[MaloS]

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Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't listen to much classical but what I do listen to is rock, jazz, big band jazz, doo-wop (think that's how you spell it), punk, electronica, dub, acid jazz, blues, reggae, and a bit of hip-hop. Come to think of it, most music needs warmth and BAs do not provide warmth without sacrificing clarity and when you have clarity it comes at the price of killing a good bit of the warmth. Never tried planar so I can't make a call on that. My point with the car stereos is that some do test out their mixes in car stereos (obviously not a junk car stereo system) as well as on headphone/earphones and speakers. In other words, they want to get a sense of what the music sounds like on those systems. I can understand the BA argument if all you listen to is classical and listening in the sense of analyzing not just the music but individual instrument characteristics on a very granular level. I ended up listening to a lot of classical during my college years and the Ety's came in quite useful as I was taking classical music. So in that sense, I can see where BAs may be a bit better but even then, if I was to go back and want to enjoy the music more than analyzing it, I would still go for the good dynamics.

Mkay, I listen to great deal of electronica, metal, rock, jazz, classical, and few other things. I get warmth out of Westone 3, and SE530 is one of the warmest things around. Both provide greater deal of clarity than any dynamic in-ear on the market. Also Westone ES2 is known for its warmth and visceral bass while maintaining excellent clarity, and ES3X even more so.

"My point with the car stereos is that some do test out their mixes in car stereos (obviously not a junk car stereo system) as well as on headphone/earphones and speakers. In other words, they want to get a sense of what the music sounds like on those systems."

Well, ya, sure, noone disagrees with you there. But only small portion of music is mixed specifically to sound good on a compromised audio system (i.e. popular music, stuff that hits the radio). Plenty of records from all genres come around with absolutely astonishing sound on a properly tuned set of studio monitors - but sounds no better than typical radio tune when played back in a car (in terms of SQ).

"I ended up listening to a lot of classical during my college years and the Ety's came in quite useful as I was taking classical music. So in that sense, I can see where BAs may be a bit better but even then, if I was to go back and want to enjoy the music more than analyzing it, I would still go for the good dynamics."

Is Ety the only BA you experienced? Even if we added SE530 to that list, you have not heard what the rest of the market sounds like. Its like listening to HD650 and Edition 9, and then coming to the conclusion that all dynamics have big powerful bass. That would be ignoring existance of of Beyer DT150 or Alessandro MS1 (or even K1000 if you want to go there). Also I have no idea how you listen to orchestral classical with stock Ety's (ignoring apuresound ety - I am aware that the difference is substantial) - left hand of the pianist, all the low register horns, tympany - all those don't sound right.

BA can sound powerful, clear, and pleasantly warm at the same time - without having questionable bass resolution. Alot of dynamics fail to do all that (few do succeed - same deal as with BAs).


In the end - I think you are trying to blame alot of things on the underlying technology - but the problem you are complaining about has more to do with the tuning of the frequency response of the headphone. On the other hand - your opponents in this argument are arguing that dynamics fail to provide certain characteristics that do happen to be the inherent flaw of dynamic drivers (clarity/resolution that results from drivers that have lightning-fast transient response...very very few dynamic headphone drivers do that).

Your argument is similar to someone saying "BA's cannot go higher than 16 khz". BA's are a newer thing on the audiophile market, and many people have not yet heard more recent models of earphones that cross that barrier. They also have not heard BA earphones that solve the issue of having visceral deep bass, and many think of the way etymotic sounds when talking about BA's - which is also not representative of the driver, just representative of psychology of one company.

 

[MaloS]

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Originally Posted by i_don't_know /img/forum/go_quote.gif ... Basically, dynamics are considered more "musical" because the driver moves more air, thus generating texture and feeling with each sound. This is what I believe is the difference between musical and non-musical. Music is supposed to provoke an emotional response from the listener. "Feeling" the sound (dynamic) creates this phenomenon better than just hearing it for what it is (BA). Musicality has nothing to do with accuracy. To be honest, I prefer a more accurate sound. But if I'm craving a bassier, less accurate presentation for some reason, I'd reach for a pair of dynamic IEMs or headphones simply for that extra musicality that comes with it. I think a bassy BA is actually a little contradicting, to be honest, since something that pumps out serious bass should make you really feel it, and BA drivers excel in speed, detail, and accuracy...

You clarify...I clarify...

Alot of people perceive musicality as having everything to do with impact. Listen to a guitarist play alone - you get no impact, only the low end instruments do so. Yet a guitarist can be extremely musical alone.

With regards to the bold line - there are BAs that do exactly that...(UE11, UE10, ES2, ES3X).

 

[VoLTaG3]

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Originally Posted by i_don't_know /img/forum/go_quote.gif For the IE7, don't forget to burn-in for 350+ hours first! Also, distortion and unnatural sound aren't the same thing. Just thought I'd point that out. I think you know that, though. So I don't understand this. Let's just forget it ever happened. Basically, dynamics are considered more "musical" because the driver moves more air, thus generating texture and feeling with each sound. This is what I believe is the difference between musical and non-musical. Music is supposed to provoke an emotional response from the listener. "Feeling" the sound (dynamic) creates this phenomenon better than just hearing it for what it is (BA). Musicality has nothing to do with accuracy. To be honest, I prefer a more accurate sound. But if I'm craving a bassier, less accurate presentation for some reason, I'd reach for a pair of dynamic IEMs or headphones simply for that extra musicality that comes with it. I think a bassy BA is actually a little contradicting, to be honest, since something that pumps out serious bass should make you really feel it, and BA drivers excel in speed, detail, and accuracy. Not arguing with you, just jumping in to over-clarify things. I'm in one of those moods. Frendz? EDIT: By the way, dynamics can produce a clean, accurate sound. It just takes a ton of burn-in, and you have to keep in mind that BA drivers will always be quicker to some degree. EDIT 2: Also, VoLTaG3, you're obviously in love with the 530's, so quit while you're ahead. Leave Head-Fi and enjoy life with your Shures.

Yes I am. I'm listening to them now and I am still blown away by the SQ these little pieces of technology has to offer. I will upgrade. Not to another IEM though. I will get a ultra high end full size headphone with a home amp.

 

[i_don't_know]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaloS /img/forum/go_quote.gif You clarify...I clarify... Alot of people perceive musicality as having everything to do with impact. Listen to a guitarist play alone - you get no impact, only the low end instruments do so. Yet a guitarist can be extremely musical alone. With regards to the bold line - there are BAs that do exactly that...(UE11, UE10, ES2, ES3X).

Actually, I'm a guitarist myself (acoustic). You can feel the sound of the guitar. Easily. And no, I'm not talking about feeling the body resonate. Even the B and high E strings have a certain impact to their sound.

Also, I have heard bassy balanced armatures. Yes, you can feel it, but it's a different kind of feeling. Quite hard to explain in words, but I wouldn't quite call it "musical". Maybe the ones you mentioned are different, but then we're comparing a few high-end BA IEMs to most, if not all, dynamic IEMs, so what I said still stands for the most part.

Point nullified (kind of).


Quote:

Originally Posted by VoLTaG3 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes I am. I'm listening to them now and I am still blown away by the SQ these little pieces of technology has to offer. I will upgrade. Not to another IEM though. I will get a ultra high end full size headphone with a home amp.

-HD800
-multi-thousand-dollar amp that has good synergy with the HD800

 

[MaloS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by i_don't_know /img/forum/go_quote.gif Actually, I'm a guitarist myself (acoustic). You can feel the sound of the guitar. Easily. And no, I'm not talking about feeling the body resonate. Even the B and high E strings have a certain impact to their sound. Also, I have heard bassy balanced armatures. Yes, you can feel it, but it's a different kind of feeling. Quite hard to explain in words, but I wouldn't quite call it "musical". Maybe the ones you mentioned are different, but then we're comparing a few high-end BA IEMs to most, if not all, dynamic IEMs, so what I said still stands for the most part. Point nullified (kind of).

You can feel it when you are holding it. You cannot feel it when you sit even 10 feet away from it. (I own a classical guitar and steel-string acoustic). In live situations you will feel...but it is not the guitar - it is the dynamic PA system...they tend to add that unnecessary low end resonance.

Lets strictly ignore chords (especially lower ones) for this argument since they have certain behavior that transents vibration of one string.

On the case of the bolded statement: yes, majority of dynamics have a boosted midbass introducing a certain boom...what does that have to do with anything? Lets tune all armatures to have a midbass bloom too, won't be any different. Lets ignore the fact that alot of dynamic drivers just plain unhealthily resonate in midbass (hello HD650 and D5000), often due to the chassis rather than the driver itself. Speakers do this in poorly tuned cabinets or untreated rooms ... causes headaches if it is out of hand.

 

[dookiex]

Malos, I see that you haven't read my other post where I made the laundry list of some of the equipment I've had. You will see that I've ran the gamut of BA earphones and finally came to the conclusion that dynamics can be equally as good PLUS have the added body that BAs lack. I've used the Etys as an example because it's the EASIEST target to show how big of a bias there is for BAs. Yes, to this day folks still feel that Etys are what music is supposed to sound like. It's kind of silly actually. By the way Malos, out of curiousity, what dynamics have you tried? Apart from the Sony EX700s and my RE-1s, I've tried Yuins as well as Atrios. Most recently I've listened to the Beats Tours for a considerable amount of time. Thought the Beats Tours aren't super dynamics, they are pretty good for their price tag, they make compromises but the compromises are much less compared to similarly priced BA phones (all based on MSRP).

With regards to your last statement. Yes you can tune BAs to have the boost in mids and lows BUT that's where I've pointed out numerous times already, that's where the compromise lies. This boost sacrifices the highs because I'm pretty sure they've used dampening to give the sound a smoother feel. That's done because BAs are unable to give that full warm sound that a pair of good dynamics can give. It's the inherent issue with the limitations of BA drivers. As someone else pointed out earlier, dynamics are hugely dependent on the drivers and THIS is where the inherent problem lies with the misunderstanding that dynamics are not as good as BAs. The enthusiast market for the past few years have RARELY tried to make BETTER dynamic drivers thus is a lot of ho-hum dynamic phones on the market. BAs have been the TREND and it's technology that companies like Shure and UE already used for their personal MONITORS thus they've tweaked their existing designs to repackage and sell to the enthusiast market. In other words, it makes very little sense for these companies to develop dynamics since they are already so heavily invested in BAs. BAs are what amounts to being the buzz and hype technology of the past few years in earphone development. This is the same reason why I doubt Sony will ever come out with BAs because have heavily invested in the development of dynamics. Apple on the other hand doesn't care what they use because that is not their focus so they basically go with whatever the trend seems to be at the moment.

Lastly, the compromises being made for BA is noticeably more than compromises used for good dynamic EARphones. You can basically have more of both warmth AND detail with dynamics while BAs I still haven't found a pair that gets to that happy agreement. I haven't heard the Westone 3s yet so it may possibly be that the Westone 3s has finally reached that place of happy ears.

 

[i_don't_know]

And thus the accuracy vs. musicality argument must be revisited once more. I believe they have nothing to do with each other. I'm not talking about a certain frequency being boosted (I realize I was using bass as a main focal point in my last post, but that's simply because musicality is usually most easily recognized in the lower frequencies since they tend to have more impact than the higher frequencies in a real life situation). I'm talking about the feeling caused by the driver moving more air around. Even treble notes have impact (but it doesn't really "hit", you can just "feel" the notes).






Also, here's how I like to think of it:

IEMs are known to have an intimate sound overall, yes?

An intimate sound puts you closer to the music, yes?


Then I feel it's perfectly fine for an IEM to reproduce the sound of an instrument as if it's being played 3 feet away (impact and feeling-wise, not stage or space-wise). And I'm sure you'd agree that even a guitar has a certain amount of impact and/or feeling at that distance. I forgot to mention that my experience with guitar isn't nearly limited to just holding it and playing it (thought I wouldn't have to add that in. Sorry, I'm tired). Of course, if something inside your ears was supposed to sound like full-size speakers, it would be a different story.



Just for the record, I prefer the sound of a BA driver because I'd rather hear the recording itself than the recording + added musical texture (unless it's one of those weird days when I just feel like feeling the music, then it's the other way around). I'm just trying to point out that musicality and accuracy are not to be confused or combined with one another. The recording is the recording. The musicality of the way in which the recording is presented to the listener is a whole different thing altogether.

 

[VoLTaG3]

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Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif Malos, I see that you haven't read my other post where I made the laundry list of some of the equipment I've had. You will see that I've ran the gamut of BA earphones and finally came to the conclusion that dynamics can be equally as good PLUS have the added body that BAs lack. I've used the Etys as an example because it's the EASIEST target to show how big of a bias there is for BAs. Yes, to this day folks still feel that Etys are what music is supposed to sound like. It's kind of silly actually. By the way Malos, out of curiousity, what dynamics have you tried? Apart from the Sony EX700s and my RE-1s, I've tried Yuins as well as Atrios. Most recently I've listened to the Beats Tours for a considerable amount of time. Thought the Beats Tours aren't super dynamics, they are pretty good for their price tag, they make compromises but the compromises are much less compared to similarly priced BA phones (all based on MSRP). With regards to your last statement. Yes you can tune BAs to have the boost in mids and lows BUT that's where I've pointed out numerous times already, that's where the compromise lies. [size=medium]This boost sacrifices the highs because I'm pretty sure they've used dampening to give the sound a smoother feel.[/size] That's done because BAs are unable to give that full warm sound that a pair of good dynamics can give. The compromises being made for BA is noticeably more than compromises used for good dynamic EARphones. You can basically have more of both warmth AND detail with dynamics while BAs I still haven't found a pair that gets to that happy agreement. I haven't heard the Westone 3s yet so it may possibly be that the Westone 3s has finally reached that place of happy ears.

Ummmm. This is where multiple drivers excel.

 

[dookiex]

They don't excel, that's the point votlag3. There's a compromise made and it's noticeable. This includes your beloved SE530s. Again, Westone 3s may have overcome that but I haven't had a chance to try those out yet. My sights are set on IE8s

 

[VoLTaG3]

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Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif They don't excel, that's the point votlag3. There's a compromise made and it's noticeable. This includes your beloved SE530s. Again, Westone 3s may have overcome that but I haven't had a chance to try those out yet. My sights are set on IE8s

How doesn't it excel?

 

[40760]

The IE8s are great. The bigger bass and airiness got into my ears for awhile. But at the end that was about it and I went back to my SE530s. I don't see how inferior the SE530s are. Even a hybrid of BA and Dynamics have their fair share of flaws.

 

[MaloS]

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Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif ...

Okay I just went back and found your list. It is missing: Westone 3, Klipsch X10. I am not going to talk about Westone 3 because otherwise someone will slap me. X10 is a single driver IEM so it does suffer from limited bandwidth (caps out at 10 khz), but what it does below that range puts up an argument against BA's inability to be warm and clear. You DO need a dedicated high frequency driver though (that's what newer Westones resolve...argh, afraid of getting slapped).

I am not focusing on IEM's as far as dynamics go - I have heard almost every single dynamic headphone that is worth mentioning out there. I think that should be sufficient point here...

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Lastly, the compromises being made for BA is noticeably more than compromises used for good dynamic EARphones. You can basically have more of both warmth AND detail with dynamics while BAs I still haven't found a pair that gets to that happy agreement. I haven't heard the Westone 3s yet so it may possibly be that the Westone 3s has finally reached that place of happy ears.

I highly doubt you can have the potential detail/resolution of BA's with a dynamic earphone. You can get close, but just as no full-size dynamic driver will match quality planar driver for resolution, we have an inherent gap in technology here. The line becomes finer and most people lose the ability to notice (or care).



I think you should try an ES2 or ES3X. I bet it will blow your mind.

 

[oarnura]

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Originally Posted by shigzeo /img/forum/go_quote.gif just for dookiex and ounara, if i remember correctly, the first custom ever was the dynamic from futuresonics. most companies use ba as they can be bought from the same shop and tweaked easily. a dynamic takes longer to get right because not only the driver needs to be personally made, designed and de-faulted, the sound chamber needs to be tweaked to get the best sound from the phone. of course ba need this too but dynamics benefit more from a properly designed acoustic chamber as they drive much much more air and need a controlled environ. the fact that dynamics move more air makes them more natural while ba may in some cases be more neutral.

I disagree. Define natural. What is natural about headphones? and compare it to how humans hear sound from a real world instrument?

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but then what system is neutral? not headphones or speakers are usually neutral. as far as i have encountered neutrality in music occurs as infrequently as honesty in politics.

But when it occurs it is brilliant.

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audiophile neither means natural nor neutral: it means love of hi fidelity in music and if we had to pin a person to it: it would be a person who wants the best. of course that best is personal. so while you disagree with each others opinions, you are both correct.

Perhaps...this is why there a lot of snake oil in this hobby.

 

[MaloS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oarnura /img/forum/go_quote.gif Perhaps...this is why there a lot of snake oil in this hobby.

Good one. =)

 

[Nosoupforyou]

Oy, Voltage, what headphones are you getting next? Something with a totally different sound signature or similar to the 530's?