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ibreakurface
United States664 Posts
On December 20 2010 03:37 Parsistamon wrote: Just bought a pari of Audio-Technica M50's yesterday, waiting for them to come in the mail. So excited! Me too  Going to be my 1st set of real headphones. PUMPED | ||
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Fyodor
Canada971 Posts
On December 21 2010 09:19 Myrmidon wrote: If you have any type of software volume control, isn't that theoretically not bit-perfect even if you're using an application running audio through WASAPI exclusive mode control (and thus bypassing Windows audio mixing/whatever)? Of course, software volume control is just decreasing the amplitude of the output through a constant multiplicative factor, which is about as benign an operation as you can do. But I'm not sure if there's anything wrong with just using the default audio processing stack. If you want to add some processing effects on top of all your audio, exclusive mode WASAPI would bypass that. If you don't want any of those effects, you can just turn them off yourself. On my setup with the foobar plugin, I've been unable to tell any difference using WASAPI exclusive mode and not. That's just one data point though. You can try it for yourself, but I don't think it's a must-do. I think pre-Vista, Windows maybe used to do weirder things with the audio, so kernel streaming was a hot topic. Maybe they still do weird things. I wouldn't be too surprised one way or the other. Some earlier sound cards and audio processing devices used to do some poor resampling causing noticeable distortions, and had other problems too. Perhaps nowadays, the issue is overblown in the audiophile community. PS: to be honest though, if you have Grados, doesn't that mean you're not interested in exact sound reproduction anyway? @hifriend: For that kind of music, I think something with a smiley-shaped frequency response would sound good. i.e. strong bass + strong treble. If you can stand how they fit/feel, Grados fit the bill. AKG is mostly known for being mids-centric, but apparently the modern K240 variants have fairly strong bass and treble relative to the mids. The K240 Studio, K240 Mk II, and K242 HD all have the same transducers, which are different and cheaper than those in the oldschool K240 models. Beyerdynamic DT-990 is also open and fits the description as well, though more people prefer the DT-880 in general. It might be out of your price range though. I have my volume at -0db. Effectively bit-perfect afaik. I use the analog volume pot on my amp to control volume. | ||
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DoctorPhil
Netherlands168 Posts
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Subversion
South Africa3627 Posts
On December 20 2010 11:12 Subversion wrote: am i correct in thinking that really good gaming headphones, i.e. ones with surround sound, wont benefit me at all by plugging them into my laptop? like i need a good soundcard or something to get the surround effect, correct? k i know this is a noob question but please explain this to me  im a headphone noob | ||
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gulati
United States2241 Posts
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/a3Gdv.jpg) + ![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/dPvdH.jpg) Profit. | ||
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
 bear in mind i am not some headset enthusiast but i own a 2.1 JBL creature II for a long time and i am very sensitive to the sound quality. I am not extremely picky but average sound effect wont satisfy me :D hope my 'review' of steelseries v2 can help some people!it is comfortable to wear for long hours and the mic quality is superb! | ||
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ChThoniC
United States536 Posts
I've had 3 pairs of JVC marshmallows, AKG K81DJs, and currently my home set is Beyer DT770s. Looking forward to hearing these! | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
On December 21 2010 09:42 Fyodor wrote: I have my volume at -0db. Effectively bit-perfect afaik. I use the analog volume pot on my amp to control volume. Yes, system volume at max, music player volume at -0 dB, etc. should mean that you get bit-perfect output. It's hard to guarantee without knowing the specifics of the implementation, but it probably doesn't matter much anyway. With analog volume control from a dual-gauge potentiometer, you need to worry about tracks being uneven, giving you channel imbalance. And so on. Unless you hear a problem, there are better things to be OCD about IMHO. On December 21 2010 10:10 Subversion wrote: k i know this is a noob question but please explain this to me im a headphone noobYou'd have to give us examples of "good gaming headphones." In general, the most expensive gaming headphones are lower in clarity, sound quality, etc. than the top headphones. The latter are more expensive, and the former are more expensive than they should be anyhow. The USB gaming headsets have their own (bad) soundcard internal to them, so that's bypassing your laptop onboard sound. For those, your laptop wouldn't matter. In some implementations, sources of sound are combined into a stereo mix in clever ways to give the impression of surround sound and position. This is a software solution, so you could be using any headphone here. See wikipedia about the HRTF (head-related transfer function). Essentially, some frequencies are attenuated more than others by your head, so a sound behind and to the left of you should reflect how your left and right ears would hear it in reality. But the actual HRTF depends on your particular head shape and ears, so generic implementations not tuned to your HRTF may sound a little inaccurate. Having bad laptop onboard sound would degrade the quality of the sound overall, so the advantage of having more accurate headphones would be diminished somewhat. It's hard to say by how much. Some gaming headsets have multiple physical transducers (speakers) inside each ear cup. I think these actually take in 5.1 sound from your sound card and map the audio signals to the different transducers inside the cups. Reports are that these are usually kind of gimmicky and don't work that well. I don't think any of these sets have great sound quality anyway. In any case, I don't think you'd be able to use these with your laptop, unless it has 5.1 outputs. But yes, it'd also be effected somewhat by the quality of your audio source. In general, you may not need a great source to get some kind of surround effect, though you'd want a better source to fully utilize any headphones. Most people find that different headphones make a bigger difference in the sound quality than different modern computer sources, so take that as you will. | ||
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Jonoman92
United States9101 Posts
I won't be using an amp or sound card and my motherboard' audio chipset is "Realtek ALC1200." Does anyone know if using on board sound is super terrible when I'm getting relatively nice headphones? | ||
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Slayem
8 Posts
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endy
Switzerland8970 Posts
On December 21 2010 01:45 Fyodor wrote: as for formats, 320kbps is usually fine afaik. The software is a very interesting question however. What I personally use is the WASAPI plugin for foobar2000. it sends an un-doctored or "bit-perfect" signal to your DAC. It doesn't let the windows mixing thing fool around with your music. But you had the right idea, you ideally don't want anything altering the sound before it hits the DAC. So disable SRS wow. (I don't think the realtek DACs (All integrated audio chips) can handle bit-perfect, it crashes my foobar when I try to pass control to it.) Grados don't mind having a solid amp but I'm not sure a FiiO would make a difference. It would probably just make it worse if you're planning on using it from your PC. FiiO does sell some neat DAC/amps that plug into some MP3 players tho. On December 21 2010 09:19 Myrmidon wrote: If you have any type of software volume control, isn't that theoretically not bit-perfect even if you're using an application running audio through WASAPI exclusive mode control (and thus bypassing Windows audio mixing/whatever)? Of course, software volume control is just decreasing the amplitude of the output through a constant multiplicative factor, which is about as benign an operation as you can do. But I'm not sure if there's anything wrong with just using the default audio processing stack. If you want to add some processing effects on top of all your audio, exclusive mode WASAPI would bypass that. If you don't want any of those effects, you can just turn them off yourself. On my setup with the foobar plugin, I've been unable to tell any difference using WASAPI exclusive mode and not. That's just one data point though. You can try it for yourself, but I don't think it's a must-do. I think pre-Vista, Windows maybe used to do weirder things with the audio, so kernel streaming was a hot topic. Maybe they still do weird things. I wouldn't be too surprised one way or the other. Some earlier sound cards and audio processing devices used to do some poor resampling causing noticeable distortions, and had other problems too. Perhaps nowadays, the issue is overblown in the audiophile community. PS: to be honest though, if you have Grados, doesn't that mean you're not interested in exact sound reproduction anyway? Thank you guys for both your answers, very helpful. I am not sure about what you imply by "PS: to be honest though, if you have Grados, doesn't that mean you're not interested in exact sound reproduction anyway?" I got the Grados RS60i because it seemed that it was the best value for 60$, and I don't think that for this budget I can get exact sound reproduction whatever the model of headphones I got. I might misunderstand you, but unless you have some personal resentment against Grado, you could just have said something like "since you only have a 60$ budget, don't expect exact sound reproduction anyway". I'm just asking, because I can still get refunded and get another model Even if I can't get exact sound reproduction anyway, I still want to get the best out of my headphones right ? I am using Windows XP so I guess your remark about pre-Vista is perfectly relevant, so I'll try the WASAPI exclusive mode control with volume set to -0db. Thanks | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
@endy: If you don't have an external amp doing the volume control (attenuation), setting volume to -0dB, max volume in Windows, etc. means you're going to get max volume out of your system. That would be bad. Fyodor is doing that because he has an external amp, and doing all that would be the way to get the cleanest signal to that amp. Don't do that if you're outputting directly to headphones. By the way, WASAPI is new to Windows Vista. About Grado...(1) I'm not trying to bash on Grado and (2) I wasn't implying that you're going to get crap out of $60. However, my understanding is that Grado headphones are not intended to be as accurate as possible. Instead, they're supposed to sound good. But I'm not familiar with Grado's whole lineup--maybe I'm wrong about the SR60i or maybe wrong about Grado in general. If you're interested, here are some headphone measurement graphs that illustrate what I'm talking about with Grado's lineup: + Show Spoiler [graphs, technical stuff] + The below graphs from this Japanese site show audio measurements with two different Grado headphones. In both tests, a test signal consisting of 100 Hz, 1000 Hz, and 10000 Hz sine waves put together was used. The graphs show the frequencies recorded during the test, which is primarily looking at the phenomenon known as intermodulation distortion. There are many other types of measurements you can do. Some people question whether these measurements can really describe the sound of the headphones at all, but that's a topic for another day. If the headphones were perfectly accurate, then the measurements would only show signal being present at 100 Hz, 1000 Hz, and 10000 Hz. What frequencies go in should come out. If the headphones are nonlinear (not accurate),then you would expect frequencies being recorded at sums and differences of 100 Hz, 1000 Hz, and 10000 Hz. i.e. frequencies other than what was input into the headphones ![[image loading]](http://www.geocities.jp/ryumatsuba/sr-60_ds.gif) Headphone 1 ![[image loading]](http://www.geocities.jp/ryumatsuba/sr-325i_ds.gif) Headphone 2 ![[image loading]](http://www.geocities.jp/ryumatsuba/dt880_ds.gif) Headphone 3 The first headphone did better than the second, right? And the third is the best. + Show Spoiler + Actually, the first graph was of the Grado SR60 ($60), while the second graph was of the Grado SR325i ($300)! The third graph was for the Beyerdynamic DT880 ($220). Many people find the Grado SR325i more to their liking than the DT880. | ||
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FruitGG
United States73 Posts
On December 21 2010 12:24 Jonoman92 wrote: Just bought some Sennheiser HD595s. Won't get to use them until early January since I'm getting them shipped to my dorm room, but I'm pretty excited seeing as I've only used cheap speakers/headphones in the past. I won't be using an amp or sound card and my motherboard' audio chipset is "Realtek ALC1200." Does anyone know if using on board sound is super terrible when I'm getting relatively nice headphones? It depends on your source.It's always "crap in ...crap out" , if you're source is bad then obviously the sound that it'll make is still bad. | ||
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drew-chan
Malaysia1517 Posts
Head Fi has always been one of the places to go to get information on high end audio equipment. The site above lists a couple of the better headphones for specific budgets, which i found extremely useful when i was first considering which pair of cans to get. I now own a HD385 (Quite good for general use, cheap too), ATH AD900 (Comfortable for some, but not really for me, tad to heavy), Denon D2k (Great for gaming, very comfortable), HD 595 (Surprisingly good even without proper amplification). I'm now looking for a good deal for an ATH AD2k. Also, I use a portable amp, nowhere near as good as full sized amps, but i need the portability more than anything else. | ||
Kinky
United States4126 Posts
On December 21 2010 08:37 Ravine wrote: Eeeeeeeeep!!! I've wanted to get those for ages but I couldn't see myself dropping 350 AUD for them!! Arghh! How much did you pay? I got them for 199usd on ebay. | ||
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gnr9292
90 Posts
took this picture myself they ROCK ![[image loading]](http://img1.dcinside.com/viewimage.php?id=earphone&no=29bcc427b48b77a16fb3dab004c86b6fb9d99c2ef276c942f4cd5ffd0d34b8032a4f49eb81192e71db7815d559f88590aa0f4151861ef4f49bef593eeaaa1a6ecd473f911f0c84&f_no=1dea8073b58261f52095e69258db343a) | ||
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neorj
Brazil10 Posts
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/x21By.jpg) 4yrs old.... works perfectly | ||
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LaLLsc2
United States502 Posts
On December 22 2010 17:10 neorj wrote: 4yrs old.... works perfectly That saying alot as I feel headphones, when compared to many other products available today, break much easier than the other products. Ive gone through probably 4 headsets in 4 years. I bought an insurance plan on my latest purchase. | ||
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god_forbids
United States111 Posts
 Have used them so long the pads are nasty but damn I love these cans. A great - and not too expensive - upgrade from the bottom of the line SR60/80s that everyone seems so fond of. I've been there too, but when you A/B them you will find real differences for the extra $. Just my 2c. | ||
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Fyodor
Canada971 Posts
On December 22 2010 17:24 LaLLsc2 wrote: That saying alot as I feel headphones, when compared to many other products available today, break much easier than the other products. Ive gone through probably 4 headsets in 4 years. I bought an insurance plan on my latest purchase. Since you used the word "headset" and "insurance plan" I assume you buy gaming trash at best buy? (forgive the language) Some headphones are more durable than others though. I'd like to see you try to break a DT 770. On December 22 2010 16:03 gnr9292 wrote: Using these cans took this picture myself they ROCK Beautiful cans there. Something about grados. | ||
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