carefullistener
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2009
- Posts
- 54
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- 0
First of all, let me give you guys a bit of background. I am a music slave, but have not been too keen on audio quality until this year. I play classical piano for nearly 14 years and have a good ear for detail.
I was looking for a pair of new headphones for pc gaming, and accidentally stumbled upon the sennhesier brand, and after that one thing led to another putting me in the audiophile position im in now.
I got the sennheiser 555s because they were only 84 bucks on amazon brand new, and I kept reading that they were the best for the price.
Needless to say while waiting for them to come, I poured endless information into my brain. I had the pink noise ready to go as well as over a terabyte of FLAC format hq music files.
When I first got them, I was underwhelmed with the bass but remembered to keep off judgement until after break-in. I notice many people say breakin is not real....
Speakers all have a break in period, and since these headphones are open air, they are basically tiny speakers that produce sound in a similar way.
After break-in I not only proved to myself that the break-in is real, but the sound quality was a huge step above what it was when I first tried it. The heavy kicking deep bass finally appeared, but without being overwhelming. I am very impressed even right now listening to how good and clear my music sounds, and yes I listen very very closely. I can see how people are sucked into this hobby quickly, since I am already imagining what the other sennheiser models sound like considering this one is so great.
Pretty much Ill have to agree with the crowd, and say that these cans are the best hands down in their price range, and even compared to many cans double their price. I still cant believe these were only 84, unreal.
I use well appointed PC, only 2 months old with powerful hardware. Only thing is I skimped out on getting a good sound card to get a better graphics card. I have the realtek high definition audio (most likely built-in on motherboard) so first question.
1) How good would you say this soundcard is? To me it sounds more than just good, but from my experience its really hard to tell the difference in sound cards by just listening. What do you think?
2) How LOUD do you crank up your 555s? I cannot bear to listen to them above 50% of windows volume (while using foobar2k with wasapi output and 100% volume on fubar). At 50% they still sound clear, even when I tried to see if there would be any distortion at 60%, there was none...just very loud clear music. So how loud can this phone go by windows vista volume setting as the indicator? My ears sometimes hurt from this 50 volume setting, other times it sounds just loud enough without causing pain. Normally I listen to them at 30-40 windows vol. What volume do you listen to your 555s?
3) I am trying to keep these in perfect audio quality shape for a long time, is it bad to play a lot of bass heavy songs at 50% windows volume? I listen to all genres, with lots of trance and dance/techno that has a lot of very high frequency and very low frequency sounds, so my question is will this kind of use shorten the life of the cans?
4) How does skin oil or very mild sweating affect the cans? I get the feeling that the oil that comes out of my skin is being absorbred by the ear pads and possibly even the netting inside the headphone which separes your ear from the driver. Am I just being paranoid? Do things like these have a risk of doing damage to the cans? The mild sweat I mention is not a whole body sweat, but just a feeling that the area where the earpads touch your ears and the area around it feeling not as dry as when you first put them on.
5) I use the phones for 8-12 hour sessions at a time occasionally on weekends, this is why I ask about skin oils, as thats a long time to have headphones on your head not moving at all. Do long sessions make the cans less durable?
6) How do people blow out their audiophile headphones considering how loud these are without distortion at even 50 volume? I would dare use these at 80-100 or even 70 volume without thinking I surely did some permanent ear damage, with hearing loss. If the phones are set on 100% volume by accident without me knowing, and something plays like a windows sound, can this cause damage? Or does the sound have to be played for a little while at max volume before it starts to damage the drivers? Basically im asking if you had your phones at 100% without knowing, and say the windows sound played when windows started but it was freakishly loud. Does this little bit cause any damage or is damage only possible with long use at that volume?
7) I never wear the phones until I take a shower right before putting them on, because it makes me feel like im better preserving their cleanliness and therefore their life span. Just how durable and long lasting are these supposed to be? Can I get 3 years out of it with using it as I mentioned at 100% fubar with 50% windows volume through wasapi?
8) In fubar2k while using wasapi, I have the soundcard set to 24bit 96k format, and foobar also at 24bit 96k. The pppHS resampler is at 96k with ultra mode on, does ultra mode make any difference? and, Did I set up these options correct? I turned 24/96 across all the boards as far as I know. Does the upsample to 96k take place within foobar before going to the soundcard? or at the card?
Many people say that there is no point in turning on 24bit and upsampling beyond 48hz, but I can hear a big difference and the individual sounds in each song sound more well defined. Also, I notice that the frequency visualization is alot tighter and compact at this mode, compared to 44hz setting. At 44 the visual takes up the entire top area of the horizontal splitter, but at 48hz the outer edges where the high freqs are seems to be pushed in from the edge, as if this upsampling is causing there to be less frequencies playing. What is the deal here?
What is your opinion on what I do here? Do you resample? What do you use and are my settings ideal for best quality and clarity?
Is there anything else I can do to improve the sound quality any further considering my hardware available? What options or settings (if any) should I change?
Any answers are highly appreciated. I searched the forum a few times but couldnt find the answers to these Qs, so any information you can give would go a long way. Especially if you are knowledgeable about headphones, and it doesnt matter if you have the 555s or not, since some questions can be answered which are general inquiries about headphones and their useage.
I was looking for a pair of new headphones for pc gaming, and accidentally stumbled upon the sennhesier brand, and after that one thing led to another putting me in the audiophile position im in now.
I got the sennheiser 555s because they were only 84 bucks on amazon brand new, and I kept reading that they were the best for the price.
Needless to say while waiting for them to come, I poured endless information into my brain. I had the pink noise ready to go as well as over a terabyte of FLAC format hq music files.
When I first got them, I was underwhelmed with the bass but remembered to keep off judgement until after break-in. I notice many people say breakin is not real....
Speakers all have a break in period, and since these headphones are open air, they are basically tiny speakers that produce sound in a similar way.
After break-in I not only proved to myself that the break-in is real, but the sound quality was a huge step above what it was when I first tried it. The heavy kicking deep bass finally appeared, but without being overwhelming. I am very impressed even right now listening to how good and clear my music sounds, and yes I listen very very closely. I can see how people are sucked into this hobby quickly, since I am already imagining what the other sennheiser models sound like considering this one is so great.
Pretty much Ill have to agree with the crowd, and say that these cans are the best hands down in their price range, and even compared to many cans double their price. I still cant believe these were only 84, unreal.
I use well appointed PC, only 2 months old with powerful hardware. Only thing is I skimped out on getting a good sound card to get a better graphics card. I have the realtek high definition audio (most likely built-in on motherboard) so first question.
1) How good would you say this soundcard is? To me it sounds more than just good, but from my experience its really hard to tell the difference in sound cards by just listening. What do you think?
2) How LOUD do you crank up your 555s? I cannot bear to listen to them above 50% of windows volume (while using foobar2k with wasapi output and 100% volume on fubar). At 50% they still sound clear, even when I tried to see if there would be any distortion at 60%, there was none...just very loud clear music. So how loud can this phone go by windows vista volume setting as the indicator? My ears sometimes hurt from this 50 volume setting, other times it sounds just loud enough without causing pain. Normally I listen to them at 30-40 windows vol. What volume do you listen to your 555s?
3) I am trying to keep these in perfect audio quality shape for a long time, is it bad to play a lot of bass heavy songs at 50% windows volume? I listen to all genres, with lots of trance and dance/techno that has a lot of very high frequency and very low frequency sounds, so my question is will this kind of use shorten the life of the cans?
4) How does skin oil or very mild sweating affect the cans? I get the feeling that the oil that comes out of my skin is being absorbred by the ear pads and possibly even the netting inside the headphone which separes your ear from the driver. Am I just being paranoid? Do things like these have a risk of doing damage to the cans? The mild sweat I mention is not a whole body sweat, but just a feeling that the area where the earpads touch your ears and the area around it feeling not as dry as when you first put them on.
5) I use the phones for 8-12 hour sessions at a time occasionally on weekends, this is why I ask about skin oils, as thats a long time to have headphones on your head not moving at all. Do long sessions make the cans less durable?
6) How do people blow out their audiophile headphones considering how loud these are without distortion at even 50 volume? I would dare use these at 80-100 or even 70 volume without thinking I surely did some permanent ear damage, with hearing loss. If the phones are set on 100% volume by accident without me knowing, and something plays like a windows sound, can this cause damage? Or does the sound have to be played for a little while at max volume before it starts to damage the drivers? Basically im asking if you had your phones at 100% without knowing, and say the windows sound played when windows started but it was freakishly loud. Does this little bit cause any damage or is damage only possible with long use at that volume?
7) I never wear the phones until I take a shower right before putting them on, because it makes me feel like im better preserving their cleanliness and therefore their life span. Just how durable and long lasting are these supposed to be? Can I get 3 years out of it with using it as I mentioned at 100% fubar with 50% windows volume through wasapi?
8) In fubar2k while using wasapi, I have the soundcard set to 24bit 96k format, and foobar also at 24bit 96k. The pppHS resampler is at 96k with ultra mode on, does ultra mode make any difference? and, Did I set up these options correct? I turned 24/96 across all the boards as far as I know. Does the upsample to 96k take place within foobar before going to the soundcard? or at the card?
Many people say that there is no point in turning on 24bit and upsampling beyond 48hz, but I can hear a big difference and the individual sounds in each song sound more well defined. Also, I notice that the frequency visualization is alot tighter and compact at this mode, compared to 44hz setting. At 44 the visual takes up the entire top area of the horizontal splitter, but at 48hz the outer edges where the high freqs are seems to be pushed in from the edge, as if this upsampling is causing there to be less frequencies playing. What is the deal here?
What is your opinion on what I do here? Do you resample? What do you use and are my settings ideal for best quality and clarity?
Is there anything else I can do to improve the sound quality any further considering my hardware available? What options or settings (if any) should I change?
Any answers are highly appreciated. I searched the forum a few times but couldnt find the answers to these Qs, so any information you can give would go a long way. Especially if you are knowledgeable about headphones, and it doesnt matter if you have the 555s or not, since some questions can be answered which are general inquiries about headphones and their useage.