[citadel]

Quote:

Personnally, I find the subjective reactions very enlightening because they echo the initial concerns with the choices being made for the design.
Example: treble ringing is pretty standard issue with orthos hence the heavy use of felts/absorbers to damp the diaphragm. The abyss designers went with a metallic foam, extremely open which acts more like a dust cover than damping layer.
I wonder if this is what yields a very snappy transient response and open sound but the transient response takes its toll with excessive ringing / smearing of the high frequencies. The metallic foam was a deliberate design decision after some extensive trials, I guess the designers relied on subjective results and didn't mind the drawbacks of the choices being made.
 

 
To be honest, I have not heard any treble ringing with my setup. I'd be interested to hear if MuppetFace has heard this ringing you are talking about.

 

[citadel]

Quote:

 
To be honest, I have not heard any treble ringing with my setup. I'd be interested to hear if MuppetFace has heard this ringing you are talking about.

 
Are you referring to the sparkling treble that Tyll mentioned?

 

[Darkbeat]

In the end I feel the Abyss is a very polarizing headphone. The bass was far better than I could have imagined, the treble far worse and the midrange fair to middling. Whether it's worth the price or not will really depend on the individual, their tastes and the music they listen to.  

 
To be honest, I have not heard any treble ringing with my setup. I'd be interested to hear if MuppetFace has heard this ringing you are talking about.

 
There is SLIGHT ringing in the treble, this can be seen on FR charts. It's difficult to describe but at times it seemed harsh and other times unrefined and even confused, possibly due to the excessive high frequency harmonic distortion. That said, it's really splitting hairs, but for $5.5k you split hairs. As for MF, she did say the Abyss doesn't have the same quality of treble as Stax, but that's to be expected.

 

[DefQon]

Funny thing, all the orthos that I have tried and modded up to date have this resonance with the treble range, a slight ringing harshness on certain music. Is it ok to say some orthos don't excel in treble but pretty good with mids and bass?

 

[Audio Jester]

Isn't it a question of priorities and judgment call about what you get for the amount of money?.....
I personnaly try to keep my mind open but have to admit the acoustic engineer in me is not really putting much hope in the abyss (in its current form) based on the design choices and measurements. The impressions from people who's hearing I very much trust make me all the more dubious on this can being truly that exceptional.

Epic post arnaud!
Sadly I doubt that I will get to hear these with the LAu, but it does seem they might not align with my tastes. Part of me feels that such a bold move for a first headphone deserves some kudos though. I will be eagerly watching Abyss in the future.

 

[M-13]

Quote:

Epic post arnaud!

+1
 
Very thoughful and I enjoyed reading it.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

Isn't it a question of priorities and judgment call about what you get for the amount of money? If am pretty convinced that ANY passionate headphone geek will find a way to finance the phone if it truly / fully delivers on what they're after.
 

 
 
Not necessarily. I specifically said "two car garage" for this reason, because while I know some folks who would conceivably sell their current rig to finance a new one, I don't know nearly as many who would spring for an additional TOTL multi-thousand dollar rig. Especially when we're talking about two different formats that require different upstream gear on top of that. I know summit-fiers have ways of justifying expenses, and where there's a will there's a way in many instances, but I was trying to specifically imply that this hypothetical owner was satisfied with the SR-009 already (and wouldn't want to sell it).
 
Purrin's posts on the other Abyss thread really sum it up well I think and reflect my own view in my ways. Orthos and stats tend to excel in different areas, and the Abyss and SR-009 seem---to me at least---to be very stereotypical of their respective technological heritages. So yes, it's very much a question of priorities and tastes. Case in point: folks I know who have taken to the Abyss the most are those who have never really been that satisfied with the SR-009. Purrin, dBel, and myself. On the other hand someone like n3rdling finds the treble not sounding like 'stat treble to be a deal breaker. This is, for me, understandable despite our having different perspectives and priorities.
 
Honestly, with regards to treble I'm kind of on the fence, because I do like refinement in the treble. However the overall FR of the Abyss is just much more "right" to my ears. The Abyss just does enough of what matters to me most to make it the most complete headphone sonically for me. It's definitely not perfect; there are other headphones that do certain things better. However as a sum of parts, the Abyss is more for me and others because it's a combination of factors you can't really get elsewhere in summit-fi. However I'm in a [rare] position to where I can own several high end pairs of headphones, so I'm quite grateful I can have the Abyss and the SR-007, SR-Omega, and new Floats. I realize though I'm in a definite minority of a subset that is already in a minority of a minority (the "summit-fi" of head-fidom).
 
Also it would be nice if audiophilia existed in a sonic vacuum I guess, but we do have brand loyalties and psychosocial baggage we bring to the table. A lot of people trust Stax and feel comfortable spending the kilobux on a set from them. There's also a certain well-established perception of Stax being "the best" out there, and for some folks that's important.

 

[dBel84]

To be honest, I don't hear this treble ringing. The top end for me is not smeared or congested. I have seen the CSDs and FR plots, and participated in conversations to understand why there is not an audible irritation as I have experienced with other headphones that have the more typical 3 pronged peaks. To some extent I think it might have a little to do with upstream equipment. I believe that Tyll did not hear any treble issues with the pair being driven off the LAu at the LA meet. My point is, these need to be heard and the equipment pairing needs to be considered. To put my preferences in perspective, I have favoured the sound attributes of planar magnetic headphones over most anything else for quite some time..dB 

 

[n3rdling]

I dunno.  The material I listened to on the Stratus + Abyss was pretty much midrange, almost no treble.  I then tried the Abyss on the LAu and specifically wanted to hear material with bass and treble and that's when I heard the treble issues.  It was grating.  I wish I listened to something with treble on the Stratus so I could be more sure, but I kinda doubt the issue was the amp (LAu) and not the phones.

 

[preproman]

Quote:

I dunno.  The material I listened to on the Stratus + Abyss was pretty much midrange, almost no treble.  I then tried the Abyss on the LAu and specifically wanted to hear material with bass and treble and that's when I heard the treble issues.  It was grating.  I wish I listened to something with treble on the Stratus so I could be more sure, but I kinda doubt the issue was the amp (LAu) and not the phones.

 
Correct..  The issue may have been with the amp and not the headphones.  They may sound different on a different amp like the Stratus..  

 

[Hutnicks]

Quote:

Funny thing, all the orthos that I have tried and modded up to date have this resonance with the treble range, a slight ringing harshness on certain music. Is it ok to say some orthos don't excel in treble but pretty good with mids and bass?

Hmmm. Idea springs to mind here. Has anyone contemplated using the Abyss measurements to generate a convolver profile and apply it to say a modded T50?

 

[jerg]

Quote:

Funny thing, all the orthos that I have tried and modded up to date have this resonance with the treble range, a slight ringing harshness on certain music. Is it ok to say some orthos don't excel in treble but pretty good with mids and bass?

I'm inclined to agree, but my HE500s + jergpads have pretty silky treble so I can't.

 

[arnaud]

Quote:

 
Correct..  The issue may have been with the amp and not the headphones.  They may sound different on a different amp like the Stratus..  

 
Besides the misinterpretation of n3rdling's comment, I would add the blaming of the amp is a bit easy. If these phones had a wild impedance swing like multi-drivers armature iems, yes I can totally imagine some weird thing happening. But these are like 50Ohm flat, the amp would need to be seriously messed up to add the kind of distortion / ringing since in Tyll's measurements.
 
Besides, I did not get the priviledge to look at them, but I noticed purrin mentioned he got very similar results to Tyll in the other thread if I recall correctly. It would be interesting to  watch the CSD from 7kHz up.
 
Arnaud

 

[dBel84]

it is more the subjective experience of treble issue I was referring to. The ringing is there on measurements, (in both sets) . I was not implying that the amp was affecting the measurements but rather Tyll's subjective experience when doing his review and at the LA meet. The specific frequency of ringing is not in the region associated with sibilance, hence my comment that it might be associated equipment..dB

 

[DefQon]

I think treble ringing has more an attribute to the design and grill placement in front of the dampened port of the front end of the transducer rather than anything else in the rest of the chain, i.e source or amplification or that matter, but a bad pairing could make the ringing or any sort of sibilance more amplified and noticeable.
 
Think tweeters and woofers for a second and the placement of them in a an enclosure be it MDF or wood veneer, speaker manufacturers who care about design and performance know that it is always important to have some sort of dampening treatment on the back end of the drivers, preventing wildly oscillating backwaves as sound travels from the end to the front to the listeners ears.
 
Using acoustic foam, cotton or wool helps prevent any backwaves from bouncing all the place in the end of the enclosure as the sound waves hit the MDF or wood, this can also contribute to absorbing or reflecting properties of the material used in the enclosure associated with how the sound goes about. Now back to the grills on the AB, for example the grills on the LCD's, it can be due to the metal properties or structure of aluminium but there is a bit of ringing in the treble or mids from it, in other words a bit harsh sounding when it comes out of the darkness. One can take it by the neck and reduce this by dampening that grill (purrins toilet pants mods or similiarly the extensive modification I've done with mine). This can possibly be applied to the AB. Now all I need to do since that I have finally heard the AB and probably plan to make another trip to hear them, is someone give me there's so I can pull it apart like I did with LCD2's (rev1/2), HE-5's and the HE-6's and play around. Ringing isn't much of an issue with the AB, but to my ear's it does not sound coherent with the rest of the passage of the music I'm listening to, but a single mod to fix one issue applied to fix one issue can certainly affect other area's of the sound aspect, be it positive or negative to the listeners experience.
 
I'm no scientist or acoustic engineer but this is my 2c based on experience.