[MisterMudd]

Exactly. A little plastic plate.

You may need to use a flashlight to see the information, because it's just embossed plastic so it can be hard to see.

Yep. WOOX. Can't remember any or all controversy on the thread, if any, about durability, but I have had exactly zero problems with them. Zip. Nada. None. I do tend to treat my cans nicely though.

 

[goodyfresh]

Yep. WOOX. Can't remember any or all controversy on the thread, if any, about durability, but I have had exactly zero problems with them. Zip. Nada. None. I do tend to treat my cans nicely though.

The ONLY potential weak-point of these things' build-quality is those L/R plastic tabs holding the lower-headband/hammock-system-thing onto the upper headband. But even those seem quite sturdy, and while I've seen reports of them breaking, those reports are few and far between and very rare.

The fact is, these things are indeed built like TANKS, and are WAY more durable than 99% of headphones in this price-range, as well as far more durable than many FAR more expensive headphones. If only HiFiMan made headphones built this sturdily, I'd be actually willing to buy their products, heh.

 

[kpopmorelikekpoop]

Bought a new pair of X2 (or X2HR as they are called now) along with HD560S.
Anyway a Question, how much in an audible way, would a 10ohm output impedance affect these X2s?
Using Xonar STX II.

And which frequency to drop a bit to tone down the Ss.

Oh and the pads are definitely not the same as the original X2s, thicker and much less on the soft side.

 

[goodyfresh]

Bought a new pair of X2 (or X2HR as they are called now) along with HD560S.
Anyway a Question, how much in an audible way, would a 10ohm output impedance affect these X2s?
Using Xonar STX II.

And which frequency to drop a bit to tone down the Ss.

Oh and the pads are definitely not the same as the original X2s, thicker and much less on the soft side.

What do you mean by "Ss?" Sibilance? Sibilance generally falls between 2 to 10khz but varies depending on the particular voice or whether it's cymbals or snare-brushes or something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-essing#De-essing_without_automation_or_with_manual_equalization
https://theproaudiofiles.com/vocal-sibilance/

As you can see by reading those articles, "de-essing" is a complex process that isn't the same across all systems but more importantly, isn't the same on all material/songs.

As for changes that a higher output-impedance may cause: This graph from DIY Audio Heaven shows the frequency-response of the X2HR from a very low (0.2ohm) output-impedance shown in green vs a very high (120ohm) one shown in green:

As you can see, a higher output-impedance will increase the mild bass-hump on these headphones to a much less mild hump, bloating up the bass (however thankfully nowhere close to the bass/mids boundary). However, the graph shown involves the shift from a 0.2ohm impedance to an insanely high 120ohm impedance; a 10ohm impedance like you're talking about will probably bloat up the bass a BIT, but not nearly as much as a 120ohm impedance does. That being said, it's recommended to always use an amp with impedance 1/8th or lower than that of the headphones. For the 32ohm X2HR, that would mean 4ohms or less is recommended. At 10ohms, the bass-bloat shouldn't be too much, but the bigger issue is distortion. A (too) high enough output impedance will ALMOST ALWAYS increase distortion, which obviously isn't a good thing. Unfortunately, I can't find any graphs of how the distortion-plot of the X2HR changes with impedance, but I can almost guarantee you that it probably isn't very pretty. I personally wouldn't recommend using an amp with 10ohm output for headphones with anything less than 80ohm impedance.

However, keep in mind how I said "almost always" above. These things vary unpredictably, unfortunately. It's ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that the X2HR's don't distort with overly-high impedances from amps, as not all headphones do! It'd be hard to say without A/B testing or measurements.

 

[kpopmorelikekpoop]

What do you mean by "Ss?" Sibilance? Sibilance generally falls between 2 to 10khz but varies depending on the particular voice or whether it's cymbals or snare-brushes or something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-essing#De-essing_without_automation_or_with_manual_equalization
https://theproaudiofiles.com/vocal-sibilance/

As you can see by reading those articles, "de-essing" is a complex process that isn't the same across all systems but more importantly, isn't the same on all material/songs.

As for changes that a higher output-impedance may cause: This graph from DIY Audio Heaven shows the frequency-response of the X2HR from a very low (0.2ohm) output-impedance shown in green vs a very high (120ohm) one shown in green:

As you can see, a higher output-impedance will increase the mild bass-hump on these headphones to a much less mild hump, bloating up the bass (however thankfully nowhere close to the bass/mids boundary). However, the graph shown involves the shift from a 0.2ohm impedance to an insanely high 120ohm impedance; a 10ohm impedance like you're talking about will probably bloat up the bass a BIT, but not nearly as much as a 120ohm impedance does. That being said, it's recommended to always use an amp with impedance 1/8th or lower than that of the headphones. For the 32ohm X2HR, that would mean 4ohms or less is recommended. At 10ohms, the bass-bloat shouldn't be too much, but the bigger issue is distortion. A (too) high enough output impedance will ALMOST ALWAYS increase distortion, which obviously isn't a good thing. Unfortunately, I can't find any graphs of how the distortion-plot of the X2HR changes with impedance, but I can almost guarantee you that it probably isn't very pretty. I personally wouldn't recommend using an amp with 10ohm output for headphones with anything less than 80ohm impedance.

However, keep in mind how I said "almost always" above. These things vary unpredictably, unfortunately. It's ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that the X2HR's don't distort with overly-high impedances from amps, as not all headphones do! It'd be hard to say without A/B testing or measurements.

The Ss's would be mostly voices, when people sing or talk.
I dont remember my original X2s having this but maybe due to their "drive-in" over ~3 years made that less harsh?
2-10khz would be a very wide range.I guess I would have to search to see if anyones EQd that part.

So what would be a cheap dac amp combo that can drive a pair of X2HR (or other 32ohm headphones) aswell as HD560s and above?
Schiit have a combo for $99*2 I think.

Oh and is it just me or does the X2HR have a slight volume imbalance, I feel vocalists are more centerleft than just deadcenter, if I add +1db to right it feels more proper center?

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

^The X2 does not need a dedicated amp. It is a 32 ohm headphone that also happens to be very sensitive aka it was designed for peeps that generally plug into their phones, daps or motherboards.
My guess is that if you invest in an amp or indeed an amp/dac combo, you are going to struggle with volume control. Even in low gain you’re most likely never going past 9 o clock unless you are listening to an old and more quiet recording...and that is unbelievably irritating. Most of the time it’ll be too low in volume or way too LOUD.

Edith: If you’re set on getting an amp possibly dac combo, then I would probably take a look at some of the less powerful ones. The Schiit Fulla perhaps. It’s got enough umphh to drive a Sennheiser HD600/650 but not quite the powerhouse like the Magni/Heresy/Hel/Asgard. Maybe it’ll work nicely with the Philips as well

 

[goodyfresh]

The Ss's would be mostly voices, when people sing or talk.
I dont remember my original X2s having this but maybe due to their "drive-in" over ~3 years made that less harsh?
2-10khz would be a very wide range.I guess I would have to search to see if anyones EQd that part.

So what would be a cheap dac amp combo that can drive a pair of X2HR (or other 32ohm headphones) aswell as HD560s and above?
Schiit have a combo for $99*2 I think.

Oh and is it just me or does the X2HR have a slight volume imbalance, I feel vocalists are more centerleft than just deadcenter, if I add +1db to right it feels more proper center?

As I said, "de-essing" is a very complex process (as you can see in the articles on it that I linked) because sibilant "sss" sounds can come from a very broad portion of the treble-range; sss sounds in male voices tend to come from a somewhat lower part of the treble range, while sss sounds in female vocals from a higher part. There's not necessarily any easy solution to it. But honestly, I don't think the X2HR's have too much issue with sibilance compared to most headphones in their price-range.

Personally, I find that both the X2HR and the HD560s sound AWESOME from my Fiio K5 Pro DAC/Amp, which cost me $149.99 on Amazon. The Fiio K5 Pro drives the X2HR's, as well as the HD560s, with A LOT of volume headroom; the K5 Pro is a very, very powerful device for a DAC/Amp combo in its price-range, and I never need to go above low gain for any material with the X2HR on it, and only need to go to medium gain to have a lot of headroom with the HD560s on very quiet material (certain movies and shows) when using something like Equalizer APO that lowers the volume through negative pre-gain. Something like the K5 Pro has the advantage of being able to drive MUCH more power-hungry headphones than the X2HR or HD560s, so that if you upgrade to some hard-to-drive headphones in the future, you won't necessarily need to update your DAC/Amp setup unless you want more micro-detail. I tried the Fiio BTR5 and K3 before this, but they couldn't drive the HD560s to its full potential (their bass tightened and cleaned up when I switched to the K5 Pro).

Oh jeez, a channel-imbalance issue? Now that's a tough one. The X2HR's are indeed known for having issues with quality-control by Philips, especially channel-matching. HOWEVER, it could also be the case that it's your ears rather than the headphones causing this! Mismatched ears (where your left or right ear hears certain frequencies more or less loudly) are actually very common. If this is your first experience with ope-back headphones with a large and expansive soundstage, it could be that you have mismatched ears and just never noticed it with headphones until now. HERE IS HOW YOU CAN TEST FOR THAT:

https://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_headphones.php

Go to that link and scroll down to the "Driver Matching" full range sweep test, which will play a sweeping tone from 20Hz to 10Khz. The tone is in the center-channel, with equal volume on the left and right sides; so if you hear it pan to-and-fro from one side to another, that indicates either a headphone channel-imbalance OR mismatched ears. To figure out which of the two it is, perform the same test again but with the headphones now flipped around so that the left earcup is over your right ear, and vice-versa. Now, check and see if the channel-imbalances/panning you hear is on the same sides as in the first test, or has reversed sides. If it stays on the same sides as in the first test when you flip the headphones around, that means your EARS rather than the headphones are mismatched. If it reverses sides, then the headphones have a channel-imbalance.

Normally there's no need to test headphones using things like this, but if you're noticing an AUDIBLE channel-imbalance, it's likely necessary to check whether it's really the headphones, or your ears themselves.

 

[Twizzleshnizzle]

^The X2 does not need a dedicated amp. It is a 32 ohm headphone that also happens to be very sensitive aka it was designed for peeps that generally plug into their phones, daps or motherboards.
My guess is that if you invest in an amp or indeed an amp/dac combo, you are going to struggle with volume control. Even in low gain you’re most likely never going past 9 o clock unless you are listening to an old and more quiet recording...and that is unbelievably irritating. Most of the time it’ll be too low in volume or way too LOUD.

Edith: If you’re set on getting an amp possibly dac combo, then I would probably take a look at some of the less powerful ones. The Schiit Fulla perhaps. It’s got enough umphh to drive a Sennheiser HD600/650 but not quite the powerhouse like the Magni/Heresy/Hel/Asgard. Maybe it’ll work nicely with the Philips as well

I hope I don't sound like I'm disagreeing for the sake of it, I'm honestly not, just offering my experience in regards to amping the X2HR.

I run my pair through a Schiit Jotunheim. I also use the Audioquest Nighthawk, the Beyerdynamic T5p (gen 2), and the Beyerdynamic Amiron Home on the Jotunheim. I can easily power the Nighthawk and T5p at low gain. The X2HR and the Amiron Home I set to high gain, and they take almost the same volume dial setting of 10-11 o'clock (using a single ended connection).

I've used the X2HR with a variety of amps over the years - Dragonfly Red, Chord Mojo, Fiio BTR5, Schiit Jotunheim. I've never experienced the issue of volume control where they're either way too low in volume or too loud. I was actually quite surprised by the X2HR being harder to drive than the Nighthawk and T5p.

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

^That’s good to hear..at least if he wants a more substantial amplifier.
Personally I just don’t understand why one would purchase an amp if one’s headphones never need it. Then again I am one of the rare few here who likes to listen to gear blind..and when you can’t see what you are plugging into, chances are it’ll sound the same unless you’re impedance mismatching.
Amps are needed/justified if you’re missing volume...and I have a hard time picturing anyone missing volume over the X2. You can literally drive it with a peeled banana.

 

[Twizzleshnizzle]

^That’s good to hear..at least if he wants a more substantial amplifier.
Personally I just don’t understand why one would purchase an amp if one’s headphones never need it. Then again I am one of the rare few here who likes to listen to gear blind..and when you can’t see what you are plugging into, chances are it’ll sound the same unless you’re impedance mismatching.
Amps are needed/justified if you’re missing volume...and I have a hard time picturing anyone missing volume over the X2. You can literally drive it with a peeled banana.

Max volume directly from my Google Pixel 3a is under the volume of what I'd usually listen. I don't listen at overly loud levels. Equally directly from a PS4 controller is way too quiet. This banana must have some fuel

 

[goodyfresh]

^That’s good to hear..at least if he wants a more substantial amplifier.
Personally I just don’t understand why one would purchase an amp if one’s headphones never need it. Then again I am one of the rare few here who likes to listen to gear blind..and when you can’t see what you are plugging into, chances are it’ll sound the same unless you’re impedance mismatching.
Amps are needed/justified if you’re missing volume...and I have a hard time picturing anyone missing volume over the X2. You can literally drive it with a peeled banana.

I mean sure, my laptop's onboard headphone-jack can drive the X2HR's to very loud levels with a lot of headroom... that doesn't mean it brings out their best sound though, because like most laptops its onboard audio is crap, and that's true of a lot of smartphones too. The X2HR doesn't necessarily need an amp with a lot of power (it certainly doesn't require a lot of voltage like my HD560s does with the latter's 120ohm impedance), but it DOES benefit from something with lower output-impedance and better THD+N levels and better intermodulation distortion and lower levels of jitter than what you often find from the headphone-jacks on phones and computers. I can literally hear distortion when using my X2HR's straight from my laptop that literally disappears when I use the K5 Pro to amp them instead; for example, any of the "air" frequencies above 10Khz produce this weird hissing wind-like noise in the background from my laptop's onboard audio, but that goes away and those frequencies become pure when using the K5 Pro.

So it's not necessarily the better output power of something like a better DAC/Amp that makes a difference, honestly with the X2HR it almost certainly isn't since they're pretty easy to drive; what really makes a big difference is the audio from a dedicated DAC/Amp just being downright higher-fidelity than that from many phones and computers.

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

^Your post could have been written by me a couple of years back..and then I tried listening to gear blind.
We hear what we see/think/feel

 

[goodyfresh]

^Your post could have been written by me a couple of years back..and then I tried listening to gear blind.
We hear what we see/think/feel

What you're not taking into account is what I pointed out above; the onboard audio from the headphone-jacks on many consumer devices is just crappy and low-fi, with audible levels of THD+N, IMD, and jitter. Laptops, especially, are notorious for having terrible onboard audio. The X2HR might not need more POWER than my laptop provides, but they certainly sound a lot better with a dedicated DAC/Amp because the onboard audio on my laptop has obnoxiously audible levels of various types of distortion, and also seemingly has a high output-impedance. I mean, when I use my Fiio FH3 IEM's, i can hear plenty of background-hiss from my laptop's headphone-jack, while they have a completely black background from the Fiio K5 Pro (yes, despite being such a powerful and low-budget DAC/Amp combo, it has a black background with 24ohm, sensitive, hybrid DD/BA IEM's), which literally proves in an audible way that the audio from the K5 Pro is much better than the audio from my laptop. Meanwhile, with something as good as the X2HR's, I can hear distortion from my laptop's audio that I don't hear on the same tracks with the K5 Pro. You can say all you want that it's all just confirmation-bias because I'm not doing blind testing, but honestly it's a KNOWN FACT that most laptops have terrible onboard audio that is measurably terrible at audible levels.

 

[Twizzleshnizzle]

^Your post could have been written by me a couple of years back..and then I tried listening to gear blind.
We hear what we see/think/feel

I'm not going on quality here, I'm going purely on available volume. The X2HR is low ohms, but without doubt requires more power than other headphones at that same 'ohm' level. Beyerdynamic for instance are far more efficient.

 

[kpopmorelikekpoop]

As I said, "de-essing" is a very complex process (as you can see in the articles on it that I linked) because sibilant "sss" sounds can come from a very broad portion of the treble-range; sss sounds in male voices tend to come from a somewhat lower part of the treble range, while sss sounds in female vocals from a higher part. There's not necessarily any easy solution to it. But honestly, I don't think the X2HR's have too much issue with sibilance compared to most headphones in their price-range.

Personally, I find that both the X2HR and the HD560s sound AWESOME from my Fiio K5 Pro DAC/Amp, which cost me $149.99 on Amazon. The Fiio K5 Pro drives the X2HR's, as well as the HD560s, with A LOT of volume headroom; the K5 Pro is a very, very powerful device for a DAC/Amp combo in its price-range, and I never need to go above low gain for any material with the X2HR on it, and only need to go to medium gain to have a lot of headroom with the HD560s on very quiet material (certain movies and shows) when using something like Equalizer APO that lowers the volume through negative pre-gain. Something like the K5 Pro has the advantage of being able to drive MUCH more power-hungry headphones than the X2HR or HD560s, so that if you upgrade to some hard-to-drive headphones in the future, you won't necessarily need to update your DAC/Amp setup unless you want more micro-detail. I tried the Fiio BTR5 and K3 before this, but they couldn't drive the HD560s to its full potential (their bass tightened and cleaned up when I switched to the K5 Pro).

Oh jeez, a channel-imbalance issue? Now that's a tough one. The X2HR's are indeed known for having issues with quality-control by Philips, especially channel-matching. HOWEVER, it could also be the case that it's your ears rather than the headphones causing this! Mismatched ears (where your left or right ear hears certain frequencies more or less loudly) are actually very common. If this is your first experience with ope-back headphones with a large and expansive soundstage, it could be that you have mismatched ears and just never noticed it with headphones until now. HERE IS HOW YOU CAN TEST FOR THAT:

https://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_headphones.php

Go to that link and scroll down to the "Driver Matching" full range sweep test, which will play a sweeping tone from 20Hz to 10Khz. The tone is in the center-channel, with equal volume on the left and right sides; so if you hear it pan to-and-fro from one side to another, that indicates either a headphone channel-imbalance OR mismatched ears. To figure out which of the two it is, perform the same test again but with the headphones now flipped around so that the left earcup is over your right ear, and vice-versa. Now, check and see if the channel-imbalances/panning you hear is on the same sides as in the first test, or has reversed sides. If it stays on the same sides as in the first test when you flip the headphones around, that means your EARS rather than the headphones are mismatched. If it reverses sides, then the headphones have a channel-imbalance.

Normally there's no need to test headphones using things like this, but if you're noticing an AUDIBLE channel-imbalance, it's likely necessary to check whether it's really the headphones, or your ears themselves.

Its generally any Sss sound regardless of it being a male or female. But I believe it may be the same freq area as on the X3s which I had before. So will test lowering in that range and see if it makes any difference.

I will order that K5 Pro and see how they fare with both headphones. They're €170 here in Sweden. But might be worth it. As if they do well I can just sell my STX IIs. Wonder if theres people out there even looking for em anymore though.

And I will do that sweeping test on my old 558, and the new 560s and the X2s just to triple check if its me or the headphone(s). I dont encounter it on the 558 or the 560s though.