[Mercuttio]

I have to agree with Zanth on this one. I like my ER4P a lot (it has become my main portable) but it is not the most natural sounding of headphones. I grew up with live music, I know how to play two brass instruments very well, and at one point I was a talented Tenor. I know what music is supposed to sound like, and I've been exposed to it for a very long time.

The ER4P does not have a natural "decay." Even the SA5000 has a little more than the ER4P. Thankfully, the ER4P is better sounding than the SA5000 in every other regard.

 

[robm321]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek Sorry, but that doesn't hold true with my experiences with live performances of all kinds and my comparisons of recorded performances using my fast headphones. And besides, even if it did, a headphone's job is to reproduce a recording, not a live situation, at least, that is my listening philosophy. And for that, a fast headphone is significantly more accurate. What about electronic music? If the headphone's decay is optimized for recreating a "live" sound, then the decay will be too slow for other types of music that don't need that added effect.

Well the performance is "live" whether it's in a recording studio or on stage. So...

 

[PiccoloNamek]

You know what I mean.

 

[Jahn]

Yep, borrowed Lan's SA5K for a bit, and didn't like em, just too darn quick! My friend's ER4P as well, tho I admit it might have been IEM aversion at play there. Same with the Qualia, ugh. Grados are about as fast as I'll want to go!

Senns are slow.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

I can't wait to hear just how slow they are.

 

[purk]

Quote:

Yep, borrowed Lan's SA5K for a bit, and didn't like em, just too darn quick! My friend's ER4P as well, tho I admit it might have been IEM aversion at play there. Same with the Qualia, ugh. Grados are about as fast as I'll want to go! Senns are slow.

Yep. I owned the SA5K very briefly and thought that they were too fast and too thin for my likings. Althoguh, I can see folks liking them for rock. I love the a sense of decay on the R10 and my L3000. Also, the Qualia is definitely a much better headphone to the SA5K if you manage to have a good fit.

 

[10068]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zanth Some would say yes, as are the Qualias. Many dislike these Sony's because of this thin sound which helps emphasize the quickness but kills natural body and decay.

I have not heard the ER4.

Just thought I would get that out of the way.

But, I agree with Zanth regarding the SA5000. That phone has some nice qualities, but for me personally, it makes music sound ghostly and unnatural. I listened to some metal and prog rock at Iron_Dreamer's place a year or two back (him, me and Jasper994). To make sure I wasn't imagining things, I listened to Dream Theater, which is in general pretty well-recorded, and I am VERY, very familiar with.

The instruments just sound "wrong", no other way to describe it. It's like listening to MP3 versus the CD.... all sorts of information is simply sliced out of the picture. The detail, speed, and bass tightness is amazing and the sound is very "clean", but nowhere near the full-bodied sound that I experience on a good speaker setup, and/or live music. YMMV

I can't imagine listening to classical, or even prog rock on a phone like that. All the "background" sound is gone, if that makes any sense. Reverberations, echo, trailing sounds from cymbal crashes, vocals, and acoustic instruments just isn't there.

 

[10068]

You should really have mentioned that these are lossy format. That makes just a small difference.

I'm hoping your opinions on these tracks were based on the CD itself, not a compressed/lossy representation of it.



Quote:

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek Check this out: http://www.sendspace.com/file/0spash /SNIPPED FOR LENGTH//

 

[mirumu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by facelvega But then again, it's not as it generations of microphone and recording technology haven't taken into account the fact that speakers of all kinds have a delayed decay, and that therefore the recording has to be mastered to accomodate this difference. So if the recording has to some tiny degree clipped off the decays, then the decay of the speakers would make up for this. Within this possibility there is room for a too-fast response.

I don't think it's that simple a process. Microphones do not pick out certain notes and apply changes to them, they react to changes in air pressure and will pick up any sound in range. If a microphone was more damped to have a faster decay to compensate for the end user's speakers, it would also make the microphone very nonreactive. You wouldn't be able to hear anything quiet and the decay would vary depending on what other sounds were being made nearby. In a studio and recording instruments individually you might get away with it to a degree but not all recordings are done this way. I think you'd find that material recorded with such a mic would sound very odd and unnatural with almost any headphones/speakers. Also in the pre-digital days, isolating a single note played by a single instrument from a signal and and shortening it's decay using only analogue electronics would be a nightmare. Guitar circuits do play with the decay but they are operating on a pure signal without having to care about other instruments.

Certainly though if the decay was somehow lesser in the recording you'd want something to try and make it up at the other end of the process. I just don't see how this could have been done before digital post processing.

 

[mirumu]

It appears to me that we are not all on the same page here. I have never heard the Etys or SA5000 personally, I'm coming more from the electrostatic perspective and I don't like thin sound at all. It seems when some people are talking about "fast" they are meaning the actual reaction time of the driver (That's certainly what I'm talking about) and others are talking about psychoacoustic effects due to the frequency response of the driver. That's all fine and good but it's no surprise it's somewhat confusing if we're all using the same term to mean different things.

 

[mulveling]

I can't see how the speed itself can be a problem - thin sound, scooped out midrange, spitty & harsh treble - now those are problems. The Qualias, when well fitted (big conditional), are not thin or harsh. I find they have great bass, smooth as silk, are incredibly musical, and work extremely well with many genres (including classical, pop, & rock). Their speed is nothing but an asset, IMO.

The SA3K I heard were awful because of their ridiculous sonic flaws; not their speed.

 

[spike33]

I think our definition of fast is different. When I think of fast, I think of high resolution, being able to easily hear every note even when a complex passage is played, such is the case with HD650. Some people refer to HD650 as slow because it has a decay with each note. Some refer to SA5k as fast because it has a scooped up lower mids/midbass so it has almost no decay at all, which is imo unnatural.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

My definition of "fast" is how quickly the driver changes in response to the signal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel Pumphrey I will also say that accuracy is essential, musicality cannot exist without accuracy. When I listen to a low note from a pipe organ, the proper Musical response from the headphone will be a note reproduced exactly when it appeared at the output of the amp, or to be more exact, the beginning of the headphone cable. No lag time is acceptable. When the note stops, the headphone must stop vibrating and not continue. This is essential for musicality to apply. The other aspect of Musicality I think is important is that the previously mentioned note from the pipe organ must be reproduced with the proper harmonic content and tone without peaks and dips being present. Often when listening to other phones (other than the ER4) I have a different result with the same given note from a pipe organ. There is a slow "note on" as musicians identify it, or a lag in the response time as others identify it. This lag is also continued for the upcoming note-off event. This lag time does not create "Musical" warmth to me, quite the contrary, it actually produces a blurred note. Along with this blurred note comes the other problem which is extra emphasis on bass notes. By this I mean the bass notes are represented louder than other notes in the audio spectrum. The final purely non-musical event which some of these so called HIFI phones often produce with low notes is a reaction from the enclosure at certain peaks, which result in not only an overloud blurred note, but also a very non musical rattle in combination with this note. This rattle is NOT distortion from the amp which has plenty of current and power to drive the phone.

 

[reivaj]

so grados are fast?

 

[mulveling]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek My definition of "fast" is how quickly the driver changes in response to the signal.

The question then becomes: what is the manifestation of that attribute in musical terms? For this, I would have to agree with spike33's viewpoint. One could also argue that micro-dynamics and imaging are heavily influenced by driver speed (all of which the Qualias excel at, coincidentally). At the risk of stirring up something, I haven't ever thought any of the Grados to be "fast" (though they do have good microdynamics). The high-end AT's are faster, and the uber Sonys (R10, Qualia) are faster still.