bazelio
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2015
- Posts
- 572
- Likes
- 115
Sorry to hear about the KGSS. Around 1 when I listened, Norah Jones' vocals were distinctly off center. But not mono.
First of all, it was nice to meet you all, Head-Fi and Massdrop folks alike. It seems my KGSSHV developed a channel imbalance (we isolated it to the HV by testing other phones and swapping the DAC’s channels), but it’s hopefully just a dislodged wire somewhere in the case. It seems clear that it was fine or close to it first thing in the morning and pretty much mono by the time I tore down my setup around 4 PM. If you listened through JRiver, you heard a bit of EQ; if through Spotify, then you heard the signal straight through, and I think most listened through Spotify.
I’ll just give a few shout outs to some good gear.
I really enjoyed Larry/ @Jazzfan’s modded HE-6’s. Tons of detail on these, though paired with a slightly hot treble. Texture and extension in the sub bass are top notch. Sound stage is wide open and expansive – some credit here is probably owed to the grill and pad mods. A favorite test track of mine is James Blake’s version of Limit to Your Love. Toward the end, he brings in a pitched bass synth, and there are many ways to screw it up – overtly distort, fail to track the pitch properly, reproduce the bass but mess up the vocals and treble in the process… the HE-6 do none of these. You hear Blake’s voice, the electronic percussion, and you can track the bass riff’s pitch easily.
Other than that, @Bill-P ’s modded 800’s sounded pretty great, although they didn’t have much “synergy” with the Luxman P1 I heard them from. They’re definitely an improvement over stock, but I didn’t necessarily prefer them to the 800’s EQ’ed, and I’ll probably just keep EQ’ing my pair of 800s. With modding, you can fix problems, but you can also end up causing unintended changes. For those of you who don’t like EQ, try some mods. With the HD800S announced, the HD800 is a great value proposition. Actually, both the HE-6 and HD-800 (with mods) are some of the best values in high-end headphone audio.
I had a bunch of fun with @ichiboy ’s AD2000’s. I used to own a pair, and even though they aren’t that impressive in terms of technicalities (rolled off on both ends, not incredibly detailed), they have this lush, liquid, romantic midrange coloration. Ichiboy’s library is thankfully free of Krallcore, and weirdly-produced, low-fi, and otherwise not-audiophile recordings sounded great on the 2000’s. I generally prefer neutral headphones, and yet I’m a little tempted to try to snag a pair to complement my 650’s for worse recordings.
I’d actually never listened to a pair of PortaPros, so I did this time. And they’re pretty great too. They get tonality right, for the most part, though they’re a bit rolled off on both ends and have a warm midbass emphasis. Regardless, I’d take them over plenty of headphones that cost an order of magnitude more.
I’m regretting not having a chance to check out the ECBW or ECZD. Oh well.
Cheers, and see you all next time.