[SteveGo]

Quote:

My update:
 
After trying these out for several months, I couldn't get:
 
 - any bass worth mentioning, with tons of twiddling, bending and placement.
 - anything out of burn-in, to tame the extreme harshness and what I can only describe as distortion artefacts
 
So I gave my pair away for free. Really, they are that bad, imho. YMMV.
 
Time to try out the Senn Amperiors

Wow, you were gone from these forums for 6 months and this is what you come up with when you return.  Trolls these days...

 

[roadcykler]

The more I listen to these the more I like them. The only way they could be better, imo, is if they were over the ear because they'd probably be more comfortable. Not they are terribly uncomfortable but I wear glasses so they can press against the ears a bit.

 

[Focker]

Quote:

The more I listen to these the more I like them. The only way they could be better, imo, is if they were over the ear because they'd probably be more comfortable. Not they are terribly uncomfortable but I wear glasses so they can press against the ears a bit.

Yep, the glasses thing is a bit problematic. I usually have to just put the headphones on and then sort of rest the temple arms on top of the pad. I try not to even wear my glasses when I'm listening, but if I'm online or at work it's hard to do. When I use them without glasses, though, they keep my ears pretty cool...that's one aspect about these phones that I like a lot. 
 
Have you tried them with a quality amp yet? We were talking about that earlier in the thread if you didn't see it...some of us are finding that they scale up nicely with something of quality...and I think it was OrbitingCow who said he felt the amp was vital. I like them out of my iPhone quite a bit, but I like them even more out of my Meier amp. I still can't believe I'm getting sound like this out of a pair of portables....

 

[PhoenixClaw]

I thoroughly enjoyed my DT1350 right out of an O2 amp. I didn't expect it to improve since I use the E7 but my friend who owned the O2 blind-tested me against it. I was using an iPod Nano 2G line-out -> Fiio E7/ O2 and played a bunch of my favourite music. The O2 was distinguishable each time, the DT1350 sounded much fuller yet refined. I don't know how to describe it properly but I'm guessing the word would be much better "resolution" than I've ever heard out of the E7.

 

[Focker]

Quote:

I thoroughly enjoyed my DT1350 right out of an O2 amp. I didn't expect it to improve since I use the E7 but my friend who owned the O2 blind-tested me against it. I was using an iPod Nano 2G line-out -> Fiio E7/ O2 and played a bunch of my favourite music. The O2 was distinguishable each time, the DT1350 sounded much fuller yet refined. I don't know how to describe it properly but I'm guessing the word would be much better "resolution" than I've ever heard out of the E7.

 
You're right, it is hard to explain. I know what you mean, though...it just sounds like the better amp has a more complete grip on the headphones....

 

[AstralStorm]

Except there aren't that many problematic portable amps and DT1350 are perfectly drivable (incl. bass and highs) out of a friggin cellphone.
 
The "lack of bass" complaint might be true if the person comes from Bose school of "neutral" sound. That is, likes huge bass boost.
DT1350 have bass that is not boosted in any way, in fact, very slightly dipping around 160 Hz and rolling off in subbass very gently.

 

[electropop]

Quote:

After trying these out for several months, I couldn't get:
- any bass worth mentioning, with tons of twiddling, bending and placement.
- anything out of burn-in, to tame the extreme harshness and what I can only describe as distortion artefacts
So I gave my pair away for free. Really, they are that bad, imho. YMMV.
LOL, people like this seriously amuse me. It's either you have no decent amplification or you have no clue what the hell you are talking about. One or the other.
Troll posts like these make people seem really incredibly daft. I have to seriously turn down my headphones there is so much bass at times in the sealed environment. I am starting to think people need to stop amping with ****ty portable amps. Go big or go home man these are 80 ohm headphones not 18 ohm.
There is really almost no harshness to these headphones unless you are seriously pushing the volume to insane levels. They are about as perfect to me as 300 dollar headphones get. I can understand some criticism as we all should but posts like that are just borderline pathetic. And then he goes over to the other thread to show his findings. I am sure the Amperiors will be you cup of tea lol and if they are not why not try your hand at every other pair out there. Someday you will find something. Someday.

 
From what I understand, they should be less picky about amping since they're 80 ohm and NOT 18 ohm. You seem to continuously be confusing impedance with sensitivity. 
 
I wouldn't be so absolute when not having a clue yourself...
 
The truth lies in what AstralStorm stated, or product variation. Whether one likes them or not for what they are is another matter altogether. 

 

[OrbitingCow]

Look, I am aware of: Power in Watts = ( Voltage * Voltage ) / Impedance
dB SPL = Sensitivity in dB/mW + 10 * LOG ( Power in mW)

I'll try to clear my language up a bit I guess. I don't think I said impedance was the be all end all. The phase shifts and impedance changing with frequencies can be a big deal though as you see in the blog below on the UE headphones. They rise to like 90 ohms at certain frequencies making some amps have trouble keeping up I am sure.

All I am saying is tiny little amps don't control the voltage or the sound like power amps can. Other factors as well. Pure and simple. I have never listened to an amp under 300 dollars portable that I would consider better than my Denon in any way with driving headphones.

In my experience, headphones with a resistance above 80 ohms or so were harder to reach full potential but it could be from a variety of things. I am NOT saying these are hard to drive but IF you have a problem with bass than YOU obviously have a hard time driving these.

Full potential to you versus me may be quite different. But using a 1/8 jack from your cellphones is pretty ******* stupid if you are talking about full potential.

Sure, they can be driven but at what cost to linearity and control? I put over 1k watts to an IDMAX in my car. I know what bass is, Jenny. And I did not get very decent bass from my ipod.

Feel free to correct anything you find wrong. Notice I don't list myself as an engineer. But please feel free to exist in a world where an ipod is a ******* Krell masterpiece. It's not even about the obvious things it is the fact many midfi to highfi home amps are built to be stable and are built to power anything. Headphones amps under 300 or so don't fall into this category imo but I could easily be proven wrong. I generally don't use them and the ones I have were mediocre or just not enough.

Sensitivity is obviously high on these. That doesn't mean your amp quality is high. Amps still have to power the device and cellphones don't power anything with quality.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/587289/head-fi-psa-the-impedance-of-a-headphone-is-not-how-hard-it-is-to-drive

A thread discussing these same issues. Yeah, we get it, the myth of impedance. It still doesn't account for people who think their ipod is a high quality amp.

 

[roadcykler]

Quote:

Have you tried them with a quality amp yet? We were talking about that earlier in the thread if you didn't see it...some of us are finding that they scale up nicely with something of quality...and I think it was OrbitingCow who said he felt the amp was vital. I like them out of my iPhone quite a bit, but I like them even more out of my Meier amp. I still can't believe I'm getting sound like this out of a pair of portables....

 
I have an older Denon DRA-600 receiver and a Crack Bottlehead, so I have a couple of options. I haven't really taken the time to compare and contrast those but I think the headphones sound great using both of them.

 

[OrbitingCow]

Just wanted to post another of the blog's replies. Design of amps and their parts is very important obviously and is just another reason why a tiny little portable does not cut the mustard with many headphones. I am not saying this directly relates to these headphones or portables I am just posting this because it was interesting.

@fz, look at most any of my amplifier and headphone DAC reviews you'll find graphs that show THD (distortion) vs Output at different loads. You'll find the same thing in op amp datasheets, etc. In nearly all cases, as the load impedance drops, the distortion rises. For the same output voltage the only thing changing is the amount of current the amplifier has to deliver. More current nearly always means more distortion.

There are multiple reasons for this. First, the output transistors (even in an IC or op amp) become less linear with higher output currents. If you want to geek out, you can look at the transfer curves of transistors and you'll see at higher currents they're less flat (linear). While amps usually have negative feedback, it can only partly correct for the non-linearity.

As an amp puts out more current, there is more audio-related, and sometimes power supply related, ripple on the supply rails. The rails "sag" more with increased output current. This can degrade the performance of the amp--especially a discrete one with relatively poor PSRR.

Nearly all headphones use a 3 wire connection via a 3.5mm or 1/4" phone plug (and some use 3 wire cables). The shared ground degrades crosstalk performance in inverse proportion to the load impedance. Lower impedance loads draw more current creating more drop in the common ground connection which shows up in the opposite channel. Just 50 mOhm of resistance at the headphone jack degrades crosstalk over 30 dB when you drop from 600 ohms to 16 ohm headphones.

Higher current creates greater drops across any series output stage resistors. For resistors insides the feedback loop these higher drops generate greater error signals which indirectly can create other forms of distortion. Amplifiers (even ICs) typically have emitter resistors in the output stage and some designs have series resistors in the outputs for stability or current limiting reasons.

As the load impedance drops many amps will at some point switch from "voltage clipping" to "current clipping". In the first case the amp runs into the power supply rail which limits the peak output. This is usually a fairly clean sort of clipping. But in the second case protection circuits in the amp are triggered to limit the peak current, a DC-DC or regulated power supply may current limit, or some amps simply fall on their face in other ways when asked to deliver current in excess of their design limit. In all of these cases the amp is no longer able to swing close to the normal supply voltage and its output is artificially limited--sometimes in a rather harsh ugly sounding way. Again, if you look at the THD vs Output graphs you'll see most amps I've tested put out a lot less maximum voltage into lower impedance loads at a higher level of distortion.

I mean for the love of god, the Op Amps and DAC in your cellphone are awful. This would directly contribute to them not being able to drive headphones in a full potential way.

As for impedance swings on the DT I have no idea.

 

[electropop]

I'm not saying an amp doesn't make a difference. But it sure doesn't necessarily give you more bass (drastically), unless it's a colored amp. Sure the dt1350 sound better through my voyager than straight from an ipod, but the bass volume level is the same. I deduce the distortion from an improper impedance match (say 18ohm phones with a 36ohm ouput) would result in more apparent bass (quantity). Wouldn't be quality bass. A higher impedance headphone is more resistant to the issues you state, however.
 
Still the issue at hand is that given the reports on such drastic product variety, the ones complaining about lacking bass either have a very different sounding unit, or that they're just expecting more volume. I can't recommend these to any bass heads, no matter how expensive or ideal their upstream gear is.

 

[OrbitingCow]

And this is where I disagree. Amping is the reason bass gets better. Bass need full control and full power with headroom to be linear and distortion free to a point. I know you are not arguing that an amp makes no difference because you would be a straight up fool and you know it. LOL soon we will have people who think audio is just great from 320 sources coming on here telling me I don't need to amp or even use CD quality sound because I cannot hear it.
 
I'm a bass head. I doubt you give 1k watts to anything and if you do great. Seriously, though, what do you know about high-end bass? Please enlighten me because you seem to be better informed than me. These headphones get bassier than hell and your ipod certainly DOES NOT give the bass that my Denon 2112ci gives. It's that simple. I'm not deaf. I can hear the difference. I have no idea what a voyager is so....
 
IDK but portable amps in my experience are completely irrelevant if they are under 300 dollars if you are talking about pushing these things. I would go so far as to say most under 500 are waaaay overpriced compared to something like a nice Denon.
 
I mean a bithead costs 150 bucks. It's a frickin bithead. 150 bucks and made for about 20.
 
I think you are teensy bit insane trying to tell me my ipod gives the same output as my Denon for these headphones.
 
I was just listening to the insane bass on Eels' Daisies of the Galaxy last night. Sorry bud but my ipod was not up to snuff. I know some people like to believe amps are useless and power is free but again I am here to tell you that you are wrong. All in good fun though.
 
Don't know what you mean by 'drastically'. Of course things are never drastic in audiophile land. It's a war for every square inch.
 
I'm also not some tub thumping tard basshead. I like linear bass that pounds the low end until you are in a trance. I port low in the 27Hz range. These headphones go low without much distortion. An ipod is simply not capable of producing those low end sounds in the right way at all.

 

[JohannLiebert]

ok

 

[AstralStorm]

Quote:

And this is where I disagree. Amping is the reason bass gets better. Bass need full control and full power with headroom to be linear and distortion free to a point. I know you are not arguing that an amp makes no difference because you would be a straight up fool and you know it. LOL soon we will have people who think audio is just great from 320 sources coming on here telling me I don't need to amp or even use CD quality sound because I cannot hear it.

 
You'd be suprised about the "cheap" amps. I'd say that there are some really excellent amps and devices with built-in headphone amps in $100-$200 range.
About bass quality, I can only agree, however this matters mostly below 80 Hz in my experience with regard to distortion. It is not readily audible with most music excluding electronica and organ, but quite apparent otherwise. (Harsh distorted sound vs smooth.)
 
Bithead is a pretty lousy amplifier. I wouldn't use it even if I got it for free, because often just the source is better than it. (except really lousy sources perhaps - iPod is not one, but it cannot drive bass perfectly)
Really, even cheap FiiO E7 outperforms it.
For the price, you can get the Objective O2 amplifier which is as perfect as they come; or Audiotrak Prodigy Cube USB sound device. Slightly more cash and you can grab Leckerton UHA-4.
 
Either of these provides perfect bass control on DT1350 and more than enough driving power.

 

[OrbitingCow]

Yes, really I have not explored portables much I am sure there are many in the 200-300 range that are decent. I think the trouble is price mark up and having to find out what is good and what is not.
 
I agree on bass especially the bass in the 10-40 range. You really do need a solid amp to hear or feel these frequencies at their best. I mean these headphones can knock my socks off if I turn them up which is why I just get dumb when people say these have weak bass. It just doesn't register lol.