Sony MDR-XB500 vs Sony MDR-XB700
May 26, 2011 at 4:08 PM Post #121 of 173


Quote:
Did you read my previous post and could you check/thinker if this is the case with you? I just want to confirm whether or not it's the pads deforming which is the cause. For me it was. The pad's upper edge became softer/thinner which led to the driver won't have the same direction/angle against the earchannel as when it was new and hence the change in bass. Doing the simple mod took care of it for me though and I can depending on how much I let the cups be angled alter the sound slightly, it does make a noticable difference in sound how the whole cup is pointed when it rests on your head.
 



Naaaa, the difference is so little. I can also hear that they are giving up gradually... Quite sad.
 
 
May 31, 2011 at 5:58 PM Post #122 of 173
Could someone tell me that, does the XB700 resist for more power than the XB500? The thing is that I might have blown my XB500's because of listening to it too loud. I sort of heard cracking when watching Tron: Legacy with them, but can't be because of bad quality since it was BluRay. They have also got a little less loud by the levels of sensitivity, or maybe I have damaged my own ears, if you know what I mean...
 
May 31, 2011 at 6:47 PM Post #124 of 173
Smuul> Do you have an onboard Realtek chip on your motherboard? If so try it out on that and no amp or anything and EQ and other plausible enhancements disabled and tell me what kind of volume setting you find "normal"/giving you the pleasurement you're looking for. :p
 
My mobo has an Realtek HD ALC889A chip. I'm normally using my Audigy 2 ZS but this is for comparision's sake.
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 6:41 AM Post #125 of 173
Quote:
Oh, your poor ears. :frowning2:



Actually I just realised that I can still hear my Z-5500's as loud and as bassy as I used to hear them, so the only option it's left is that XB500's didn't stand up to that high volume listening. Well that is a big relief :) I don't wanna lose my most important sense O.o  
 
 
Quote:
Smuul> Do you have an onboard Realtek chip on your motherboard? If so try it out on that and no amp or anything and EQ and other plausible enhancements disabled and tell me what kind of volume setting you find "normal"/giving you the pleasurement you're looking for. :p
 
My mobo has an Realtek HD ALC889A chip. I'm normally using my Audigy 2 ZS but this is for comparision's sake.


 
I do have it, but it makes so terrible sound. This one really crackles and is hard to use with headphones. I usually turned the volume up till I got into the middle of the word "Volume" on the Z5500 screen lol. But now I have to turn it even more up because I installed Windows 7 on my computer, this makes quite a lot lower sound. I guess it is because of the lack of support of the motherboard, quite crappy one. I noticed the lower sounding with my mobilephone. Usually it had lot of bass and overall sounding was very loud, but now it sounds about 15% quieter and almost half of the bass has gone somewhere. It is quite the same loud as it was after buying, while attached to my computer, but about 30% of the bass is gone too.
Still I would have wanted about 2 times more bass than they had when I bought them :/ In ideal it could be 5 times more bassy, but that's not possible from headphones, atleast I haven't heard any which could make such sound.

I think I should buy XB700's too, because I like sometimes to listen some more muddy and lower bass too :) Maybe those will stay longer alive. Also still I have this question, can it handle more power than XB500's? I just need something which has lots of bass and plays real loud. I'm not so big fan of the mids and the highs, as I also realised with XB500's. I'm a very big critic of bass, I know that I can't ever find the best headphones for me, but I try to find the most bassy headphones. I also still can hear very big difference between some headphones by their highs and mids. I like the wow effect, like in theatre or at a concert, which XB500's don't have, but I also have put aside them and tried to find some headphones with very loud and low bass.
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 7:20 AM Post #126 of 173
I know Realtek onboard is sounding crappy but I was interesting in hearing what kind of volume setting you'd use with it so I can compare on my comp with the onboard Realtek as well and tell if you're listening to safe or unsafe volume levels. :p
 
XB500 actually is more bassy than XB700, XB700 got similar or possibly slightly more very deep bass but has got significantly less mid/upper bass. The XB500 hits harder with more impact and is AFAIK the headphone with the biggest bass quantity and also extends more than fine (outputs down to like 10Hz with almost no roll-off at all and I personally only hear down to 15Hz). Next step for you if you're really that much of a spoilt basshead is to get a "ZO Personal Subwoofer" or an old Audigy soundcard, Audigy 2 ZS are the best choice of those and easiest to find but you'll have to buy 2nd hand. Just put up a WTB Audigy 2 ZS thread on this forums and some1 will probably respond very quickly and they should cost around $15 today which is like nothing and believe me you WILL GET ZOMG EARTHQUAKE in your head kind of bass that will literally tickle your ears from bassheavy notes if using the 3rd party drivers kX Audio and the very high quality hardware DSP EQ to it and it can boost frequencies up to like at least +36 which will make it sound like you'd be next door to a nightclub with almost only the bass audible and it won't even distort (depending on volume levels obviously) and sound like a VERY natural extension of what's already there and won't color the frequencies. I've tweaked the settings for my XB500 for like several months using the kX Audio 3rd party drivers for my Audigy 2 ZS and I also have two different EQ settings depending on my mood, one that brings subwoofer kind of bass output and another more balanced output, I let this graph show the EQ setting:
 

 
I'm sure you'd love my config for the XB500 using the kX Audio drivers and I wish others were able to hear it, there aren't any words that can explain how great it is, you just have to try it out to believe. Would love to get another person with the same setup. I've come from similar background as you and would crave more bass than headphones themselves would put out as I were replacing an old 5.1 comp speaker set with a strong sub so felt all headphones were all weak in the bass but using Audigy cards + kX Audio drivers and using the EQ fixed that completely.
 
 
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 9:34 AM Post #127 of 173
You've been talking about your set so much that I think I should really get it :p. Can the XB500's resist for +36 dB power up? I mean that, can I raise the bass up like this? Can I also raise the volume as usually just the bass is so much higher? Does it support fully Windows 7? The thing is that Windows 7 seems to be a bit quieter and weaker than XP. How much does your soundcard make the bass higher with kX drivers comparing to your Realtek crap ;D? Do the kX drivers also give them more power like some amplifier or it just has high quality equalizers?

I hope you don't mind to answer those questions. Anyway thanks for giving me advice, I think I'll do as you told me to get that soundcard, just doing some research to get know the thing better :)
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 10:08 AM Post #129 of 173
Q: Can the XB500's resist for +36 dB power up? 
A: Yes but you'll have to be VERY careful with the volume settings and trust me, you'll never gonna use +36 anyway unless you for some reason like that next-door club sound with bass notes heard through the walls and rest sounds muffled and very silent compared to the bass. It's like 90~95% bass and 5~10% rest of the range is heard, I doubt any1 would enjoy this kind of amount bass, even for a extreme basshead but it's there if you'd need it or need to make a very basslean headphone to bassheavy.
 
Also playing "full volume" with boost of +36 and chances are:
 
A) Your headphone drivers will blow
B) Your ears will blow
C) Bass is played like it would be a mini-sub
 
Q: Can I also raise the volume as usually just the bass is so much higher?
A: Yes, the EQ turns up the volume for specific frequencies and the volume sliders increase the volume for the whole range as usual.
 
Q: Does it support fully Windows 7?
A: There's some bugs present but it won't affect headphone use at least. The most noteworthy bug is with the "Master Mixer" output that cause pops/cracks or distortion every now and then and this output device is needed for multichannel (4.1/5.1/7.1) speaker setups to work properly so there's routed the correct sound to the correct speakers, with other outputs you only get true stereo output and may also simulate surround speaker setups but it's not done hardware-wise. The author hasn't given up on the drivers yet but development is going rather slow at this rate, the project is ~10 years old!
 
Q: How much does your soundcard make the bass higher with kX drivers comparing to your Realtek crap?
A: This one's hard, it has the capability of raising the bass say 20x, 30x compared to Realtek? Dunno :p More than any1 will ever need. The case with Realtek is that it's so weak so it doesn't have enough power to deliver the bass, especially with deep bass notes the rest of the range gets muted so the lows get all the power they need and it'll sound very annoying when you hear the vocals etc be a lot more silent when bass kicks in and then comes back to alive when bass is gone. With Audigy 2 ZS + kX Audio drivers this will never be the case, nothing ever gets "muted".
 
Q: Do the kX drivers also give them more power like some amplifier or it just has high quality equalizers?
A: No, you can't add more power in a software way, it always have to be done the hardware way but the thing is that the hardware EQ found within the drivers will be able to raise the volume of the lows (or mids or highs) until you get to the natural physical noise-to-signal ratio (SNR) which is 108dB on Audigy 2 ZS which is fairly decent even for today's standards (lower-medium cost soundcards). I believe the realtek onboard chips usually have SNR around 84~87dB or something like that so they will start distorting way sooner. Anyway VERY FEW EQs have the capability to boost the volume of the frequencies by a large amount without getting distortion/coloration of the frequencies (or it might be even so rare as it's a unique feature of this soundcard/drivers if we talk about +36 boosts to frequencies without getting very audible distortion even if we've taken into account the volume sliders have been lowered significantly but pre-amp hasn't).
 
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 10:30 AM Post #131 of 173


Quote:
 
 
Running a subwoofer isn't always practical if do not wish to disturb others.
 


Yea it's impossible for me and why I gave up speakers in first place. Lots of people would get suprised by how well Audigy cards with kX Audio drivers installed handles bass though, that's for sure, I wouldn't have believed it myself either. :D
 
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 11:03 AM Post #132 of 173
Thanks RPGWiZaRD :) The last question was actually "Does the soundcard...?", but I got the information what I needed. 20x, 30x of Realtek, like are you serious!? That's enough for me, haha :D. Also I would like to know in addition, does the Audigy 2 ZS have optical and coaxial option, would like to connect my Z5500 to it. I don't even know what to ask more. Trying first to find this card from Estonia, when don't get it here, then will start new thread here :)
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 12:09 PM Post #133 of 173
If you must have Z-5500 connected at the same time as the headphones so you won't be using the analog outputs then you would probably need the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum card with a front panel with additional inputs. But I'm not sure if the front panel will work with kX Audio drivers or not as I haven't paid attention to speaker use.
 

 
It also should work with the digital out though (seems to be a coaxial digital out) if using some kind of special cable or converters so you can connect it to the Z-5500. You seem to require Stereo mini jack -> RCA cable for that but after some reading it seems to only output sound in stereo (front speakers) so you'd need to plug it by analog to get the rear channels as well as sub and center too. So yea it should work with the Audigy 2 ZS (non-platinum) alone but you will need to have digital out, analog front (for the headphone), analog rear and analog center/sub inputs all connected for this so in total 4 cables connected to the card in that case if you wish to have both the headphones as well as the speakers connected to an Audigy 2 ZS (non-platinum). According to some people it does work though reading on some forums and this way it should also work with the kX drivers for sure.
 
Audigy 4 Pro also has a front panel with optical out/in and this would also have a bit better quality but it costs a little more too but the front panel looks quite useful IMO as you could easily use WASAPI plugin for foobar2000 and control the volume with the volume knob as without any amp/external dac or whatever the XB500 will be way too loud for WASAPI plugin (which bypasses the windows mixer/EQ which results in better quality) http://www.google.fi/imgres?imgurl=http://gearmedia.ign.com/gear/image/article/585/585086/sound-blaster-audigy-4-pro-20050203054252299_640w.jpg&imgrefurl=http://gear.ign.com/dor/objects/728126/sound-blaster-audigy-4-pro/images/sound-blaster-audigy-4-pro-20050203054252299.html&usg=__Dhu5zyGv8WXNSGi8X0din5pJu9g=&h=224&w=640&sz=81&hl=en&start=40&zoom=1&tbnid=kjogOEHpFGnmgM:&tbnh=79&tbnw=227&ei=8mjmTclPxKD7BsTC2OYO&prev=/search%3Fq%3Daudigy%2B4%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D882%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=235&vpy=426&dur=325&hovh=82&hovw=237&tx=155&ty=61&page=2&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:40&biw=1680&bih=882
 
 
 
 
Jun 1, 2011 at 1:03 PM Post #135 of 173
I might try get a hold of an Audigy 4 Pro (SB0380) as I'm such a fan of kX Audio drivers and not ready to give up on them yet and may as well the the most out of it as possible, I realize the volume knob on the front panel would really come handy as I don't use any amp for XB500 cuz it doesn't need any as it's like the easiest driven and loudest headphone I've ever heard and would be nice with bit-perfect output which is out of question without any physical volume knob.
 

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