FLTWS
Headphoneus Supremus
My listening is at least 95 percent classical, and big, overblown, Late Romantic and Twentieth century symphonies are my meat and potatoes, although I like to listen to chamber and solo music for variety and a change of pace and to cleanse the little gray cells. The SR1a ferrets out the finest inner detailing with any type of music like no other HP I've heard (I haven't owned Stax since the 80's) and that gives me a greater sense of what I know to be true in the concert hall when I go live which I've been doing often for 5 decades. Along with all that detail comes the reveal of poorly recorded music (of any genre) which actually sounds better to me on less capable reproduction gear. But, depending on SQ of the recording including those that capture the bottom end satisfactorily from my perspective, the SR1a still doesn't deliver that sense of air pressure in the bottom octave with instruments like bass drum, tympani, and other instruments that go low. So I use a little Loki to assist, but still its not the same as live. You just can't reproduce the dynamic range of 100 musicians filling a large concert hall volume of space in a living room sized volume of air with speakers and electronics let alone inside a small HP ear cup. Or the popular genres performed in large halls with stacks of amplified speakers.
There is a difference between "loud" and "dynamic range", and live and canned are two different listening experiences to me. The rock oriented concerts I've attended over the years and rock oriented groups I like listening to canned (and I do like complex electric guitar playing) are about a steady stream of a sound at a fixed volume level . With symphonic, or chamber for that matter, music it is often about the difference between the softest sounds and the loudest sounds (and all the gradients in between the two extremes) and those loudest passages are generally very brief peaks by comparison with the average level of loudness. I think I listen at moderate levels compared to most people because of that. I find trying to push any HP to true concert hall dynamic range impossible so I don't. The smaller the ensemble the easier I find it to suspend belief that its not canned because it's so much easier to capture a Beethoven string quartet than a Mahler symphony.
I owned the large Carver "Amazing" MK IV ribbons as my last speaker system in my dedicated listening room before downsizing in planning for retirement and had been wondering since early 2016 when I got into hi-er-fi HP's why someone hadn't attempted using a ribbon in a HP for home use, and RAAL finally took care of that for me. But ribbons do have there excursion limits and the Carver's came with 4 x 12" woofers per side in an open baffle design driven by small but fast magnet structures crossed over at 100Hz to the 6' ribbons. The sound in my dedicated listening room was "Amazing" for reproduced sound be it Classical or Jazz or Rock oriented genres, and not just about revealing detail and tonality and wide frequency response, but dynamic range as well. Best I've ever owned.
All of my acquaintances are into more popular genres of music (and certainly not into high end gear) and they generally prefer a lot more bass oomph all the time and the sound to my ears generally comes across as very compressed in dynamic range. It's a pretty steady stream of music at the same level of loudness. It's easy for me to understand my friends preference for speakers, HP's or ear pods that have a much more present bass range. No one size fits all, you've got to figure out what works best for you with your music.
But, I am intrigued by the possibility of a closed or open backed, around the ear, HP from RAAL with their ribbon technology.
In my personal opinion the intrinsic nature of the sound characteristics of any transducer can only be very modestly influenced by choice of electronics, but for those of us constantly questing for the sound we want to re-create its a part of the whole experience of being an audiophile.
There is a difference between "loud" and "dynamic range", and live and canned are two different listening experiences to me. The rock oriented concerts I've attended over the years and rock oriented groups I like listening to canned (and I do like complex electric guitar playing) are about a steady stream of a sound at a fixed volume level . With symphonic, or chamber for that matter, music it is often about the difference between the softest sounds and the loudest sounds (and all the gradients in between the two extremes) and those loudest passages are generally very brief peaks by comparison with the average level of loudness. I think I listen at moderate levels compared to most people because of that. I find trying to push any HP to true concert hall dynamic range impossible so I don't. The smaller the ensemble the easier I find it to suspend belief that its not canned because it's so much easier to capture a Beethoven string quartet than a Mahler symphony.
I owned the large Carver "Amazing" MK IV ribbons as my last speaker system in my dedicated listening room before downsizing in planning for retirement and had been wondering since early 2016 when I got into hi-er-fi HP's why someone hadn't attempted using a ribbon in a HP for home use, and RAAL finally took care of that for me. But ribbons do have there excursion limits and the Carver's came with 4 x 12" woofers per side in an open baffle design driven by small but fast magnet structures crossed over at 100Hz to the 6' ribbons. The sound in my dedicated listening room was "Amazing" for reproduced sound be it Classical or Jazz or Rock oriented genres, and not just about revealing detail and tonality and wide frequency response, but dynamic range as well. Best I've ever owned.
All of my acquaintances are into more popular genres of music (and certainly not into high end gear) and they generally prefer a lot more bass oomph all the time and the sound to my ears generally comes across as very compressed in dynamic range. It's a pretty steady stream of music at the same level of loudness. It's easy for me to understand my friends preference for speakers, HP's or ear pods that have a much more present bass range. No one size fits all, you've got to figure out what works best for you with your music.
But, I am intrigued by the possibility of a closed or open backed, around the ear, HP from RAAL with their ribbon technology.
In my personal opinion the intrinsic nature of the sound characteristics of any transducer can only be very modestly influenced by choice of electronics, but for those of us constantly questing for the sound we want to re-create its a part of the whole experience of being an audiophile.
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