I'm sitting at my work desk staring at a Ray Samuels Hornet (close neighbor to the amp mentioned by Anak-Chan), an E10, a Head-Room Micro-DAC, the Grado HF-1, my TF-10s, a PC tower, an iPod Classic and even an iHP-140. My RS-1, MS-2i, ER-4S, DT-831, M-80 as well as my Macs, Ray Samuels XP-7, MAD Ear++ and various other amps are all at home.
But as quirky as a comparison could be of this intergalactic gumbo of sources, amps and headgear, I haven't made one because I've been using my E10 and M-100s exclusively to edit a playlist of passacaglias, passacaillen, grounds and chaconnes. This has been going on for two days.
Anyone who wants to hear the compressed version can do so on Spotify if they search for a playlist titled "Passacaglias, Grounds and Chaconnes."
Why am I doing this? Because a
passacaglia is a classical form involving variations on a bass line, a
passacaille is the French word for the same form, a
Ground Bass is the English variant, and the
chaconne is a set of variations on a series of chord changes (note how close baroque forms often come to jazz -- "Giant Steps" works the same way as the Chaconne in D minor from Bach's Partita for Solo Violin, and the harpsichord's figured bass in baroque trio sonatas and cantatas is reminiscent of a chord chart from the original Real Book).
I'm interested in the effect of the M-100's frequency emphasis on classical music which is structured around prominent bass parts and/or chord changes.
My suspicion is that the M-100 is better for certain kinds of classical music than people might think. As with rock, it all depends on the specific style, instrumentation, orchestation and piece of music. I'll go further and say this is usually true of other headphones as well.
I tend to favor classical styles in this order: modernist and postmodernist, medieval, baroque, rococo, post-romantic, renaissance, classical period, romantic, chant and (last and least) minimalist. The playlist is arranged roughly to reflect that (though I haven't organized the end). A few jazz passacaglias occur early on. (Don Ellis's is the truest representation of the form.) The last few tracks at the very end of the playlist are interpretations of the form by rock bands and other non-classical artists.
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When people talk about recessed mids and unsatisfactory guitars, it sounds to me as if they're missing the lower mids specifically. That's the range that adds weight to unison comping and lines on the low end of the neck. I've spent decades of my life watching guitarists lay down tracks and then having to fit keyboard parts into the few open frequencies around them. (It's a bit like being the last person to choose your elementary school Christmas present out of the gift pile, but it's also a fun challenge.)
Tristan Avakian -- an excellent guitarist, by the way -- used to come into the studio so attuned to the mixing desk you'd have thought he arrived with a track sheet already filled out. He carefully EQ'd and tailored his tracks to occupy as many prominent frequencies as possible. I used to watch him nudge the engineer aside and do it all himself. When he was feeling more trusting, he'd call out exact gain levels and frequencies to notch.
He focused on lower-mid lines and rhythm parts, with board-and-mic-sculpted highs to accentuate the attacks. He was as organized and cerebral about it as a keyboardist. I think he'd sound quite good on the M-100; not so a guitarist like Dave Mustaine, whose sound was always pointlessly nasal and would prove especially washed out on these particular headphones.
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Quote:
That's one of the most distinctive color/shield choices yet. I actually chose not to get the crocs, but that's because my design was wordy and a textured surface looked not to be the place for it. Whereas DF's centuries-old Gothic/Nouveau cross could be rendered in jewelry. My significant otter might love it.
One last thing:
To the person who wanted to see orange shields with the matte-black M-100s: I haven't installed mine because I'm waiting to hear whether customer service is satisfied with my photos of the slightly scratched earcup and matte black shield. I don't want to touch anything until I verify that I can exchange my current pair for a new one whenever it becomes available. Customer service has said this is likely (and they've been exceptionally responsive and honorable), but I want to be sure they're satisfied before I change anything.
BTW: The scratch I'm talking about is so small that some people would wonder why I cared. And my cord isn't frayed at all, nor are any that came with my M-80. Any minor build issues are probably reducible to the stage of development at which we chose to purchase our M-100s. The M-80s were largely perfect from the start because we weren't buying them
before they were ready.