I now understand you guys
Mar 19, 2006 at 7:26 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 30

JaGWiRE

Headphoneus Supremus
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I've had my hd595's for since this afternoon, but I just put them on and gave them a try directly to my sound card. First of all, my m-audio rev 7.1 is not ideal for this setup, and in the future i'll probably add an head-amp and creative x-fi platnium or something of the sort. Anyway, first of all, I understand your addiction, I hear what you call a soundstage. I also understand why you guys rip flacc, 128 kbps sounds awful, 320 kbps doesn't sound bad, cd's sound better then both, and flacc sounds good (well I haven't tried it, but flacc is a cd on your hard drive with full quality.) I can turn them up fully without it hurting my ears, possibly that is because there is so little distortion compared to any other phones i've tried before. I have logitech z-5500 speakers, and have heard some good speaker systems, and I think I'm going to sell my speaker system now. I see no reason why to keep it, headphones have such a soundstage, and compared to my speakers, are amazing, with my speakers I don't even hear a soundstage.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 7:38 AM Post #3 of 30
Quote:

Originally Posted by PeeeMeS
The opposite is true when you get into high-end speakers

They'll make headphones sound like they have no "soundstage"



How high? I have heard some home theatre setups that cost about 2000 thousand dollars, and I mean, the only thing you get is a real feel of whatever you are watching due to a subwoofer rumbling your house. I could see this being true with some very expensive speakers set up in a room specially designed, with accurate calculations and the right amps/reciever, and everything.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 7:53 AM Post #4 of 30
Surround/Home Theatre setups are really not designed for music listening at all. Music gets recorded in stereo, so ideally you should only have it played back in two channels. That's why most serious music listening speaker setups are just two floorstanding speakers. The soundstage that you hear with a good setup like that is incredible.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 8:13 AM Post #6 of 30
Quote:

Originally Posted by JaGWiRE
How high? I have heard some home theatre setups that cost about 2000 thousand dollars, and I mean, the only thing you get is a real feel of whatever you are watching due to a subwoofer rumbling your house. I could see this being true with some very expensive speakers set up in a room specially designed, with accurate calculations and the right amps/reciever, and everything.


$2k can get you a very respectable speaker system...just like $100 can get you a very respectable headphone system ... pa2v2 + KSC75 comes to mine
very_evil_smiley.gif
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 9:00 AM Post #7 of 30
You notice a difference between 320kbps and FLAC?
confused.gif



Quote:

Originally Posted by PeeeMeS
The opposite is true when you get into high-end speakers

They'll make headphones sound like they have no "soundstage"



x2.. My speakers trample my headphone rig soundstagewise.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 10:05 AM Post #8 of 30
Quote:

Originally Posted by XxATOLxX
You notice a difference between 320kbps and FLAC?
confused.gif





x2.. My speakers trample my headphone rig soundstagewise.




This is because there is more physical space between you and your speakers. This adds to the imagined and perceived size of the soundstage. While a headphone puts the soundstage in or very close to your head. Also with speakers, your room is part of the soundstage equation. Either helping or hurting the accoustics and perception of the soundstage.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 10:08 AM Post #9 of 30
Hm, I'm not sure if I notice a difference between 320 kbps and flacc, my brother took some of my 128/192 kbps mp3's and make them 320 kbps for some stupidly dumb reason, but I did listen to a few which I did rip with 320 kbps myself, and I'm not sure, I'll have to listen closer. You must remember though, flacc is cd quality, mp3 is compressed to a much smaller format.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 10:21 AM Post #10 of 30
Quote:

Originally Posted by JaGWiRE
Hm, I'm not sure if I notice a difference between 320 kbps and flacc, my brother took some of my 128/192 kbps mp3's and make them 320 kbps for some stupidly dumb reason, but I did listen to a few which I did rip with 320 kbps myself, and I'm not sure, I'll have to listen closer. You must remember though, flacc is cd quality, mp3 is compressed to a much smaller format.


It takes a *really* transparent system to show off a difference between lossless vs 320 kbps mp3. It can only be done with a trained ear(so you know what to hear for) and a minority of recordings.(this is assuming that the mp3 is a good rip)
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 10:24 AM Post #11 of 30
Quote:

Originally Posted by PeeeMeS
It takes a *really* transparent system to show off a difference between lossless vs 320 kbps mp3. It can only be done with a trained ear(so you know what to hear for) and a minority of recordings.(this is assuming that the mp3 is a good rip)


I just took a look, turns out the mp3 I was listening to was part of the folder (group) of songs my brother ripped and then upconverted (which is dumb, becasue you can't make 128 kbps into 320 kbps quality by taking the 4 meg 128 kbps and upconverting it into a 10 meg file). So what I was really listening to was a 128 kbps song, which probably lost more quality in the conversasion, so there was a huge difference, but one of the songs I did listen to was 320 kbps, and it sounded pretty good. This means, my brain was playing tricks on me when I said 320 kbps doesn't sound bad, haha.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 10:33 AM Post #12 of 30
I never understand all this talk about low bitrates sounding bad. There has been an A/B-Test between 128kbit and lossless floating around and I've only been able to tell ever so *slight* differences by concentrating VERY hard using my DT 880. I don't hear any difference from 256kbit VBR and above to lossless. So either everybody else has golden ears or there must be some hype about lossless involved.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 11:31 AM Post #13 of 30
Quote:

Originally Posted by EvilDwarf
I never understand all this talk about low bitrates sounding bad. There has been an A/B-Test between 128kbit and lossless floating around and I've only been able to tell ever so *slight* differences by concentrating VERY hard using my DT 880. I don't hear any difference from 256kbit VBR and above to lossless. So either everybody else has golden ears or there must be some hype about lossless involved.



Audiophiles pay *thousands(sometimes tens of thousands)* of $ just to get slight performance boosts like the one you heard. It takes maximum concentration and sometimes can be heard only on certain parts of certain songs.

So yea, a free universal performance boost is definitely going to get a lot of hype
biggrin.gif
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 11:37 AM Post #15 of 30
Quote:

Originally Posted by EvilDwarf
I never understand all this talk about low bitrates sounding bad. There has been an A/B-Test between 128kbit and lossless floating around and I've only been able to tell ever so *slight* differences by concentrating VERY hard using my DT 880. I don't hear any difference from 256kbit VBR and above to lossless. So either everybody else has golden ears or there must be some hype about lossless involved.


Try a different approach... rip a song and encode it in 128KBPS, and keep the original .wav. Now instead of concentrating, just relax and listen to the MP3 for awhile, get completely used to the sonic signature of the song. Then switch to the .wav. Or reverse the procedure, using the .wav as reference. IMO it's easier to hear differences if you're not trying, because often this causes a person to not see the forest for the trees. That's a major failure of the whole ABX thing IMO, it narrows one's attention down and results in hearing only the more obvious differences.
 

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