[streetdragon]

Quote:

This graph seems to contradict your opinion:

So that was what he meant by 'M's.
Well personally i found that the momentum had quite present treble, but not really that smooth and a small chance of sibilance. Also just because the treble is lower than the midarange, it doesn't mean that it will sound mellow. You see that in the treble region alone the treble goes upwards to a 10khz hill. Which may cause sibilance.
The HD600's treble region has an overall more even rolled off shape.

 

[jmsaxon69]

Quote:

So that was what he meant by 'M's.
Well personally i found that the momentum had quite present treble, but not really that smooth and a small chance of sibilance. Also just because the treble is lower than the midarange, it doesn't mean that it will sound mellow. You see that in the treble region alone the treble goes upwards to a 10khz hill. Which may cause sibilance.
The HD600's treble region has an overall more even rolled off shape.

 
I guess if you take the treble by itself and ignore the rest of the frequencies then yes, that could be the case, but the response of the HD600 could lead one to say there are 3 or 4 points in the response that could cause sibilance.  It's all relative to the overall response as far as a sonic signature goes.  One thing I'd like to know when people give their personal opinions on headphones is if they used any EQ at all when listening.   If someone is jacking the treble and then talking about sibilance, that's very misleading.  I listen completely flat all the time.  Just curious about how often people post about how a particular headphone sounds and THEY are altering the frequency response anyway? Not accusing any one of anything, just curious because it's amazing how many times I read reviews and comments about products I own that are not even close to my experience/opinion. 

 

[streetdragon]

Quote:

 
I guess if you take the treble by itself and ignore the rest of the frequencies then yes, that could be the case, but the response of the HD600 could lead one to say there are 3 or 4 points in the response that could cause sibilance.  It's all relative to the overall response as far as a sonic signature goes.  One thing I'd like to know when people give their personal opinions on headphones is if they used any EQ at all when listening.   If someone is jacking the treble and then talking about sibilance, that's very misleading.  I listen completely flat all the time.  Just curious about how often people post about how a particular headphone sounds and THEY are altering the frequency response anyway? Not accusing any one of anything, just curious because it's amazing how many times I read reviews and comments about products I own that are not even close to my experience/opinion. 

We all hear quite differently coming from different headphone backgrounds. Also the momentums seem to have an unusually high variance in opinion around here. Some calling it boomy while others call it nice and flat. That's why the best way to know a headphone well is to actually audition a pair ourselves.
The spikes at the HD600 are not too high and are not at where sibilance occurs. (the 8khz spike is much lower than the 3khz one)
For normal use i normally use the eq but for auditioning purposes i switch it off to get a fair observation of course.
Also cause i use the eq i can pretty much imagine what the graph would translate to actual listening experience.

 

[jmsaxon69]

Quote:

....For normal use i normally use the eq but for auditioning purposes i switch it off to get a fair observation of course.
Also cause i use the eq i can pretty much imagine what the graph would translate to actual listening experience.

 
No offense but here is where you lose all credibility to me, don't mean to sound like a jerk, but it's the truth...

 

[streetdragon]

Quote:

 
No offense but here is where you lose all credibility to me, don't mean to sound like a jerk, but it's the truth...

But didn't i state that i switch it off to test? Also I don't own it so i have not used an eq on it before so i have a clean slate to start with.

 

[egokun]

So that was what he meant by 'M's.

Well personally i found that the momentum had quite present treble, but not really that smooth and a small chance of sibilance. Also just because the treble is lower than the midarange, it doesn't mean that it will sound mellow. You see that in the treble region alone the treble goes upwards to a 10khz hill. Which may cause sibilance.

This is close to my impressions. The Momentum can border on sibilance, but it's not intrinsecally sibilant as the HD25/Amperior. So you'll get sibilance with tracks that are already prone to sibilance, but in all other cases, the Momentum isn't offensive. Also, to get that tendency to sibilance you have to take it to high volumes.

The Momentum isn't exactly smooth, but not shrill, either.

 

[jmsaxon69]

Quote:

....So you'll get sibilance with tracks that are already prone to sibilance, but in all other cases, the Momentum isn't offensive. Also, to get that tendency to sibilance you have to take it to high volumes.

The Momentum isn't exactly smooth, but not shrill, either.

So if the recording is sibilant and the Momentum gives an accurate representation of the recording this is a bad thing and a reason to label the headphone as sibilant? I don't understand this logic...
 
Also, listening loudly causes some issue? No kidding?   I'm stunned...

 

[streetdragon]

Not saying the momentum is sibilant. Just stating the it is more likely to see sibilance in the momentum compared to the hd600 on hot mastered tracks.

 

[jmsaxon69]

Quote:

Not saying the momentum is sibilant. Just stating the it is more likely to see sibilance in the momentum compared to the hd600 on hot mastered tracks.

Gotcha, I haven't heard HD600 is YEARS! I can't even comment on them...
 
I now have HD650 or HD700 on my radar instead of the Grado RS1i/RS2i

 

[egokun]

So if the recording is sibilant and the Momentum gives an accurate representation of the recording this is a bad thing and a reason to label the headphone as sibilant? I don't understand this logic...

Also, listening loudly causes some issue? No kidding?   I'm stunned...

Sorry, I don't understand the sarcasm.

Please tell me where I wrote that the Momentum is sibilant, or that an accurate reproduction is a bad thing. I'll be... stunned if you can find the passage.

The Momentum is actually my current top candidate for a do-it-all portable, so I don't get where your comment comes from.

 

[jmsaxon69]

Quote:

Sorry, I don't understand the sarcasm.

Please tell me where I wrote that the Momentum is sibilant, or that an accurate reproduction is a bad thing. I'll be... stunned if you can find the passage.

The Momentum is actually my current top candidate for a do-it-all portable, so I don't get where your comment comes from.

I'm sorry I must have read what you wrote incorrectly.  Let me know what you think if you end up buying a pair!

 

[plakat]

Quote:

Also the momentums seem to have an unusually high variance in opinion around here. Some calling it boomy while others call it nice and flat. 

 
I still think that this wide array of impressions has something to do with the fact that some people can fit their ears within the pads while some use them on-ear. I was in the latter category and found them rather boomy with too much mid-bass and too rolled off treble...

 

[musiclife]

Quote:

This graph seems to contradict your opinion:

You know that a piano and a guitar can play exactly the same music, at the same frequency ? So how do we differientate each other ? By the harmonics. That's why a frequency response graph like this cannot show the whole picture, since it only gives us the "first answer" of the headphone, and not the following "colours" or harmonics.

 

[koolas]

You know that a piano and a guitar can play exactly the same music, at the same frequency ? So how do we differientate each other ? By the harmonics. That's why a frequency response graph like this cannot show the whole picture, since it only gives us the "first answer" of the headphone, and not the following "colours" or harmonics.

It really depends on how these graphs are prepared. The proper way of testing frequency response would be to tell for each input frequency what the spectrum looks like.
A graph similar to Foobar's spectrogram (on log scale off course). The graphs that are shown on headphone.com most likely only show how loud the headphone was when input given frequency was provided. However it doesn't tell you what was the actual frequency at which headphones responded. You would be surrised, but when input frequency is in range 50-150 hertz some headphones may respond with 100Hz and nothing else. The effect that causes that is called intermodulation. he best is to look at square wave response, which for M's is almost same as LCD's (bravo senn!!!) and to look at THD, which tells you how the spectrum looks like for 1kHz sine-wave. However you would like to know how the spectrum looks for every possible frequency from 30Hz to 18kHz (your ears most likely don't care about other f's). The only way to show that one one picture is spectrogram of monotonically increasing frequency.

BTW. Using EQ doesn't make anyone jerk, unlike calling someone one. I also use EQ, compressor, B&T, crossfeed etc. All these are digial processing methods, that have a reason to be used. There is an Audiophile type application for Linux called Aqualung. It actually has three (not sure if three or how many) compressor settings. One of them is no compressor, and you use that at your home in ideally silent environment, but then there are also few others that are fully justified. The good thing is when record it-self was not altered (compressed etc - vinyl rulez), and when your analogue part (including amp, headphones and DAC as well) have accurate response for all frequencies in audible range. In such case your setup should nicely respond to even +/-0.5 dB changes! For example on Momentums you can have brain burning bass by gaining it not more than +6dB, and +3dB is already very strong. So basically before you judge, first think.

BTW. Before you call some setup reference, invite some friend to play real piano or cello in front of you and see how it compares.

 

[jmsaxon69]

I completely understand that these graphs don't tell the whole story which is why i wrote this a few posts back:

"....the Sennies have a very nice curve in the bass region in comparison, more low bass than the Grados, it's a lot more linear, but I know that doesn't tell the whole story so I am going to check it out."

In the case of the graph I showed it was to show the balance of the frequency response.