[Proglover]

Quote:

Funnily enough I read a thread on here yesterday where someone transcoded a flac to 128mp3 and back, and posted that and the original for blind testing. The amount of differing answers made me laugh pretty hard.

I though there were websites where you can blindtest that kinds of things, don't have links unfortunately 

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

I used my AD700 for months and months, and even burned them in for hundreds of hours. The sound didn't change whatsoever from initial use.
 
Just enjoy the damn headphones instead of trying to make yourself believe all this nonsense actually works.

 

[rockthesky]

I'm using mp3s from albums that I get from blogspots and mediafires all over the net. What kind of specs are you looking for exactly? Bitrate? I'm not familiar with file details. I know mp3 is a million times better than wav for sure though.

 

[detoxguy]

How about you save your money and buy an amp when you can afford to keep it? Most of the places that stock and sell headphone amps are small independent stores and every time someone returns an item it costs them money. My advice for if you want to try out stuff is to buy them used on the forums then re-sell them if you don't want it. 
 
Buying something with no intention of keeping it is pretty dickish.
 
Quote:

Ok so basically I was expecting something magical to happen when I put on the AD700s...like unicorns and rainbows popping out of the sky - nah not really. I like using them because they are comfortable and I really listen for the details in songs and I am actually excited to try them with certain songs, but it never really exceeds my expectations.
 
I would love to experiment with headphone amps now, meaning buy, try out, return. I'm willing to spend $100 strictly for trying out stuff, I will not actually keep anything until later when I have a job. Any recommendations for these particular headphones? I regularly visit a J&R and Best Buy, but I don't know if they have amps.

 

[detoxguy]

Absolutely incorrect. 
 
Quote:

I'm using mp3s from albums that I get from blogspots and mediafires all over the net. What kind of specs are you looking for exactly? Bitrate? I'm not familiar with file details. I know mp3 is a million times better than wav for sure though.

 

[Argyris]

I've used the ABX comparator in foobar2000 for this sort of thing before, though the headphones I had when I tested weren't up to my current standard so I might test better if I tried it again. I'm not too proud to admit that I bottomed out at V0 (the old top preset using LAME) for MP3 (I flunked with a 50%--in other words, completely random) and 192kbps VBR for AAC. I think the number of people who can really tell the difference after that point is very small, and that those who only think they can might be surprised (and have their egos dashed) if they actually tested themselves. This is probably why DBT/ABX discussion is generally discouraged (and, in the case of cables, explicitly banned) on Head-Fi--people don't like having their tootsies trod upon, and flaming and circular arguments ensue.
Quote:

Quote:

Funnily enough I read a thread on here yesterday where someone transcoded a flac to 128mp3 and back, and posted that and the original for blind testing. The amount of differing answers made me laugh pretty hard.

I though there were websites where you can blindtest that kinds of things, don't have links unfortunately 

 

[kmhaynes]

Quote:

An amp will not increase the sound quality of the AD700s, at least not by a vastly noticeable amount.

But it could improve the quality of the signal to the phones, which you could probably hear, depending on the sensitivity of your ears.

 

[ShawnSmith]

Quote:

I'm using mp3s from albums that I get from blogspots and mediafires all over the net. What kind of specs are you looking for exactly? Bitrate? I'm not familiar with file details. I know mp3 is a million times better than wav for sure though.

y'all have just been trolled. hard.

 

[Proglover]

Quote:

I'm using mp3s from albums that I get from blogspots and mediafires all over the net. What kind of specs are you looking for exactly? Bitrate? I'm not familiar with file details. I know mp3 is a million times better than wav for sure though.

Yes, bitrate.
Euh, wav is cd format, that's lossless. mp3 is with loss, so much less in quality then wav or other types of lossless format (like FLAC, ALAC f.e.).
 
The bitrate of an mp3 file is pretty crucial to it's sound quality. If the bitrate is 128, it's very noticably less in quality then the actual recording. Not worthy of headphones like your AD700.
 
192 is a little bit better, but if you want to enjoy sound on cans like AD700 or higher, I'd say you need 256/320 bitrate or simply lossless.
 
Get into this if you want to enjoy music with good headphones, otherwise it's pretty useless, to be honest with you. 

 

[Danneq]

Quote:

I know mp3 is a million times better than wav for sure though.

Better in what way? Wav is a copy of the original CD track. When you convert to lossy formats such as MP3, frequencies are cut out of the file. Mostly low or high ones that you cannot hear are cut in order to make the file size smaller. Even if it is difficult to tell a 320 kbps MP3 track (highest bitrate) from a wav track, no matter what some audiophiles may think, the MP3 file still has got some frequencies cut out. While this might not affect the sound itself, it might affect the music in a psychoacoustic way. You might perceive the music a bit differently with lossy formats than with lossless formats and CD's. This is just speculation from me, though...
 
I use MP3 strictly for portable use and it works great. A rule about MP3 format is - the higher the bitrate, the better. Stay away from stuff lower than 192kbps. Also the encoder can affect the MP3 tracks. LAME is considered the best one, and a MP3 file encoded at VBR0 (variable bitrate at @ 250kbps) or CBR320 (constant bitrate @ 320kbps) should sound very good and indestinguishable from a wav/CD track.
 

 

[Proglover]

Quote:

Quote:

I'm using mp3s from albums that I get from blogspots and mediafires all over the net. What kind of specs are you looking for exactly? Bitrate? I'm not familiar with file details. I know mp3 is a million times better than wav for sure though.

y'all have just been trolled. hard.

 

See the responses in a couple of minutes including my own response, LOL!
 
Maybe your right, would be actually funny, but maybe you aren't....you never know

 

[Argyris]

You've got that backwards. A 16-bit, 44.1kHz WAV file is identical in quality (with a different file wrapper and bit arrangement) to a CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) track. Its bitrate is 1411kbps, though this is usually considered meaningless because, bit-for-bit, there is absolutely no difference from the same track on a CD (incidentally WAV is just a format, and as such can support higher or lower bitrates and bit depths if needed).
 
Conversely, the typical low quality MP3 you're likely to find floating around the Internet is 128kbps at either 44.1kHz or 48kHz. MP3s offered by Amazon and other online music stores are typically 256kbps. All of these are lossy, meaning that parts of the musical information have been removed in order to make the file sizes smaller. Clever programming ensures that the parts we're least likely to miss are removed first, but as the bitrate gets lower, the loss becomes more noticeable. Good headphones will magnify this deficit. This is why a lot of Head-Fi'ers insist on lossless formats like FLAC because they don't actually involve any loss of information.
 
EDIT: Geez. Everything I just said is redundant. I've got to learn to type faster!
Quote:

I'm using mp3s from albums that I get from blogspots and mediafires all over the net. What kind of specs are you looking for exactly? Bitrate? I'm not familiar with file details. I know mp3 is a million times better than wav for sure though.

 

[Proglover]

Quote:

I've used the ABX comparator in foobar2000 for this sort of thing before, though the headphones I had when I tested weren't up to my current standard so I might test better if I tried it again. I'm not too proud to admit that I bottomed out at V0 (the old top preset using LAME) for MP3 (I flunked with a 50%--in other words, completely random) and 192kbps VBR for AAC. I think the number of people who can really tell the difference after that point is very small, and that those who only think they can might be surprised (and have their egos dashed) if they actually tested themselves. This is probably why DBT/ABX discussion is generally discouraged (and, in the case of cables, explicitly banned) on Head-Fi--people don't like having their tootsies trod upon, and flaming and circular arguments ensue.
Quote:

Quote:

Funnily enough I read a thread on here yesterday where someone transcoded a flac to 128mp3 and back, and posted that and the original for blind testing. The amount of differing answers made me laugh pretty hard.

I though there were websites where you can blindtest that kinds of things, don't have links unfortunately 

 

So I would have to get foobar for this, darn. Wish I could find a good online test or something, would be very fun.
 
I love doing comparisons between different masters of an album, that's good fun and definitely not always that easy to hear differences.
 
If we don't want our egos to be dashed, just have to make sure they're not overly big to start with

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

I can tell the diff between 128-160 vs 320-FLAC-WAV. I'd say the bare minimum for making it real hard to discern for most people would be 192kbps mp3s. I myself can't tell the difference between 320 and FLAC except on a very FEW songs. And that's with nitpicking. In normal use, no one would tell, but I'll leave that for the anal audiophiles to argue.

 

[Skarecrow77]

we had like a 12 page thread on this subject about 2 weeks ago. Only one single person in the thread who claimed to be able to easily tell the difference between mp3 and lossless was able to do so when pushed to ABX (bless him he actually posted logs to prove it), but he was also fair enough to admit that he wasn't able to ABX better than 50% on the very next song he tried.
 
Me personally, I can't ABX LAME -v6 (~130kbps) most of the time. I guess I have "bad ears", although music certainly sounds pretty damn sweet to them. *shrug*
 
That said, that's a LAME rip directly from lossless or the original CD. It is quite possible to find complete and utter crap rips on the web that have a bitrate of 256kbps or 320kbps.
 
Also, I agree that we've been trolled.