, no efforts went to waste


i get what you mean:- you dont need to be Benedict Cumberbatch to be really pleased with your self in the mirror, and yet these DT990 tick all the boxes of open-back and nice base and stuff, but fail 100% to sound nice at all

so should i get a pair of headphones that match my sound needs (no ear rape), and are comfortable, my issues i pointed out should sort of go by the nature of being ok with the headphones? cool. but taking everything in, i just cant be having these headphones given they dont do what i want them to... looking at them graphs, the

shp9500

have nice flat looking everything, other than the base ;( never tried them tho


and ones i have tried before (arctics 5 from steelseries) i HATED

they sound tinny and horrid and 0 base, EQ or not


since i have a nice amp that i got for the 990 (Fiio btr3k), would you know of a power hungry pair that i could then bully into having base? (that has a similar profile to them sexy looking SHP9500)



I am sort of hoping at this point that, as you say, the DT990 fail at everything it tries to be and would find better success at being a 2 wheeled car in a pogo stick race, and anything similar build wise and price wise will probably be ok


so, at least i know what i DONT like

is there a program that i can download that will make one of them sexy graphs for my own headphones? just to get further benchmark on what i have.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

i get what you mean:- you dont need to be Benedict Cumberbatch to be really pleased with your self in the mirror, and yet these DT990 tick all the boxes of open-back and nice base and stuff, but fail 100% to sound nice at all

It's like having a fast car that otherwise has an annoying exhaust note you start to envy the guy in the Ferrari or Aston Martin that at least isn't embarrassing on the street (until you see a total douchecanoe that revs it really loud outside of a track day or a club event, at which point he's about as embarrassing as the kid in the Civic with a coffee can exhaust).

so should i get a pair of headphones that match my sound needs (no ear rape), and are comfortable, my issues i pointed out should sort of go by the nature of being ok with the headphones? cool. but taking everything in, i just cant be having these headphones given they dont do what i want them to... looking at them graphs, the

shp9500

have nice flat looking everything, other than the base ;( never tried them tho

While it might not stab your ears outright the upper frequencies will tend to be more audible, more so if you have hyperacusis.

and ones i have tried before (arctics 5 from steelseries) i HATED

they sound tinny and horrid and 0 base, EQ or not

It has that weird hump in the 100hz to 500hz region that if not sufficiently reinforced by the low end will sound weird, not to mention it has peaks at 3400hz and 8000hz, which can stab your ears.

since i have a nice amp that i got for the 990 (Fiio btr3k), would you know of a power hungry pair that i could then bully into having base? (that has a similar profile to them sexy looking SHP9500)

1. You can't "bully" a transducer into having bass just by feeding it more power. All power does is not limit what the driver is capable of, and deliver it at a louder volume before the amp distorts (if it's a lower quality driver that cone will physically and audibly distort long before a good, powerful amp does, due to the strain put on it by moving the cone to reproduce that bass at that level).

2. Even if you could in some way bully a power-hungry driver into producing more bass the BTR3K driving an HE500 is kind of like having a lone infantryman with a WW2 bazooka trying to bully the crew of an M1A2 or Challenger with reactive and chobham armor layers into getting out of the tank.

I am sort of hoping at this point that, as you say, the DT990 fail at everything it tries to be and would find better success at being a 2 wheeled car in a pogo stick race, and anything similar build wise and price wise will probably be ok

so, at least i know what i DONT like

Philips H2XR might be worth checking out
https://www.amazon.com/Philips-X2HR...1&keywords=philips+h2xr&qid=1609781154&sr=8-2

At least it won't be far too much for the BTR3K to handle so whatever you hear out of the combo that's mostly representative of how well they do.

is there a program that i can download that will make one of them sexy graphs for my own headphones? just to get further benchmark on what i have.

You can't just do that with software and a PC in-line mic.

More about that here: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/headphone-measurements-different-setups-different-results.751100/

 

[ThanatosVI]

I try to keep it short, since I doubt that I can be of any help.

The Dt990 have very piercing treble, so especially if you're treble sensitive they are not the right headphones for you.
As recommended, you should try something like a LCD-2C for a completely different sound signature.

The problem you have with the headphones covering your head, will persist with all headphones, so depending on how bad it is, maybe you just won't be able to enjoy headphones.
You could try InEars, but I got a feeling that the ear canal sealing might trouble you as well.

Therefore, all that is left are speakers. What are the reasons that you can't enjoy speakers?