[SP Wild]

 
Quote:

I hear ya... but you guys are not giving me a straight answer to my question i'm afraid.    i am too by the way,prefer more neutral sound lately and i am enjoying my ety's hf5 very much.  in fact, i think that they are currently my best sounding headphones in terms of balanced sound.
 
anyway..what i was trying to say/ask is this:    why are some high level audiophile headphones (like the hd650/600) can't produce some deep bass notes?    this is absurd if you are asking me.     imo every high level audiophile can's should be capable of reproducing all the frequencies hearable by our human ears (and maybe beyond).    and those who can't,shouldn't be called audiophile cans.    
 
can you guys please give some examples from your experience about different headphones' bass response?    did you ever encounter a headphone that  was incapable of revealing some very deep bass notes?

 
So far, only the LCD2s can accomplish what it is that you ask.
 

 

[SP Wild]

 
Quote:

Evolution? I don't think bass is naturally sounding at all, certainly not in the grand scale of human evolution. Music is a byproduct of other adaptations, perhaps our sensitivity to speech; a harmonically rich sound that the brain has to analyze into it's frequency components in order to understand speech. Perhaps a byproduct of emotional calls that go way back in primate evolutionary history; sighs, moans, laughs, crys and so on. Possibly a byproduct of motor control; keeping your bodily actions at a constant optimal rhythm. Maybe what music does is combine bits and pieces of all these other parts of the brain, packs them into a super normal stimulus, something that actually presses our buttons harder than anything in the natural environment would and we enjoy it.
 
In order to analyze speech the brain has to have certain mechanisms for taking frequencies and analyzing harmonics. These same brain mechanisms can't help but being super normally stimulated, bass is only a very small part of it. I can't tell you to learn to enjoy the music however given time, age perhaps, you will.

 
Trust me...animals retain the evolutionary scarring that big bass delivered.  You know nothing about me, I do know you hate bass.
 
Orchestral works contain big bass...when it does, you respect.  Or run and hide like the evolutionary scarred animals.
 

 

[Deep Funk]

Studio headphones? At the Head-Fi meet in Berlin I gave the HD600 a listen, bass was good enough to enjoy. Still, if I can find a studio headphone that lets you hear what was recorded including the deepest low range sounds and details I vastly prefer that. 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I shall celebrate the day treble heads are made to hang their heads in shame as bassheads are made to in this time.  Treble heads that care little about music will love some of the ear damaging treble that some cans crap out.

Seriously, why is it that most anything that's relatively flat past 60hz derided as bass heavy, bloated, and uncivilized?  Elevated treble will change the tone of an instrument in much the same manner, but receives little criticism, and often praise instead.  I'm not saying either side is right.  They are both personal opinion and preference.  They can't be right or wrong.  Why are the bass heads considered the barbarians at the gates?  I don't tell people who prefer the opposite tonal balance that they "care little about the music".  By that logic we should all be listening to stereo typical dead flat, 'clinical', and 'lifeless' monitor units unless we "care little about the music".
 
Look at how similar these FR curves are.
 

 
Since nearly $1200 separate the street prices of these 'phones lets ignore the quality of the sound  just focus on the quantity since it would be rather unfair to do otherwise.  With such small differences in the FR, what yields such a different tonal balance between the HD800s and the D2000s?  The difference is in the slope of the curves.  The HD800s have more mid and upper bass than the D2000s but gently falls off below about 150hz.  The D2000s slope in the opposite direction with more low bass and less mid and upper bass quickly falling off after 30hz, which is lower than a lot of music goes.  I find this to be a good thing for two reasons.  First, as the sensitivity of your hearing drops off, it makes sense for response to rise - especially if you don't listen at ear bleeding volumes.  The second is that bass is as much felt as it is heard.  Speakers (and live music) produce enough bass to be felt by the whole body, while headphones do not.  In order to approximate the same overall perception (not just the sound) an elevation of the bass response is necessary.  This does make a compromise in the sound to enhance the feeling.  It is a necessary compromise in headphone audio.
 
Some people prefer to give the sound nearly 100% while others prefer the feeling to the same extant.  Generally I'm somewhere in the middle, but it depends on what type of music I'm listening to.  What are different headphones for after all?  Since its impossible to make a headphone that does both perfectly, a compromise must be made somewhere, and its placement falls to preference.  Both are a legitimate part of the music and neither side can be really be said to correct or neutral since the full experience requires both in equal measure which is not possible given current headphone technology.

 

[SP Wild]

Just let your natural body defenses guide you.  For me...the D7000 will eventually fatigue me with excessive bass, the HD800s will eventually fatigue me with treble (at reasonable volume levels).  Some cans do not seem to give me as much fatigue and I am able to listen to them louder and for longer.  Just listen to you body when it gets uncomfortable...it is indicating to you that it has reached its limit to exposure of a certain stimuli...and warning you to remove the stimuli before permanent damage occurs.

 

[smeggy]

The simple fact is that most phones have a significant falloff below 50Hz and a significant hump in the mid to upper bass. There are very few that don't suffer either of these problems. They might still sound nice but a flat mid bass and an extended and strong low bass are very desirable traits in my book. It's not a case of being a bass head, more that phones should be able to reproduce these notes with full depth and force. For whatever reason, probably 99.9% of all headphones cannot reach the sub-bass with anything like full force and even some that can often sound bloated due to lack of control.

It's just a sad fact.

 

[Ashirgo]

 
Quote:

Evolution? I don't think bass is naturally sounding at all, certainly not in the grand scale of human evolution. Music is a byproduct of other adaptations, perhaps our sensitivity to speech; a harmonically rich sound that the brain has to analyze into it's frequency components in order to understand speech. Perhaps a byproduct of emotional calls that go way back in primate evolutionary history; sighs, moans, laughs, crys and so on. Possibly a byproduct of motor control; keeping your bodily actions at a constant optimal rhythm. Maybe what music does is combine bits and pieces of all these other parts of the brain, packs them into a super normal stimulus, something that actually presses our buttons harder than anything in the natural environment would and we enjoy it.
 
In order to analyze speech the brain has to have certain mechanisms for taking frequencies and analyzing harmonics. These same brain mechanisms can't help but being super normally stimulated, bass is only a very small part of it. I can't tell you to learn to enjoy the music however given time, age perhaps, you will.

Actually things get a little bit less or more subtle here (depending on your perspective). My source tells me that we developed acute hearing to respond to environment cues when hunting or running away. So hearing helped us a lot in surviving. An interesting side note is that one of the few things we never get used to (learn to ignore, habituate) is noise.  Speech is a very strong adaptation, possible only in combination with hearing, but it came second.
 

 

[Graphicism]

I hear ya... but you guys are not giving me a straight answer to my question i'm afraid.    i am too by the way,prefer more neutral sound lately and i am enjoying my ety's hf5 very much.  in fact, i think that they are currently my best sounding headphones in terms of balanced sound.
 
anyway..what i was trying to say/ask is this:    why are some high level audiophile headphones (like the hd650/600) can't produce some deep bass notes?    this is absurd if you are asking me.     imo every high level audiophile can's should be capable of reproducing all the frequencies hearable by our human ears (and maybe beyond).    and those who can't,shouldn't be called audiophile cans.    
 
can you guys please give some examples from your experience about different headphones' bass response?    did you ever encounter a headphone that  was incapable of revealing some very deep bass notes?

The problem is the HD600/650 will produce the deep bass notes just not at the thumping level you demand. I do understand where your coming from, perhaps you haven't found your perfect headphone, perhaps it hasn't been made yet. Technology what it is we will see future advancements, I've talked previously about headphones that could replicate an orchestral hall to the point where you close your eyes and feel like you're there. Likewise I think we will see a bass rich phone that isn't muddy and only strikes when it's called for, staying hidden when listening to acoustic and coming alive in electronica and such. I also think the frequency range is a big marketing lie, if we humans can here roughly 20-20 why do some headphones seem to extend further than others. In the reality of things there probably isn't a headphone that can produce a true solid 20Hz tone but now I'm wondering into trolling territory... anyway I'm sure you get my point. Looping back to my original post, if bass is more important to you than the rest of the music then continue enjoying your Denons, if it gets too much as it did for me find something else.

 

[Graphicism]

Quote:

Actually things get a little bit less or more subtle here (depending on your perspective). My source tells me that we developed acute hearing to respond to environment cues when hunting or running away. So hearing helped us a lot in surviving. An interesting side note is that one of the few things we never get used to (learn to ignore, habituate) is noise.  Speech is a very strong adaptation, possible only in combination with hearing, but it came second.
 

Yes I'm sure survival would be a main reason to develop a sense, perhaps those species like us that did not evolve disappeared quickly. I think you can learn to ignore noise, from the noisy air conditioning unit in the apartment to your alarm clock in the morning... if I understood you correctly?

 

[Ashirgo]

Quote:

Yes I'm sure survival would be a main reason to develop a sense, perhaps those species like us that did not evolve disappeared quickly. I think you can learn to ignore noise, from the noisy air conditioning unit in the apartment to your alarm clock in the morning... if I understood you correctly?

Okay, it seems to be a problem of gradation... A loud noise, maybe? It makes people sick, to live in a noisy environment, for sure.

 

[plonter]

Quote:

The simple fact is that most phones have a significant falloff below 50Hz and a significant hump in the mid to upper bass. There are very few that don't suffer either of these problems. They might still sound nice but a flat mid bass and an extended and strong low bass are very desirable traits in my book. It's not a case of being a bass head, more that phones should be able to reproduce these notes with full depth and force. For whatever reason, probably 99.9% of all headphones cannot reach the sub-bass with anything like full force and even some that can often sound bloated due to lack of control.

It's just a sad fact.

thank you for the response.   so in order for headphones to get to the most lower regions ,they emphasize the whole bass frequency spectrum (including the midbass) so that a certain headphone could reach those frequencies...like with the D5000 and M50 for example.  I never measured their frequency response with numbers but i can hear for myself that they can reach very low.   I read people's comments about the M50 and the D5000 that said that they DO reach the 30-40 hrz frequencies without a problem. 
if someone who actually measured those headphones (or other bass heavy one) can chime in with some numbers it would be great.
 
by the way..does it say that the whole frequency response reported by the makers are simply lies?  if my grado RS1 can't output 20-30 hrz frequencies than they are definitely lying..but why are they doing this?

 

[maverickronin]

It would seem that it is rather difficult to create a dynamic driver with even sub bass response without jacking up the mid bass as well.  The denons use a ported design that allows them to reach fairly low and flat before the response falls through the floor.  Completely sealed models which achieve sub bass, such as the the DT770 32/80/250 and M50 can only seem to do so at the expense of greatly increased mid bass.
 
IEMs (dynamic of balanced armature) on the other hand can easily deliver low bass all the way down to DC.  In the case of BA at least, this deep bass response can be achieved without having to add mid bass bloat.  Unfortunately, IEMs can only deliver this bass to your ear canal so you do not feel it very much at all.

 

[plonter]

Quote:

It would seem that it is rather difficult to create a dynamic driver with even sub bass response without jacking up the mid bass as well.  The denons use a ported design that allows them to reach fairly low and flat before the response falls through the floor.  Completely sealed models which achieve sub bass, such as the the DT770 32/80/250 and M50 can only seem to do so at the expense of greatly increased mid bass.
 
IEMs (dynamic of balanced armature) on the other hand can easily deliver low bass all the way down to DC.  In the case of BA at least, this deep bass response can be achieved without having to add mid bass bloat.  Unfortunately, IEMs can only deliver this bass to your ear canal so you do not feel it very much at all.

yeah..you are right about iem's...i know because of my experience with the ety hf5. they sound dead flat to me and still digging very deep when it is on the music.

 

[smeggy]

there is a big difference between flat real deep bass and rolling off deep bass with a hump. On many good phones you can hear pretty low down, when you get into LCD2 territory which is flat to sub-bass, you notice it right away. It's similar to going from mid-sized speakers to large-sized ones. Given all else being similar, the bass on the big ones is going to be hugely more impressive in both depth and power. The smaller ones will let you hear what you might perceive as deep bass but it's very far from what a true full-range speaker can offer. Most phones offer mjd size speaker presentation and you never get that sense of sheer power and dynamics that an orchestra, for example, can put out. Achieving a flat and deep bass is apparently very difficult with phones.
 
Again, that's not to say they sound bad, just that you are not getting the full picture as presented by the recording, and that has nothing to do with bass-heads or otherwise. If it's in the recording and you can't extract it properly then you're missing out on an important piece of the recording.

 

[SP Wild]

Teenagers aren't wrong, they're just more connected to their primal beast (testosterone)...they go way over board on the bass.  So what do audiophiles do?  they run as far from that angle possible and seek the "air"....but little do they know - they've yet to establish greater maturity than teenagers for when it comes to balance...as all to often they go so far into "air"...they've no idea they've distorted the tonal signature of every acoustic and percussive instrument...yet this is called "uncolored" 
 
The truth is somewhere in the middle - it's generally accepted to be OK to go from top to bottom (HF to LF) when seeking audio perfection, for some reason seeking the perfect bottom is generally perceived as unnecessary?  Its very necessary...the beast inside told me so.  Not impressed by natures awesome bass huh?  that's perfectly understandable...a wild Lion when caged for long starts to look like a gentle ***** cat...this is normal.
 
Teenagers love bass...male teens love to drive too fast and kill themselves, start fights and behave erratically - its OK...its normal....its the call of the Wild.
 
To answers UE question...the moment the cost of watts fell so they are affordable by teenagers....the first thing they did was connect those watts to 18 in subwoofers to proclaim their alpha status....record companies obliged and the demand was there so they unleashed that primal bass as well.
 
When you older folks walk past teenagers, you might look to the ground....not me when I walk past teenagers, I make them look to the ground.  I listen to the wild everday.
 
I could imagine as a cave man...the sound of a thundering herd of grazers...with all that earth vibrating subbass, could only indicate one thing...DINNER!!!