Quote:
Originally Posted by dBel84 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
... these [Yamaha YHD-2] are my personal best portable HPs - ever.
ps wualta - keep the opinions comming, I am starting to listen more and more to the recording techniques...
I can't say I recommend listening the way I do, because there's a danger of sucking all the magic out of the recorded music 'sperience. I'll risk repeating myself: as your equipment gets better, recordings will start to sound like recordings. The general assumption that better gear gets you closer to the experience of live music is, sadly, without basis. You know your gear is getting better when you start to hear things that don't make your toes tap (why just the toes?) but rather make you say "Oh.." "Ouch!" and "Oof, she buried the needles [on the old VU meter] swallowing the mic on
that note.." Good gear takes a mix that cost millions of dollars and months of hair-tearing panic to produce, and deftly takes it to bits before your very ears. The producer consoles himself by saying "Heh. They'll never hear that." Then he gets in his Bugatti and drives off, little knowing.
The flip side to all this is knowing that if, by some miracle, a really good recording ever does come along, your equipment will be ready.
In the meantime, you risk becoming a paraprofessional nitpicker and killjoy. Don't say I didn't warn you.
By the way, I'm using a Sony portable CD player optically feeding the Panasonic XR55 which is driving the headphones from its speaker outputs through a Pioneer JB-21 resistive coupler. The Equibit amp inside the XR55 is basically a power DAC. This doesn't mean it's perfect or that everyone will like it, just that the signal stays digital all the way to the speaker terminals, or so they claim.
As for the TP, if I
were to be a swine nitpicking killjoy ingrate, I'd say the bass needs to be tightened up and/or extended downward a bit (I know, the two are exclusive) and there's a peak in the tizz region around 6--8 kHz that makes female sibilants stand out. That's the kneejerk nitpicking no-social-skills engineer part of my brain talking. But I also know that a closed 'phone is a mess of tradeoffs, and one of the payoffs here is a wonderfully tight mono image, which means it has an ultraclean stereo image. Stuff that in a normal 'phone would get sprayed randomly all over the headstage stays locked in place on the TP, so all the little details come out. This gives the TP its ability to take apart a stereo mix. The treble just seems to go on forever, too-- it doesn't die after the peak, so I'm guessing maybe cavity resonance somewhere in or near the driver? maybe? Anyway, this is what I'm hearing on my equipment. The YH-100 plays lower and tighter, but it sounds rather dry and HD-414ey on the top end compared to the TP (yet another of those tradeoffs) and the mono image isn't nearly so good. Fostex has made great strides in driver matching, it appears.
Random hint for the next auditioner: don't let the earpads cover the little brass vents in the bottom of each cup.
Smeggy has worked an amazing acoustic tranformation on the stock T50RP, to say nothing of the sheer craftsmanship involved. Which is what we'd expect of him. Those expectations will eventually kill him, as he well knows. I'm grateful for the mere opportunity to sample his cooking. In the meantime, I'm going to try a reverse reflex dot to see if I can't squelch that tizz. "Squelch That Tizz!" would be a good name for a postapocalyptic TV game show. But we should come up with a name for that use of a reflector dot. Treble dam dot? Damn treble dot? Tizz-B-Gon? Diffractor dot? I'm blockin' here. Suggestions?
Quote:
Take a look at my profile and let me know if you see something you like, not everything is for sale but try me
Whoa! you must be saving up bigtime for one of the Neo Orthos, yes?
Quote:
Great price! You bought it then (the ad says it is sold now) ?
The guys are correct, the YHD-2 is a steal at 30 USD. I think you'll be impressed. One of the things I used to compare to the TP was YHD-2 drivers transplanted into a Pro 30 headset. Great little drivers, and you'll get a kick out of the YHD-2 stock headset too.
