[Brooko]

Quote:

As above ^

 
OK - I no longer have the 250ohm DT880 or the Q701 - so I can't compare.  As you'll note - I was talking about the 600ohm - and I think I've already established how they sound to my ears - with the graphs to back it up also.
 
Anyway - it's an interesting discussion - but there is no definite here .......
 
As I already suggested, I think It depends on
- version of DT880 (IF graphs are accurate - big IF)
- music you are listening to (emphasis on lower bass or mid-bass)
- how you volume matched the two cans.

 

[Evshrug]

Is there another way to volume match headphones besides using a microphone?

 

[Chris J]

Please look at the difference between 600ohm dt880 and 250ohm dt880. The Q701 most definitely has more bass than my 250ohm dt880. It's not night and day but it is noticable.

The reason the Q701's come out sounding louder in the high frequency compared to the 880's frequency curve is because of your ears. 701's have a EQ bump in the upper mid range where your ears are pretty sensitive to sound. The 880's are louder at the upper frequencies where your ear is less sensitive.

Listen to 2 phones that for sake of argument are perfectly flat. One with a bump at 2khz and one with a bump at 12khz and the 2khz ones will sound brighter and more detailed even though it's not at as high a frequency.


Here take a look at this graph to see what i mean about the bass.




According to measurements, the Q701 are 4 to 5db LOUDER from 800 to 20hz than the DT880 250ohm that I own. Notice the 600ohm DT880 has a similar curve but about 3-4db more bass than the 250ohm DT880.


I own 250ohm DT880 and Q701 and what I hear when I compare them, holds up in the measurements, Q701 has more bass than my dt880, right down to 20hz.

And do you see that little hump at 2khz in the green line? That's why the Q701's sound brighter and more detailed than the 880 and why their midrange is so applauded. Your ears are far more sensitive to 2khz than to 10khz

You are putting way too much emphasis on one single parameter: Amplitude response.

I haven't looked at square wave and impulse responses of these two phones for a while, but there may be some clues in those graphs. Or the waterfall charts. We may just be reacting to high frequency resonances in the Q701.

How many times have you heard two different loudspeakers which sound completely different but appear to have almost identical amplitude responses?

Please keep in mind I can only comment on the samples I own. With your samples, YMMV.

 

[Evshrug]

How does one read square charts? What is the "target" and how does a shape relate to the sound?

 

[Kodhifi]

I'm basing my opinion on owning both 880 and 701, it just happens that the frequency response echos my observations.
 
The main difference between 250 and 600 ohm 880's I think is the fact that ohm value changes with frequency and from the look of it, the 600 ohms are nearly identical down to 1khz, but then the impedance starts to change more from the 250 which results in more bass. If you look at the top frequencies, they almost perfectly mirror each other.
 
 
 
I agree that looking at frequency charts does little to help you understand how something actually sounds. I have the V6 for instance and the graph shows me it should be a bloated bassy mess with no highs, but in practice they sound great and don't seem much more than slightly veiled in the high end and the bass is playful but not overpowering.
 
 
the fact is that I run both the Q701 and DT880 with about 4db of boost from 20-60hz because to my ears it sounds better. The only exception is classical, jazz, or when I'm mixing music, in which case no EQ is the best.
 
I'm not sure how others read square charts but what I look for is how closely it resembles a square, how long does it take it to render it.
 
The faster a driver the sharper the peaks. The tighter a driver is wound the shorter the peak.

 

[Nion]

Quote:

I'm basing my opinion on owning both 880 and 701, it just happens that the frequency response echos my observations.
 
The main difference between 250 and 600 ohm 880's I think is the fact that ohm value changes with frequency and from the look of it, the 600 ohms are nearly identical down to 1khz, but then the impedance starts to change more from the 250 which results in more bass. If you look at the top frequencies, they almost perfectly mirror each other.
 
 
 
I agree that looking at frequency charts does little to help you understand how something actually sounds. I have the V6 for instance and the graph shows me it should be a bloated bassy mess with no highs, but in practice they sound great and don't seem much more than slightly veiled in the high end and the bass is playful but not overpowering.
 
 
the fact is that I run both the Q701 and DT880 with about 4db of boost from 20-60hz because to my ears it sounds better. The only exception is classical, jazz, or when I'm mixing music, in which case no EQ is the best.

 
Do you think the textured low sub bass (extension) sound the same between dt880 250ohms and Q701?

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

How does one read square charts? What is the "target" and how does a shape relate to the sound?

 
Short answer is a perfect square wave response looks like a perfect square wave.
However, the response will never look perfect (in fact, it is impossible to generate a perfect square wave) as a perfect square wave response implies the headphone has bandwidth from DC to infinity.
Rise time will show you how much high frequency response the headphone has.
If you look at the top of the square wave you normally see some downward slope looking left to right, this gives you an idea how much low frequency response you have.
When I get more time I'll see if I can post some useful links.
 
This may be the most important thing:
If you see ringing, this is bad, more ringing  =  worse,  less ringing = better.

 

[Evshrug]

Thanks kodhifi,
In fact, I also have been enjoying that range/ dB bass boost lately (in the same situations) with the boost built into FiiO's new E12 amp, the Mont Blanc.

ChrisJ,
Thank you very much for the detailed response. I don't know what "ringing" looks like on the graph, would that be when the "plateau" of the square has a "U" bend to it? I was looking at the different headroom graphs for some of my headphones, trying to understand the relation to sound:

The ER-6i again looks the most "accurate," but I think it's curious that the AD700 is the cosine of most headphone's square graphs. Is that cosine significant?
The 500Hz graph looks like even more gibberish:

Again the AD700 is mirror to the other two shown (and most others I've tried, the Grado SR60 interestingly was in the middle), but the graph looks so much less like a "square" that, unlike a freq chart, I can't tell what it means.

They all seem to "peak" to a fast rise time about equally, so I guess that means similar high freq response, the right side/half of the "square" places the Q as holding onto bass response the strongest and most evenly, but that's not the same story in the 50Hz graph. Anyway, excuse me for putting you into teacher mode, but I am always fascinated by a mystery.

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

Thanks kodhifi,
In fact, I also have been enjoying that range/ dB bass boost lately (in the same situations) with the boost built into FiiO's new E12 amp, the Mont Blanc.

ChrisJ,
Thank you very much for the detailed response. I don't know what "ringing" looks like on the graph, would that be when the "plateau" of the square has a "U" bend to it? I was looking at the different headroom graphs for some of my headphones, trying to understand the relation to sound:

The ER-6i again looks the most "accurate," but I think it's curious that the AD700 is the cosine of most headphone's square graphs. Is that cosine significant?
The 500Hz graph looks like even more gibberish:

Again the AD700 is mirror to the other two shown (and most others I've tried, the Grado SR60 interestingly was in the middle), but the graph looks so much less like a "square" that, unlike a freq chart, I can't tell what it means.

They all seem to "peak" to a fast rise time about equally, so I guess that means similar high freq response, the right side/half of the "square" places the Q as holding onto bass response the strongest and most evenly, but that's not the same story in the 50Hz graph. Anyway, excuse me for putting you into teacher mode, but I am always fascinated by a mystery.

Ugh!
There are some things you just don't want to see!
 
The ringing is the high frequency noise on the plateaus of the 50 Hz square wave response, the U bend should look nice and clean.
Unfortunately they all ring a bit.
 
Don't worry about the ATH being "upside down".
 
Yes the 500 Hz looks like gibberish, but again, you are seeing ringing (or resonance) immediately after the peaks.

 

[Kodhifi]

Quote:

 
Do you think the textured low sub bass (extension) sound the same between dt880 250ohms and Q701?

It's hard to say. I don't usually listen to music with much sub bass and while I've listened to organ music on the q701, I haven't listened to it lately on the 880.
 
I did however use a frequency sweeper a few weeks back to see how low they could go and I found even at 15hz I could plainly hear/feel the bass. Both headphones could accurately give the effect of a rather large diesel engine vehicle idling outside of my house. Imagine being near a locomotive like a Dash 9 when it's idling and you know the kind of bass I'm talking about.
 
As far as texture, it's hard to gauge that with a simple sine sweep. Neither are boomy in the least, very tight, bass presents as a crisp whoop, double bass in jazz music sounds especially good with no EQ and on top of the bass it puts out, you can still clearly hear the percussive slap on some notes, that great bass click against the ebony board on a fretless.

 

[J Bones]

Quote:

How does one read square charts? What is the "target" and how does a shape relate to the sound?

 
In actually looking at the 50Hz square wave response between the 880's and Q's, there isn't a whole lot of a difference. 880's might have a little bit better response and control I suppose. Really it's just a way of looking at a range of  frequencies in one wave and where the cans really see a difference or extra emphasis in this frequency response.
 

 
This is a general way of summing up how to read both a 30 and 300 Hz square wave response (one covering bass ranges and the other covering the lower end of the midrange, I feel 50 and 500Hz might help a little better), all thanks to InnerFidelity.

 

[Kodhifi]

Quote:

 
In actually looking at the 50Hz square wave response between the 880's and Q's, there isn't a whole lot of a difference. 880's might have a little bit better response and control I suppose. Really it's just a way of looking at a range of  frequencies in one wave and where the cans really see a difference or extra emphasis in this frequency response.
 

 
This is a general way of summing up how to read both a 30 and 300 Hz square wave response (one covering bass ranges and the other covering the lower end of the midrange, I feel 50 and 500Hz might help a little better), all thanks to InnerFidelity.

I can confirm that the MDR-V600 do sound a lot like this predicts. When I bought them in 2000 they were the bomb. Compared to what I was listening to 10 years later they just bombed. I hadn't listened to them in 5 years due to the earpad material wearing off but I finally found a company in China that made replacements. I was surprised to find how bad they sounded to me now. Very colored, over midrange, several resonances, no real highs to speak of and lows only on bass heavy music.

 

[Evshrug]

J bones!
Fantastic find! Suddenly everything makes more sense...
So the AD700 suffers from ringing (now I know what it looks like, but does that sound like a slow treble decay? Or like "tinnitus," lol), and bass roll off (not much of a surprise). The Q has the least ringing of my 3, but overall the Ety's are the closest to ideal?

I'm going to use Inner Fidelity's chart you found in a future "article" in my journal thread! Do you mind if I just quote your post, so as to credit the person who found it for me (though Tyll made the chart I presume?)?
Thanks again!

 

[mobius5]

Just got my pair of Q701's the other day and I'm really liking them. I was also considering the HD 650's and DT990's but decided the Q701 was going to fit my tastes better, and I think I was right. (I didn't get a chance to listen to the 650's or 990's, so I can't compare. I did get to listen to a pair of HD 600's, but as they weren't amped I don't think it would be a fair comparison either).
 
 
I'm using a Schiit Magni to power my Q701 and the main strengths I see are:
- Separation & imaging
- Emphasis on instrument dynamics
- Presents music as it was mixed
 
You really get the feeling of texture on vocals and acoustic instruments, you can hear the physical striking of the notes or the slight changes in the singer's breath that really makes the sound come alive. The instruments seem to occupy their own spaces, and the way mixes are layered really comes through. If the lead guitar isn't emphasized in a mix, these headphones won't emphasize them, and so on with every other instrument. But at the same time it's very engaging to hear vocals, backup vocals, bass, and guitar all come in from different spots in a choreographed manner, like in The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun". I believe these characteristics are what lead people to call these headphones "analytical". If you are hoping for a set of sounds to gel as a cohesive whole, these don't quite do it.
 
I don't think the depth of the soundstage is as good as others claim it is. Maybe it's because I'm used to having large speakers and a subwoofer, or maybe the soundstage is great in comparison to other headphones, but in any case I think the depth is 'good' or 'very good', but not amazing.
 
I've also tried them on movies and I really appreciate how they bring dialogue to the front (chalk it up to the great separation and imaging).
 
As for bass, it really depends on the song. Some tracks have plenty (again, see 'Here Comes the Sun') while in others it's just part of the background. In any case, it's very tight, bordering on dry at times. In other words, if you really like bass with a presence that sets the stage for the rest of the song, these headphones probably won't cut it for you.
 
I listen to a lot of orchestrated soundtracks, hip-hop, R&B, as well as electronic music and acoustic performances; I think the Q701's strengths are just as good in each genre. Oh and I find them to be very comfortable, though I'm wondering how long it will take for the little cords that maintain tension on the headband to break.

 

[Evshrug]

I feel very similar to you mobius5, though one man's "analytical" distinctness of each instrument and spot on the stage is another Manns' believable reproduction of a performance I love realizing there is a backing vocal or revealed instrument that previously would've taken a lot of concentration to even notice on more "cohesive mix" sounding headphones, but that's just taste, doesn't change the fact that these are revealing headphones.

I also agree depth can sound a bit "off" sometimes... The famous (niche?) AD700 headphones has an expansive, round soundstage I quite enjoy, the Q701's upon first listen still have good soundstage but of a more "oval" shape. Adding an E12 helped me perceive the depth a bit more, and this tube amp –which I really hope makes it to market – makes the soundstage even and somehow simultaneously increases my perception of texture AND compels my feet to swing in time

One thing I'll add, there are times where the Q's just wear out my ears, my head hurts and I just can't take anymore. That seems to happen most when I'm tired, so...