OK, not fully burned in, 24 hours on the burn in Rack ("Oh no, not the RACK!!!), but these Hifiman HE560 are quite fine headphones. Have to give it more burn in, play with amps (they spend most of the time on the 560 thread discussing good amps for these). They are very sensitive to what you feed them-crummy recordings sound crummy, listening now to the HDtracks American Beauty, Grateful Dead, as us old Deadheads are wont to do. It's a really great hi-rez file, and Jerry and the Boys sound marvelous. What really strikes me is that I think they have perfect bass. When I read descriptions of bass in reviews, generally it seems headphones have good quantity of bass, not necessarily the tightest/highest quality, or, if they have good, textured, tight bass, seems to often be bass light in quantity. These things hit it just right. The bass doesn't overwhelm, doesn't underwhelm, doesn't bleed into the mids, is present, driving, tight, really cool. Highs are also extended, nice air, nice sparkle, cymbals sound like cymbals. Soundstage wild, open phones and are fine at portraying a wide stage. I'd say the mids, while not reticent, are very slightly recessed, slightly dry (which is where all the amp talk comes in, matching to bring this part out). Anyway, it's early, I often have the honeymoon reaction, then later find the warts with my new toys, so I reserve the right to make a complete about face (kidding, but not about the honeymoon stuff). Have to run it against the Senn 650, FAD, Shure 1540 one of these days, after the kazillion hour burn in and when I have the time (after the apocolypse, likely).
Different discovery-not gear, but a service. Have a Spotify subscription, which I took when Mog went to the dark side (it was bought by Apple, turned into Beats music). I actually hardly use it, my daughters love Spotify, so I keep the subscription. Today, I took an offer for a free month on a Swedish service (lots of great things come from Sweden) called TIDAL. They're selling point is that they provide uncompressed, CD quality music. Well, listened at my office, with my PC plugged into an old Kloss 99 table radio, decent sounding, and the service sounds fantastic. Killed the radio signal, killed other streams I run (my office blocks most streaming, but WFMU has some streams that are great, and sneak by the firewall). The presence, detail, impact were SO much better than what I'm accustomed to hearing in my office (as a bonus, it also slips by my office firewall, where Spotify and many others I've tried don't). No fancy converters (don't think the office computers will allow drivers that some of these require), cheapo connecting cable, decent table radio, sounded GREAT!. Downside (isn't there always one) is that it costs twice what the other services do, about $20/month (more than twice some of them). But, I have a month to decide, but my initial impression is that I may dump Spotify and go with TIDAL (it seems to have a pretty good supply of music available, but not as much social content and recommendations as Spotify. It does also have music videos, though). Worth checking out imo.
OK, too late once again, go hit the sack. More later....
