[Player1josh46]

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To my ears, my M50 showe improvement up to and after 100 hours of burn in. And I don't mean listening burn in....I mean cycling music through them at full blast (and assisted by an amp). Coming from my UE TripleFi's I noticed the sound signature improvements but it wasn't like "ooooh....greatest thing ever"...that's only happpened once-when I went from my Klipsch S4 to UE TripleFi's, added and LOD to my iPOD AND re-did my entire music library at 320 kbps.THAT'S when I went oooooh.
 
Now...with that said, my M50 needed 3 things to really shine and make me want to reach for them as my primary listening headphones:
 
1) Burn in (as noted above).
 
2) Amp. In my case, JDSLabs cMoy but honestly I've heard that the PA2V2 and a couple FiiO's achieve the same thing.
 
3) Mod. Get rid of the extra padding behind the ear pad. It brings out more detail and pulls the mids up a bit.
 
Course if I keep hearing people talk about the HFI 580 and what it has over the M50 its going to be hard for me not to want to try those......

My responses to your 3 points:
 
1) I'm burning them when not in use, although not at full blast since Iheard it would damage the drivers. As the process is going I am noticing improvements gradually.
 
2) If you can recommend an amp that is less than $20 than please do so b/c I can't spend alot of money anymore.
 
3) If you can post a link to a video of the mod your talking about I would greatly appreciate it.
 
Everything sounds good as time passes except for those songs that have low kbps and have some static and hiss in the background. Thank You.

 

[Optimus Praim]

Quote:

2) If you can recommend an amp that is less than $20 than please do so b/c I can't spend alot of money anymore.
 
 

 

Get the Fiio E5,cheap and a good match!
​

 

[ucdavisboy]

Here is the link for the mod:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/551679/how-to-make-m50-s-mid-less-recessed-increase-soundstage-56k
 
Others which much more experience here can speak to the burn in process, but I've never been advised that anything up to 75% volume is harmful (after all, some listen at that level). I also do periods of burn in at lower levels as well....a little of everything works better than a lot of one thing in my experience.
 
As for amps at that price....not much there. If you can save up $60 you can order a JDS Labs cMoy, FiiO or PA2V2 all which are well regarded here and will be more than adequate for the M50.
 
I would enjoy what you have for now and look to when you can purchase an amp in that $50-$80 range.

 

[Player1josh46]

Quote:

Here is the link for the mod:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/551679/how-to-make-m50-s-mid-less-recessed-increase-soundstage-56k
 
Others which much more experience here can speak to the burn in process, but I've never been advised that anything up to 75% volume is harmful (after all, some listen at that level). I also do periods of burn in at lower levels as well....a little of everything works better than a lot of one thing in my experience.
 
As for amps at that price....not much there. If you can save up $60 you can order a JDS Labs cMoy, FiiO or PA2V2 all which are well regarded here and will be more than adequate for the M50.
 
I would enjoy what you have for now and look to when you can purchase an amp in that $50-$80 range.

 

i don't want to take a chance with the mod since i don't want to mess anything up and besides I'm not an audiofile so I can't pinpoint exactly what the highs, lows, mids, and tremble are so it doesn't really bother me. All I want is to get songs with better kbps, save up for a decent amp, and let them burn in alot more so everything can continue to sound better.

 

[jerg]

Wow, I never believed in lossless (always listen to 192kbps or 240kbps mp3s) on my M50s, until I saw this thread today and downloaded some Queen flac rips for the heck of it. God **** that's a huge jump in details.

 

[Player1josh46]

Quote:

Wow, I never believed in lossless (always listen to 192kbps or 240kbps mp3s) on my M50s, until I saw this thread today and downloaded some Queen flac rips for the heck of it. God **** that's a huge jump in details.

so youre saying flac rips are better? How do u get those as opposed to encoded mp3s?

 

[jerg]

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so youre saying flac rips are better? How do u get those as opposed to encoded mp3s?

Much MUCH better - mainly in the treble, everything (singer voice, instruments, beats) sounds smoother, more refined, with so much more nuance and fidelity. I also got some jazz music flacs just now (Kenny G) and holy hell i can feel the sax buzz beside my ears! Makes me smile when I listen to it (relative to my 320kbps mp3 rips of the exact same albums).
 
And no it's not placebo effect, I'm playing each song/music once in mp3 and once in flac and the difference is clear as day.

 

[blacknile]

m50 with flac files, foobar/wasapi, well produced jazz and a decent dac+amp (ibasso d2+ in my case) are a slice of heaven imho.

 

[Player1josh46]

Quote:

Much MUCH better - mainly in the treble, everything (singer voice, instruments, beats) sounds smoother, more refined, with so much more nuance and fidelity. I also got some jazz music flacs just now (Kenny G) and holy hell i can feel the sax buzz beside my ears! Makes me smile when I listen to it (relative to my 320kbps mp3 rips of the exact same albums).
 
And no it's not placebo effect, I'm playing each song/music once in mp3 and once in flac and the difference is clear as day.

Is there a way to get flac files for my songs in itunes on a windows 7 desktop? Also on my ipod?
 
 

 

[Brooko]

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Is there a way to get flac files for my songs in itunes on a windows 7 desktop? Also on my ipod?
 
 

Rip from CD to ALAC (Apple Lossless).  Or rip to FLAC or WAV and convert to ALAC.
 
To be honest though - you are not 'likely' to hear the difference with the M50s between a properly ripped 320 mp3 and FLAC.  You'll get a lot of people saying the difference is night and day - YMMV, but IMO unless you have top of the range gear, you won't be able to tell (and even then it's not going to be easy).
 
The easiest way to test is grab a CD, rip it in both FLAC and as an MP3.  Use Foobar 2000's ABX ability (after volume leveling both series of songs), then see if you can tell the difference.  By doing it blind (using Foobar's ABX), as long as the rips are volume matched, I'd wager that you're not going to be able to reliably tell the difference.  This is actually good for your portable listening.  It means that you can fit more music on your player.
 
For me - I rip everything in FLAC (I use linux), convert to AAC 256 for my iPod Touch.  The reason I rip to FLAC is simply for archiving.  It's lossless so that if I ever go to another player, I can reliably convert to a different format without doing a lossy -> lossy conversion (then you really can notice quality loss).
 
BTW - want a simple test (blind) to show the difference in audio quality on entry point gear?  Go to www.mp3ornot.com and take the test.  It's a test between 128 and 320 mp3's.  I's also blind.  Take it over 15 tests (should only take about 10-15 minutes) and see how your % fares.  You may be surprised - I ended up with ~ 70-85%.  If you ace that - do the foobar test.  Discerning 320 mp3 from flac is considerably more difficult.
 
Don't simply listen to the phoolery often quoted on this site.  Do yourself a favour, and test for yourself.  It's an eyeopener when you do.

 

[Player1josh46]

I just converted one of my songs to a AAC version and it showed a higher kbps rate than the original mp3. Does this mean the quality is better and I should do it for all my songs that are low in kbps or it makes no difference?

 

[silverbox]

Quote:

Wow, I never believed in lossless (always listen to 192kbps or 240kbps mp3s) on my M50s, until I saw this thread today and downloaded some Queen flac rips for the heck of it. God **** that's a huge jump in details.

 


Quote:

Much MUCH better - mainly in the treble, everything (singer voice, instruments, beats) sounds smoother, more refined, with so much more nuance and fidelity. I also got some jazz music flacs just now (Kenny G) and holy hell i can feel the sax buzz beside my ears! Makes me smile when I listen to it (relative to my 320kbps mp3 rips of the exact same albums).
 
And no it's not placebo effect, I'm playing each song/music once in mp3 and once in flac and the difference is clear as day.

Convert those flacs to 320 mp3s. Hear any difference?
 

 

[jerg]

Quote:

I just converted one of my songs to a AAC version and it showed a higher kbps rate than the original mp3. Does this mean the quality is better and I should do it for all my songs that are low in kbps or it makes no difference?

No, converting from low bitrate to high bitrate doesn't make any difference. It's like upscaling a photo that was originally 800x600 in resolution, up to 8000x6000 resolution - it'll still be as detailed as each pixel in the old version.
 
Best way to go about it is to grab a piece of paper, write a list of your favorite albums, and go search for FLAC torrents online. If you don't worry about piracy and all that mumble-jumble of course.

 

[Player1josh46]

 
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No, converting from low bitrate to high bitrate doesn't make any difference. It's like upscaling a photo that was originally 800x600 in resolution, up to 8000x6000 resolution - it'll still be as detailed as each pixel in the old version.
 
Best way to go about it is to grab a piece of paper, write a list of your favorite albums, and go search for FLAC torrents online. If you don't worry about piracy and all that mumble-jumble of course.

thought so, but people on this thread have said that there is almost no difference b/w 320kbps and flac files, plus getting flac files are way too much hassle.
 

 

[silverbox]

 
Quote:

No, converting from low bitrate to high bitrate doesn't make any difference. It's like upscaling a photo that was originally 800x600 in resolution, up to 8000x6000 resolution - it'll still be as detailed as each pixel in the old version.
 
Best way to go about it is to grab a piece of paper, write a list of your favorite albums, and go search for FLAC torrents online. If you don't worry about piracy and all that mumble-jumble of course.

Do you have any CDs? Take your fav CD and convert a few songs to flac and 320kbps mp3 and then compare.