[junkimchi]

I'm a relatively young member of this forum but I'm a listener of a wide variety of music. However my most visited music genres are generally various form of alternative rock, post rock, and some classical. I often feel that my music choice (mainly rock in this case) does not allow headphones to truly live up to their full potential. I feel that listening to rock that has distorted guitars and heavy drums don't allow the listener to enjoy the intricacies that the headphone might provide. Is there a certain type of music that *shows off* the potential of high end headphones?

Listening through albums with my sr60 I also noted one more thing. I think some albums or some recording are just not meant to be listened to at a high end level. Some recordings just seem to be aimed at the casual listener and the eq settings are vamped and often sound strange in my headphones.


all this is due to me looking into buying the hd650

 

[dye1337]

could just be that you dont like the grados sound, although admittedly some songs sound better with them than others, just like with all headphones. I'd deffinetly make sure they were recorded well though, high end headphones (even sr60's) will show a lot of the faults of a bad recording. I generally wont bother unless it's rap or something like that lower than 192kbps, what your source is, is also just as important

 

[krmathis]

Try some live and/or acoustic records.
I am still stunned by how great example Nils Lofgren "Acoustic Live" sound on high end headphones (Stax in my case)..

 

[DemonicLemming]

A lot of metal I listen to - especially stuff like Turisas - just seems to be "squeezed" when I listen to it with headphones, but it sounds perfectly fine when I listen to it with a normal speaker setup. A lot of metal doesn't exactly shine on good heaphones, whether it's poor production, poor recording, whatever.

I've found that a lot of "alternative" stuff like progrezzive jazz, trip-hop, prog metal, and melodic/gothic metal sound really good through headphones, assuming it's a good-quality rip.

I've actually been fairly disappointed that some of my favorite bands like Lamb of God, lots of Viking/folk metal, Chimaira, Lollipop Lust Kill, etc, sound less than impressive on headphones, while they sound great with normal speakers.

 

[basic-chanel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by junkimchi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is there a certain type of music that *shows off* the potential of high end headphones?

The music you listen to and enjoy the most, obviously.

 

[Drosera]

x2 what DemonicLemming said. I was also really disappointed at how metal can sound with good headphones. And surprised that it often does sound better with speakers. Especially the really fast stuff, like a lot of Vikingmetal, appears to suffer. My first suspicion is that the recordings are not very well made, but there might a catch here. It might be that it is actually quite difficult to make a good metal-recording, to capture that barrage of sound and still make it a transparent whole.

As to the question of the OP, perhaps Electronica is the best genre to show off the capabilities of headphones. Or at least, to hear the results with even very modest models. Even then, the increased definition, separation and ability to hear more details would be obvious.

At the high-end part of the scale, classical music (and perhaps acoustic jazz) is probably the hardest challenge for headphones. You can get fantastic results, but it might take a really sizeable investment.

Yes, it might be that the SR-60's are already showing up things in your recordings that you don't actually want to hear. And it might be that the HD650's are more forgiving with certain aspects. They will most certainly provide a more relaxing listening experience.