[afton]

I just got my MS-1 and the sound is okay, but not mind-blowingly aurgasmic.
I guess I was expecting too much after reading all the reviews here.

It's currently connected directly to my Soundblaster Live sound card.
Now, to improve the sound, which would be a better value:
upgrading the sound card or adding an amp?

 

[Killercrush]

You can upgrade the soundcard to Mister X's Alien DAC/XP amp combo, It can be found for around $200 used I believe.

 

[nickchen]

An amp would surely help, whereas a HQ soundcard would (only) improve noise things such as the ugly bzzzzzz sound when HDs are busy or CPU under torture.

I'd go for a combination of soundcard and amp thus, in form of an external USB- or firewire soundcard with integrated amp. Don't know the australian market (besides lots of beer

), but over here in the EU, solutions like M-Audio, Terratec or so cost about 150€ and some of them are said to compete easely in the 400$ amp leage.

Be aware that the MS1 doesn't improve that impressivly when being amped.

 

[BrookR1]

I thought the step up to an external DAC/Amp (E-MU 0404) was a great upgrade. Do the MS-1s come with the flat comfy pads or do they come with bowls? Buying a set of bowls should improve the sound.

 

[Jahn]

first impressions out of the box may change after you get about 40-50 hours play time on them. so you can either put em on your head and after a week or two have them settle down, or just crash course it and let em rip in a drawer for 2 days straight to work out the kinks. by then it should play like it'll play for a while, and the only changes after that will be up to your tunes, and your pads.

MS-1s come with "comfies" as pads - for a cheap mod, go to rat shack and cut a quarter-sized hole in the rat shack pads and pop em on. If you like that, spend a little cash for some Senn HD414 replacement pads (still available direct from Senn) and poke holes in those - yeah they're yellow but they are such a nice pad mod that i use them on my GS1000!

MS-1s are probably revealing your soundblaster to be, uh, not the best source. Amping is probably only going to reveal that even more. If you plug into even an Apple Shuffle with some nicely ripped tunes (that aren't hot-mastered to begin with), even unamped, you should hear something nice coming from the MS-1. keep in mind that the MS-1 is never going to be as forgiving as, say, the Koss KSC-35. The Alessandro is the first step into the world of home hi-fi/monitoring, and may not be the best consumer-level can to deal with consumer-grade ripped tunes (no knock on liking music only available that way tho of course - i have iTunes stuff and even ancient Napster rips that i groove to in my portable rig).

edit - ditto on the EMU 0404, that's what i use. has the price come down from 100 bucks? still not bad for a pro soundcard, but the internal version has no headphone out just fyi - you'll need an external amp to deal with the 2-channel mono line outs, or an external DAC to deal with the digital outs. I hear the new external 0404 has a headphone out included tho, so there's that - haven't heard it personally tho.

 

[cgdef]

ok you should know that MS1 needs to be burned in in order to actually sound great. Also even though they are rated at 32 ohms they kinda need an amp. You can get away with a cheap amp though. You could probably use a set of decent speakers even. I have never tried that but depending on the speakers it might work. Anyway sound blaster is pretty crappy and even if you get the amplification working for you you are still going to hear static coming from the card. If you don't want to spend ( or cannot ) a lot of money I would look for an m-audio board. Those have very nice components and even the lower end models do a great job. It's not the can's that is the problem though. Oh and the burn in time considering that you have a weak source is pretty long. But plug in the headphones and before you leave the house just turn on some music and moderate levels. Run them for a couple of days and I can guarantee you that you will hear a difference. Oh and the senn 414 pads are actually better and cheaper than the grado ones so you might want to order some. If I am not mistaken they were something like 1/3 of the price of grado pads. Oh and the color is really no problem. Come on MS1 is already ugly as hell so it can't really get any worst.

 

[F107plus5]

Ah: the 414s. My pad of choice for my MS-1 as well! Even slightly more comfortable to me than my HD600s which of course are actually quite comfortable indeed!!

I tried the bowls from my MS2i on the MS-1 and although they did sound just a tad bit better "to me" than the reversed and modded 414s, I felt that the comfort advantage on the MS-1 outweighed the slight, very slight, gain in performance.

 

[basmatirice]

things you might try... for cheap...

the chaintech av-710 audio card. should sound much better than that sound blaster for about $20 at newegg.com

the pa2v2 headphone amp. supposed to tame the highs of grado and ety and have really good synergy with them

flat pads from ttvj.com. the senn pads are junk.


i'm going to be trying that amp and that card with some er6i soon (hopefully... probably be about a week) and i will post a review then. hopefully i won't be blinded by high frequency garbage anymore.


my motto is to always configure your system to be warm. evey cd was recorded differently and you're NEVER going to get perfectly tonally balanced sound... so why not save your ears some pain. just make a system that has as little distortion as possible shooting through it while being just a touch warm. save your ears. enjoy the music.

 

[freakmax]

Maybe upgrading headphone would be a better choice.

 

[basmatirice]

i think his phone are fine, especially if he's not mostly listening to the highest quality recordings possible on a nice $400+ cd player. his phones would probably be fine for even that. he needs to upgrade his source quality, get a nice amp that pairs well with grados, and change the pads to the ttvj. i think warming up the sound a bit would make it more pleasurable. taking down the high can be a wonderfull thing. also, note that the highs aren't the only place to find detail. i find the detail of the mids and lows to be much more important than the detail of the highs. detailed highs hurt. detailed lows and mids inform.


also note that in real life one would not hear these excessively detailed highs so well.

synergy is what this game is about. don't buy an amp for grados that gets good review for senheissers.

 

[F107plus5]

I've always kinda went by the philosophy of getting the phones with the over-all sound that I like and then going with the system that is closest to neutral to maintain the original sound.

....but;...that's just me.

 

[geekbanter]

For the most part I agree with basmatirice. I would add that I like the reversed modded Senn 414 pads, and I needed the Beyer DT770 headpad for comfort.

I have a Chaintech AV-710 -> PA2v2 -> MS-1s. I would say that the most important change you could make is to improve your source. I had Portapros for a year before upgrading to MS-1s. I initially used my onboard sound and the AV-710 did make nice improvement, I felt it was worth the $20 card. The amp made a bigger difference overall, it definitely improved the sound of the Portapros, tightening up the bass, making the sound cleaner and fuller.

Now with the MS-1s having a better source makes a significant difference, I tested my onboard sound for kicks and it was really muddy and hummed compared to the AV-710. The amp seems to make less of a difference with these phones than the soundcard does. I would say that it makes the sound somewhat fuller, perhaps rounder, but overall it makes less difference than it did on the Portapros. I would still recommend an amp if you were to get an AV-710, as the card's hi-quality line out doesn't seem to push enough current for the MS-1s so you end up with good quality, but quiet sound. The PA2v2 is fine, and I'm sure that many other amp will be just as good. I've seen many other recommend Little Dot Micro+ amps and Go Vibe amps, but I don't know much about them, or why they would be better than a PA2v2, anyone?

Note: If you do go with a PA2v2 I recommend getting a better quality cable. I had a cheap coiled/springy headphone extension cable running from my soundcard to my amp, and with the MS-1 I realized that this cable was introducing static and other (rf?) noise in the line, which was then amplified by the amp. I got a good quality $10 6ft Belkin cable and that fixed the problem, no joke.

 

[afton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by geekbanter /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have a Chaintech AV-710 -> PA2v2 -> MS-1s.

That's exactly the setup I want to have

I reckon those 3 items offer the best bang for your bucks on a tight budget,
cmiiw.

What's the diff between MS-1 and MS-1s?

 

[basmatirice]

ms1s is plural

 

[afton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgdef /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh and the burn in time considering that you have a weak source is pretty long.

Why is this?