[sub]

Folks,

I have been a long time devotee of the clean sound of the DT880 and until recently I use the cans for classical as well as jazz music. For my bass requirements I have a Darth Beyer DT770.

Anyway, last night I thought that I would crank up my DT880 while listening to Portishead.... and wow! I thought I was hearing things and was I ever! There was bass and beautiful quality deep sub bass!

I put on my DT770 for comparison. At the same volume, there was distortion and muddy sound. What was going on here? Bass was excellent but not in the same league as my trusty DT880.

Have I missed something here? For low volume listening my DT770 is absolutely doing a fine job. Crank up the volume of your amp to feed the DT880 and the most beautiful bass opens up. It almost feels like the twin webers on my Alfa Romeo GTV opening up on acceleration...a lot of grunt yet smooth and purposeful.

Damn, if I got a faulty DT880 (maybe with DT770 drivers?), this is a sin and am a sinner

I am very happy to keep using the DT880 for bass intensive applications but the open nature of this phones make it impractical. Anybody noticed the same? I wished I've done this a long time ago....

Equipment used:

TEAC Reference MD-H500i
Jena Labs IC
G&W T2.6F Tube Amp with Electro Harmonix 6922 EH
Darth Beyered DT770 (Blackmax)
Stock Beyerdynamic DT880

Music used:
Portishead - Dummy
Air - Moon Safari
Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain
Santana Collection

 

[Rickio]

Oh yeah your absolutely right! I did the same thing by listening to some Isley Brothers with very deep bass tracks and was amazed

DT880 is so often mentioned as being weak in bass. No way! I even compared it to my K701 and HD580 as well as DT990 and it was a deeper bass. It had a different quality, it was able to not only have the deep bass but the resonance that often surrounds a very deep sub bass, which I have not even heard on my other Can's.

 

[Cyrilix]

I think the DT880 is slightly lighter in bass than I'd like, but it has good bass extension, imo. They were the first cans that showed me what a subwoofer-in-headphone sound might sound like.

 

[sub]

The thing with it is that you really have to crank it up to open up the bass. I can see why some ppl thought the bass was lean (it is if it is in low-medium volume). The sub woofer-like bass has just a depth that I have never heard on a set of headphones (under $300) and I have experimented with quite a few.

This headphones are really underpriced for what it is. This is the old version by the way (2005). A real keeper, imho, a bargain if you can find one in excellent nick with the aluminum box.

 

[MarkyMark]

Kraftwerk's Tour de France Soundtracks & Minimum-Maximum Live are great demo discs as well. They show just how good the bass can be on the DT880

I think the reason the bass can sound lean is that it doesn't have 'punchy' mid-upper bass. If you look at the Headroom graph, however, the bass response is very linear and shows little if any boost. So a case can be made that the reproduced sound will simply reflect what is recorded on the disc. However, it can also be argued that this response curve fails to take account of the ear's sensitivity at different frequencies and therefore a tailored response curve with more bass/less treble is required. There's definitely been some prior discussion of this on Head-Fi!!!

 

[Cyrilix]

I think the bass becomes "fuller" and more well-rounded with an M^3 amp.

 

[JohanK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkyMark However, it can also be argued that this response curve fails to take account of the ear's sensitivity at different frequencies and therefore a tailored response curve with more bass/less treble is required. There's definitely been some prior discussion of this on Head-Fi!!!

It boggles my mind that people do not understand what is wrong with this reasoning...

Actual sound--->The ear hears the frequencies with different sensitivity
Actual sound--->Recorded with flat equipment--->Reproduced with flat equipment--->The ear hears the frequencies with different sensitivity

Why would you come closer to the real thing if you compensate for something which is an inherent charachteristic of our hearing? If anything, compensating for it is unantural.