It's the combination of the treble bump and the laid back upper mids that makes it "bright." By definition it isn't bright, but the treble sort of takes you by surprise because of the hole in the mids and bass emphasis (at high volumes the treble is a bit piercing, I haven't had a problem with it since I bought my Dragonfly though). I never really gave tube amps a chance but I'm starting to do work at a hi-fi stereo store for a high school co-op and they use vinyl with tube amps... so perhaps I'll get into them. They've got a lot of Jolida and McIntosh amps. I wish I knew more about amp design, I think that would be interesting to learn about and discuss.
Ok, something interesting. HD800. Regarded as most detailed headphones, and quite analytical, kinda like for monitoring. So, the interesting part is people like it over tube specifically bottlehead crack or sex.
We've been getting discussions regarding high distortions of tubes and not ideal output etc.. How to explain that HD800 output is good though tubes?
That's rediculous to me, it's a $1.5k headphone that you have tame the sound with an external amp? I heard you have to give it the right amp etc... Why would I pay $1.5k for headphones and I have to buy several amps to find out which is the best. Oh lord. This is why I like Planar Magnetic. You just give it power and it does it's thing. Doesn't get fussy with amps.
If one enjoys the HD800 sound, there's really no full-sized alternative so it makes sense to use whichever amp that makes it sound less bright. My tube amp does a good job with K340; it adds body and warmth to the electret treble. It's not as if planars are easy to amp well, except for the newest ones. Maybe you're being lazy.
If one enjoys the HD800 sound, there's really no full-sized alternative so it makes sense to use whichever amp that makes it sound less bright. My tube amp does a good job with K340; it adds body and warmth to the electret treble. It's not as if planars are easy to amp well, except for the newest ones. Maybe you're being lazy.
Maybe... I just want to connect and be done with it. I don't want to get a $1.5k phones, and get a amp that doesn't help it out, and cry like a baby all night.
well most people would be able to achieve what they look for with a little understanding of EQ on a hd800. but EQ is despised and completly unknown for the wrong reasons, when tubes are adored for other wrong reasons(why risk 0.05% distorsion with some bad EQ when you can get more than 2% with tubes... oh wait! ... ). nothing much to do about it.
about the hd800, out of its signature that I very much don't like (I'm more a "don't hurt me" hd650/lcd2 kind of guy), it's still a great quality headphone. very light(around 300gr I think, lcd2 is around 500gr
), very comfy and not really hard to drive*. so kind of the ideal headphone to live with on a daily basis several hours a day.
too bad the signature is what it is.
* I'm talking about actually driving it, not the coloring stuff that should have nothing to do with amps. if a good amp is a wire with gain, what does that make of a colored distorted tube amp? you get my drift.
I have an EQ setting for SS that I like a lot - nothing too invasive, no more than 5db adjustments, and it sounds great to me. Just a little bit off the top and slightly more body for my DT880s. It sounds close to my tube amp actually, with the benefit of being cleaner, and quicker during transients. There is one thing that has me going back to my tube amp though: second order distortion. Not an EQ roll off, but a very definitive bloom or halo effect I sense over notes and voices.The second order distortion sounds sweet to me, and that is all I care about. Some might say I can achieve this with software, but every software trick I've seen that did this sounded cheap and artificial... like real ugly distortion, where the slight bloom I get from tubes feels more like a subtle coloration. To me it is worth having the tubes around for the times I want ear candy. That's not always, but often it can be very enjoyable and software just doesn't do that well yet.
Also, second order distortion is not a tube-only thing. I have been enjoying the audio from my HTC phone quite a bit. Turns out, according to measurements on Anandtech, there is some second order distortion along with third order. Supposedly that distortion is all in the thousandths, but it still sounds somewhat warm to me. And the headphone amp from my Denon receiver is by far the "tubiest" of all my outputs. It's rolled off, bass heavy, and lacking detail - and it doesn't even glow! Instead of using buzz words like "tube vs. ss" to describe sound signatures audio hobbyists should be more specific about things we like, i.e..... "I like a -5db roll off @ 2k with -50db 2nd order and -80db or lower 3rd order distortion.
That's rediculous to me, it's a $1.5k headphone that you have tame the sound with an external amp? I heard you have to give it the right amp etc... Why would I pay $1.5k for headphones and I have to buy several amps to find out which is the best. Oh lord. This is why I like Planar Magnetic. You just give it power and it does it's thing. Doesn't get fussy with amps.
The reason is because color can be most prevalent in headphones or speakers. That said even with very flat SQ response amps and DACs the headphones are the main contributing color source.
This is just the way it is even if everything is set up correct and with-in the systems response boundaries. As we know some solid state and some tube amps start to make added signal distortion at high volume level reaching close to their full potential to amplify.
All headphones have some frequency response that we work on improving with something up stream in the system. A great way to understand this is by mixing and matching amps and headphones. At one point you will actually find a combination of amp and headphones which sound really bad at a certain point in the sound signature. The best way to visualize this is imagine two over-lapping graphs with the same peaks. When they are put together then you have the faults magnified.
Thus we want and amp or source to smooth-out the issue. This also is very common in audiophiles placing tube preamps with solid-state amps or solid-state preamps with tube power amps.
The fascination here also comes with different volume levels. Yep, distortion is different at different volume levels. This is the most overlooked concept in Head-Fi. You have all these graph geeks studying graphs but the truth is different volume levels make many understanding of graph frequency responses inaccurate. This of course is primarily at both the headphone amp power limits and headphone current response limitations.
Most of out flagship headphones have such a power handling capability that these high volume levels would be outside of human tolerance in hearing, it would, just be too loud. Still what is not talked about much here is the different amounts of audible distortion at listening levels.
This concept is also very common concerning low-power amps and power hungry headphones. The issue is instead of bass at louder volumes your getting pure distortion. The amp is just not able to drive the headphones so with lower volumes your getting a more true to the signal bass response.
All this is occurring because we are making something out of nothing. Line-out with gain is the concept but creating volume is always going to be met with imperfections, at times small and at times large and noticeable. The second phase in headphone application concerns the identity of the headphone response to signal. If all headphones were perfect they would have a perfect and flat response and maybe all sound the same.
In our real world each headphone has it's own personality. The characteristics are in the thousands and start with driver material, structure composite and cable design and material. Not to mention ohm, damping and function of form. We are making a reproduction of sound out of nothing.
Genre matching, amp matching and personal sound preference are addressed with the different combos. The most successful HeadFi ears have either copied a great system, lucked out or did years of equipment matching to get where they are.
Let me put this a different way. Below is the vid of the Tannoy Westminster Royal. This is the oldest speaker company in the world. In extreme HI/FI standards these are fairly low cost at 33K. Here we are not even taking into consideration the cost of source and amps.
So my question to Sound Science is " Is there color in this reproduction? "
This line array kit could be the most colorless speaker you could get now. Still far from flat response, regardless of EQ work or room treatments. The reduced color is due to the linear sound wave response with timing and regards to room reflections. Due to the top speaker fading, sound wave timing is brought into coherence and the waves act as from a point source. Maybe a little like the Tannoy speakers but with multiple point sources. Two ways to reduce distortion of sound waves and take color away outside of what is even possible with simple EQ or room treatments.
This may help you understand the limitations of EQ and crossover DSP or simple crossovers. The fact is that every speaker has color regardless of design. It is because we are making something out of nothing.
Example here:
Try and make a glass vase. Every glass vase will have very small imperfections. Have an aircraft mechanic CNC the vase out of a chunk of aluminum, the imperfections are still there but at a lower tolerance, thus maybe you get my point.
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