|
On December 06 2011 04:09 lurchpanda wrote:
Beyer dt 880
Asus Xonar
If i got these two as a bundle, how much better quality would it be for listening to music through pandora and gaming?
1. Pandora Sound quality sucks, there is no reason investing in a good setup to listen to 192 kbps.
2. DT 800's need a amp
3. Theres little to no reason to buy the Asus Xonar, better invest a bit more and buy a external dac/amp (NuForce Icon 2 for example is a cheap option - 350 bucks).
4. Theres no such thing as 5.1 headphones.
I haven't liked any of the Beyer's I've tried so far, I just dislike their house sound, but thats all very individual =)
|
On December 05 2011 08:56 Cytokinesis wrote:
The beats pro (the 500$+ ones) actually have decent audio quality. It's quite good.
![[image loading]](http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/8189/350x311pxll355f3170dret.jpg)
Soo good it can rival the MEElectronics M9?
|
On December 07 2011 04:45 TorontoRaccoon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 04:09 lurchpanda wrote:
Beyer dt 880
Asus Xonar
If i got these two as a bundle, how much better quality would it be for listening to music through pandora and gaming?
1. Pandora Sound quality sucks, there is no reason investing in a good setup to listen to 192 kbps. 2. DT 800's need a amp 3. Theres little to no reason to buy the Asus Xonar, better invest a bit more and buy a external dac/amp (NuForce Icon 2 for example is a cheap option - 350 bucks). 4. Theres no such thing as 5.1 headphones. I haven't liked any of the Beyer's I've tried so far, I just dislike their house sound, but thats all very individual =)
Depending on which of the ASUS Xonars he bought, they supposedly function pretty well as a headphone amplifier. And why would you suggest the NuForce Icon 2 at 350? At that price, there are much better headphone amplifiers...
He didn't ask about 5.1 headphones existing or not, but yes, they do exist. Plug several speakers in the correct housing and you can try to emulate 5.1 sound...it's just not going to compare against audiophile headphones. Gaming headphones are better at positioning in shooters than many "audiophile" headphones too...
On December 07 2011 04:48 TorontoRaccoon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2011 08:56 Cytokinesis wrote:
The beats pro (the 500$+ ones) actually have decent audio quality. It's quite good. Soo good it can rival the MEElectronics M9?
Earbuds have generally worse sound quality than headphones for the price. Not to mention it's a completely different sound... not sure what you're trying to imply.
EDIT: Oh. Beats PRO should be priced around $200 for the sound quality, add another $50 for the noise cancelling, and maybe $50 for the brand and style... so stop with the hating. It's just overpriced, not crap.
|
On December 07 2011 05:23 Blisse wrote:
At that price, there are much better headphone amplifiers...
It has a DAC, one box solution, and the HDP's DAC is pure awesome!
Earbuds have generally worse sound quality than headphones for the price. Not to mention it's a completely different sound... not sure what you're trying to imply.
Yeah those ones are 19 bucks, and sound pretty damn good 
Noise cancelling is crap, not only it doesn't help - you cannot listen to the headphones if your batteries die, even without NC.
|
On December 07 2011 04:45 TorontoRaccoon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 04:09 lurchpanda wrote:
Beyer dt 880
Asus Xonar
If i got these two as a bundle, how much better quality would it be for listening to music through pandora and gaming?
3. Theres little to no reason to buy the Asus Xonar, better invest a bit more and buy a external dac/amp (NuForce Icon 2 for example is a cheap option - 350 bucks).
So, I know very little about sound systems and I'd like to educate myself a little as I'll probably invest some money into it soon since it'll be my system's weakest link. I'm only interested in headphones.
I currently own an Auzentech Bravura sound card with Steelseries Siberia v2, so a decent setup when compared to the average but still pretty modest given the gaming-oriented headphones and I guess a mid-end sound card. It makes me miss my modded HD555. However I'm thinking about getting something more, something a little bit "fancy" (A cheap amp and decent headphones  ).
I don't know much about headphone amps. From my understanding they're best used alongside headphones with high impedance, but could anyone explain or link to a website that explains the difference between low impedance and high impedance headphones? Basically I'd like how it works all around, without getting too much into the technical details.
I took a look at the "NuForce Icon-2" that you mentioned and I was wondering how does it compare to my much-cheaper sound card? Maybe it's a silly question but I'll run with it.
Thanks.
|
On December 07 2011 05:27 TorontoRaccoon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 05:23 Blisse wrote:
At that price, there are much better headphone amplifiers...
It has a DAC, one box solution, and the HDP's DAC is pure awesome! Show nested quote +
Earbuds have generally worse sound quality than headphones for the price. Not to mention it's a completely different sound... not sure what you're trying to imply.
Yeah those ones are 19 bucks, and sound pretty damn good Noise cancelling is crap, not only it doesn't help - you cannot listen to the headphones if your batteries die, even without NC.
No. That's the Icon HD or the HDP. The Icon-2 has a good amplifier with a mediocre DAC.
And read the edit above. Your ME-whatever is pathetic in comparison. Stop with the blind hate.
Noise cancelling is amazing. You've clearly never seen a need for noise cancelling, so don't brush it off as useless for people who want or need it. Travel by plane or train much? A god send. Battery life is 2 weeks or so for heavier use. Perfectly acceptable.
|
On December 06 2011 13:52 lurchpanda wrote:Show nested quote +
You should be careful there. Those are the Pro (250 ohms) version. There's a Premium 250 ohms as well. The DT 770/880/990 Pro versions clamp a little harder and tend to be priced lower. The difference in clamping makes a difference in the sound quality, even if the drivers were the same--and people dispute whether or not the drivers are the same (aside from impedance) even among the 32/250/600 ohms variants.
Well if they pinch down harder that might be an issue since i wear glasses, which could make them very uncomfortable. Also could you possibly comment on the quality of the amp that come with the deal that the other guy posted? thanks for the help so far guys
Even the Pro shouldn't clamp down too hard (and you can bend the metal headband without issue, assuming it's like the 770 Pro). The clamping force should be distributed among the large pads pretty easily, so it's probably not an issue unless maybe you have certain very thick frame glasses.
Behringer HA400 is a small headphone amplifier by a budget brand pro audio company. In general the pro audio products aren't ripping you off, and may actually be manufactured in large quantities, unlike most audiophile gear where the majority of products are backed by snake oil. However, the intended usage for this product is for cheap non-critical distribution to multiple different people wearing different headphones (i.e. sound quality not that important). Thus the sound quality may not be that great.
In particular, the HA400 has a large output impedance and is unsuitable for driving most low-impedance headphones, so it's generally okay with something like the 250 ohms DT880 but not some other headphones. Data sheet says 40 mW output into 100 ohms, with 80 ohms output impedance. So it's probably like 30 mW into 250 ohms, doing some math...Unless you listen to music fairly loud, with peaks hitting around 110 dB SPL, it's probably okay at least in terms of volume. If you listen to any type of popular music, that's usually dynamic range compressed, then peaks of 110 dB are super loud since the average is not too much below that. Possibly with some types of audiophile classical or jazz recordings that are very very quiet on average, would there be an issue.
As mentioned earlier, even if it has enough power, sound quality may not be the best. I wouldn't expect it to be terrible though. But even with high-end headphones a low-end sources, the headphones usually contribute more distortion, so it's not really a huge deal...
Input is 1/4" TRS so you may need an adapter, but that's not expensive.
Asus Xonar ST / STX are very high quality (higher fidelity than most playback gear including most audiophile stuff that's more expensive) unless possibly there's significant interference from other internal PC components that are mucking it up.
http://www.stereophile.com/content/asus-xonar-essence-ststx-soundcards-measurements
Beats Solo is supposed to be much worse than the Pro. Meelectronics IEMs are generally good values for the money, but that's a large stretch to say the leas, for $19 IEMs to beat that.
Active noise canceling is good for some sounds and useless for others. As you say, they perform optimally for train/plane sounds. I think some kind of deep-insertion IEMs would do much better if isolation is that important though, and they'd actually be highly attenuating more spurious noises (which are probably more distracting) as well.
|
Double posting, but this is a completely different topic and above post was long enough already.
On December 07 2011 05:38 Djzapz wrote:So, I know very little about sound systems and I'd like to educate myself a little as I'll probably invest some money into it soon since it'll be my system's weakest link. I'm only interested in headphones. I currently own an Auzentech Bravura sound card with Steelseries Siberia v2, so a decent setup when compared to the average but still pretty modest given the gaming-oriented headphones and I guess a mid-end sound card. It makes me miss my modded HD555. However I'm thinking about getting something more, something a little bit "fancy" (A cheap amp and decent headphones ). I don't know much about headphone amps. From my understanding they're best used alongside headphones with high impedance, but could anyone explain or link to a website that explains the difference between low impedance and high impedance headphones? Basically I'd like how it works all around, without getting too much into the technical details. I took a look at the "NuForce Icon-2" that you mentioned and I was wondering how does it compare to my much-cheaper sound card? Maybe it's a silly question but I'll run with it. Thanks.
(emphasis added) -- this is not really true; see below
Weakest link is often still the headphones.
Headphone amplifiers are to optionally (1) boost the signal level, i.e. make things louder and (2) make things sound better.
Regarding (1):
Some high-end headphones tend to be very significantly quieter than most cheaper stuff. This has to do with both impedance and sensitivity. Higher impedance and lower sensitivity mean that more output voltage is needed. The output voltage level is directly related to the volume you get with headphones. Thus to even play your music at good volume levels, you may need an external amp, since the integrated amplifier of whatever you're using may not reach levels high enough to be satisfactory.
Regarding (2):
Some people prefer amps that intentionally change the input signal so the output is something that's a little "enhanced" (or you may say "degraded" depending on your perspective). If the goal is high fidelity (and thus not trying to add enhancements), it doesn't really cost too much to do a good enough job that it's pretty much impossible to distinguish it from an "ideal" amp by listening to it.
In general, lower impedance and lower sensitivity headphones tend to be more difficult for an amplifier to drive accurately without undue distortions. Higher impedance is easier to drive accurately, so for high-impedance headphones, you're mostly just looking for something with enough power.
Some NuForce products might be good, but I'd avoid them in general because they're very sloppy with design in general. It doesn't seem like they really test their gear before releasing it, which is true for a lot of shitty audiophile products manufacturers**. e.g. uDAC-2 clips the top (and bottom) of music when the peak is at max digital volume (regardless of the volume level you set), this incident with the CDP-8 (scroll to bottom and next page), etc.
**Note that not all audiophile products manufacturers are shitty, just some or many.
|
T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On December 07 2011 04:45 TorontoRaccoon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 04:09 lurchpanda wrote:
Beyer dt 880
Asus Xonar
If i got these two as a bundle, how much better quality would it be for listening to music through pandora and gaming?
1. Pandora Sound quality sucks, there is no reason investing in a good setup to listen to 192 kbps. 2. DT 800's need a amp 3. Theres little to no reason to buy the Asus Xonar, better invest a bit more and buy a external dac/amp (NuForce Icon 2 for example is a cheap option - 350 bucks). 4. Theres no such thing as 5.1 headphones. I haven't liked any of the Beyer's I've tried so far, I just dislike their house sound, but thats all very individual =)
Nuforce products are crap. They're all marketing. Both their high end and low end products measure extremely poorly. Unfortunately I bought a u-dac2 before the scandal came out. Even before the scandal I thought the sound from my galaxy s was better than from my u-dac2.
|
@Myrmidon, thanks for that. I was going to try to respond with something like that, but couldn't write it without being confusing, so I just scrapped it. I was also going to say you would be around any time soon with that kind of response anyways :d
Can't really say anything about the NuForce complaints except that for the most part, if you don't require perfect output, it doesn't really concern you. But still shouldn't support those kinds of practices.
Interestingly, the guy who points out what certainly look like stupid design and manufacturing flaws says his sounds fine, too.
Sounds fine, measures shitty.
Also, IEMs are usually more painful than over-ears for extended use, say when travelling. And you want to get rid of with the ANC is the engine sound. It's mainly preference of what sounds you want to get rid of though. The high pitched screech is less annoying than engine sounds I find.
|
On December 07 2011 06:26 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 04:45 TorontoRaccoon wrote:On December 06 2011 04:09 lurchpanda wrote:
Beyer dt 880
Asus Xonar
If i got these two as a bundle, how much better quality would it be for listening to music through pandora and gaming?
1. Pandora Sound quality sucks, there is no reason investing in a good setup to listen to 192 kbps. 2. DT 800's need a amp 3. Theres little to no reason to buy the Asus Xonar, better invest a bit more and buy a external dac/amp (NuForce Icon 2 for example is a cheap option - 350 bucks). 4. Theres no such thing as 5.1 headphones. I haven't liked any of the Beyer's I've tried so far, I just dislike their house sound, but thats all very individual =) Nuforce products are crap. They're all marketing. Both their high end and low end products measure extremely poorly. Unfortunately I bought a u-dac2 before the scandal came out. Even before the scandal I thought the sound from my galaxy s was better than from my u-dac2.
So true pretty funny read here
|
On December 07 2011 06:30 Blisse wrote:
Also, IEMs are usually more painful than over-ears for extended use, say when travelling. And you want to get rid of with the ANC is the engine sound. It's mainly preference of what sounds you want to get rid of though. The high pitched screech is less annoying than engine sounds I find.
Well, IEM fitting is very very very person-dependent, even more so than fullsize headphones, which is a big issue that I was conveniently ignoring. That's the reason for custom molds on the expensive models after all. I would guess that most people could find some tips that are suitable for the if they looked hard enough, but that it's just not going to work for others no matter what.
Admittedly I can't deal with the super-deep multi-flange stuff, but to me the Klipsch oval tips (medium or large), for example, are suitable for wearing for hours and maybe more comfortable than any fullsize closed headphone to me. And with just that, that's more isolation than any fullsize headphone I think (but probably less than fullsize headphone with ANC for low-pitched repetitive sounds).
|
Klipsch had the X10's on sale during black friday for like 99 bucks sob id buy another pair just to have em for such a price =(
|
Thanks Myrmidon, that was very helpful but I'm still a bit confused...
For one, I forgot to ask, what are DACs? Digital to analog something, but what is the pertinence here? I understand that there are some DAC/AMP combos, what's the deal? =P
Also, let's say hypothetically that I bought Sennheiser HD650's, (their impedance is 300ohm, I don't know what other specs are relevant to the following question) --- basically, what kind of device would I need to buy to get good sound out of them if my source is my computer?
Thanks again.
|
DAC is a digital-to-analog converter. On your computer or CD or music player, music data is stored in digital format, so the digital audio stream needs to be converted to analog (voltage) values, which over time look like a squiggly waveform. The goal is to apply that squiggly waveform to the headphones, and the headphone drivers will more or less move to follow that input signal, thus creating vibrations, thus creating sound waves with a pattern that matches that squiggly waveform, which you hear as music.
In most contexts "DAC" refers to the chip that does the digital-to-analog conversion, but for consumer audio, people are usually referring to the entire device (DAC chip + PCB + other components on that PCB + case, etc.). It may or may not include an integrated headphone amplifier.
So the output of the DAC chip is a squiggly waveform, but if you were to connect that to headphones, the signal would no longer look like anything like it was supposed to, as a DAC (and most devices) are terrible at maintaining their outputs when connected to a relatively low impedance load like headphones. Also the output level may not be suitable. That's why some kind of headphone amplifier--integrated or not--is needed in between the DAC and headphones.
Anything with an analog audio output that's not reading from an analog source, has an integrated DAC of some kind.
HD 650 is pretty easy to drive because of the high impedance, despite what some people think. It's 300 ohms and the sensitivity is 103 dB SPL / 1V input, nominally. (In practice, both impedance and sensitivity vary over frequency, see here.) The only problem is that they are somewhat insensitive, so they need just a little bit above 2V output to reach 110 dB SPL.
Depending on the integrated output of the computer, you will probably get good sound out of them with HD 650s. It just could be a little bit better with a dedicated amplifier of higher quality. Also most integrated computer outputs don't do over 1V output, so it could be a little quiet unless you get something with a stronger output.
Cheapest possible solution with a strong enough output is something like that HA400 listed earlier, or maybe some type of CMoy variant.
However, getting a better amplifier doesn't guarantee that your onboard sound's DAC is performing very well (what with all the noisy crap from the CPU and GPU power circuitry nearby, and other high-speed switching noises from I/O), even regardless of what the datasheet says it's capable of. It might be.
So you could get an external sound card or dedicated DAC+amp or an internal sound card (but internal ones may also be close to all of that bad stuff). Some people say the FiiO E10 is very good for the price. It definitely has enough power, at least.
|
Speaking of DACs, would anyone be able to recommend me a USB DAC that would pair well with a Little Dot MKIII amp and a Sennheiser HD600? I'm purchasing an audiophile setup for my father for Christmas and realized that he will be listening mostly out of a PC so a DAC will be necessary since he doesn't have a sound card.
I've done a bit of research and read a few good reviews on the HRT Music Streamer II. I've also looked into the Little Dot DAC I which seems to be a more expensive if not more sleek and well made DAC (and the fact that it is more expensive than the amp is certainly something). Any other recommendations or concerns would be greatly appreciated.
|
On December 07 2011 08:19 TorontoRaccoon wrote:
Klipsch had the X10's on sale during black friday for like 99 bucks sob id buy another pair just to have em for such a price =(
Yeah I got in on that deal because I was curious about the sound.
To be honest, I'm not too impressed by the sound quality and the construction. But it's pretty comfortable so it'll be my backup IEM's.
|
T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On December 07 2011 11:21 c0ldfusion wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 08:19 TorontoRaccoon wrote:
Klipsch had the X10's on sale during black friday for like 99 bucks sob id buy another pair just to have em for such a price =( Yeah I got in on that deal because I was curious about the sound. To be honest, I'm not too impressed by the sound quality and the construction. But it's pretty comfortable so it'll be my backup IEM's.
What are you comparing it to?
|
On December 07 2011 11:48 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 11:21 c0ldfusion wrote:On December 07 2011 08:19 TorontoRaccoon wrote:
Klipsch had the X10's on sale during black friday for like 99 bucks sob id buy another pair just to have em for such a price =( Yeah I got in on that deal because I was curious about the sound. To be honest, I'm not too impressed by the sound quality and the construction. But it's pretty comfortable so it'll be my backup IEM's. What are you comparing it to?
For the same form factor/price - UE triple-fi.
EDIT:
Alright, I'll give a more detailed comparison. A lot of reviews out there say that the X10s are lacking highs when compared with the triple-fis but have better lows. I haven't spent that much time with the X10s, but I find the highs to be sufficient to my ears. Also, I don't think the bass is much better than the triple-fis. It somewhat -feels- like they're reaching a little bit lower and that the lows are -slightly- more detailed. For me, the real drawback are the mids. The mids just don't have the same even/smooth feel of the triple-fis.
Bottom line - they're much better than all my cheaper IEMs like S4s, Mee M6's, Shure E3Cs, etc. But, to my ears, they're worse than the triple-fis overall SQ-wise.
|
Triple-fi is so uncomfortable its not even funny. X10's are single driver, no point comparing. I paid 350 bucks - I though it was kind of ovepriced, but for 99 bucks? Pfft give me five!
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/838/350x311pxll355f3170dret.jpg/)
