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On June 29 2014 13:59 DefMatrixUltra wrote:
If the M50s color the sound, why are they sold as monitoring phones? That's the thing I don't get. It's like trying to paint with sunglasses on.
...
Probably for the same reason simple headsets are marketed as being "F0R G4M3RZ!" Seems like typical marketing hype, although the M50s are probably much less "deceitful" than most gaming products. Like I said, I haven't personally heard the M50s myself so I can't attest to how much they really color the sound (which would be subjective anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter  ), but people seem to agree that they hype the lows/mids, if only a little bit. There are mixed reviews out there from knowledgeable people; some think they're great for monitoring at this price range, some think they're horrible. Par for the course, right?
Still, as far as monitoring is concerned, it's arguably more important to understand your headphones than anything else, right? Not that it's a bad thing to have flat, accurate headphones, but it's certainly not impossible to mix on colored headphones if you're comfortable and familiar with them.
They just seem to hit the right price/performance mark for a lot of people. Flat enough for most bedroom producers, enough clarity for entry-level audiophiles, and anything will sound amazing to the uninitiated Apple earbud/Beats by Dre generation.
There's a picture of Dr. Dre wearing M50s out there, for whatever that's worth haha
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I bought a fidelio L2 and my experience with it has been pretty damn good.
I came from a earphone that costed around 250usd and this headphone blows it away.
The music is a lot more 3D, a lot of depth and I am hearing a lot more sounds that I did not hear or experience in its "true" form before.
I think it's one of the best bang for bucks headphones out there imo.
I owned a bose quite comfort and this headphone is even better in some departments.
Only thing I dislike is the noise canceling is not great since it is a hybrid headphone
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Germany54 Posts
Hey guys I already posted in the Headphone enthusiast thread but got only very few responses, maybe more people read this thread so here goes: roughly 3 years ago i bought some allesandro ms-1 (after getting a recommendation on TL) and i really liked them. Sadly the cable broke in a rather annoying place where its not easy to fix myself and the local music stores wont fix them either. Sending them in also isnt an option because i ordererd them from the US (no retailers in germany).
So now i need a new pair of Headphones and would like to get some recommendations again. (I wont buy the Alessandros again because dealing with customs is a pain and getting them fixed as i said above aswell) I mainly listen to Rock, Metal and some Blues (Led Zeppelin, Guns n Roses, Black Sabbath, In Flames, Muse, Pearl Jam are some of my favourite bands). I also use them to play Games (but thats low priority, I care about the sound of the music) and used my old Headphones to plug them into my Guitar Amp from time to time (you can get some nice volume for yourself without annoying the neighbours). For listening to music a use them on my PC with a Asus Xonar Essence STX
Im looking at a price range of ~100-150€ (if its a bit above I won't mind).
So if anyone has any recommendations they would be very much appreciated, thanks!
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On June 30 2014 21:17 eLyx wrote:
Hey guys I already posted in the Headphone enthusiast thread but got only very few responses, maybe more people read this thread so here goes: roughly 3 years ago i bought some allesandro ms-1 (after getting a recommendation on TL) and i really liked them. Sadly the cable broke in a rather annoying place where its not easy to fix myself and the local music stores wont fix them either. Sending them in also isnt an option because i ordererd them from the US (no retailers in germany).
So now i need a new pair of Headphones and would like to get some recommendations again. (I wont buy the Alessandros again because dealing with customs is a pain and getting them fixed as i said above aswell) I mainly listen to Rock, Metal and some Blues (Led Zeppelin, Guns n Roses, Black Sabbath, In Flames, Muse, Pearl Jam are some of my favourite bands). I also use them to play Games (but thats low priority, I care about the sound of the music) and used my old Headphones to plug them into my Guitar Amp from time to time (you can get some nice volume for yourself without annoying the neighbours). For listening to music a use them on my PC with a Asus Xonar Essence STX
Im looking at a price range of ~100-150€ (if its a bit above I won't mind).
So if anyone has any recommendations they would be very much appreciated, thanks!
I used these for many many years(595 before them), and for your budget I really recommend them. Sennheiser HD598
I also had it paired with the Xonar Essence ST soundcard, especially for Metal which I think the sound signature suits very well. They are light, and very comfortable and you will use them for hours on end and not even notice any discomfort.
Edit: Also has a detatchable cable so if yours break for whatever reason can just get another one.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
Heya people
Not sure if many people read/post here but i'l give it a shot anyway:
I wasn't really much of an audio person (never saw fit to invest in it over things like monitor or CPU) but recently i have talked a bit about it and become more curious. After a generous gift from a friend, i now have a pair of Sony MDR-V6's (he wanted me to try those specifically) and they're pretty awesome. I understand that they are supposed to be studio headphones, and more neutral/uncolored approach to sound rather than crazy bass heavy etc which is ok for me. I'd love to own like three pairs of super expensive headphones which sound quite different, but in the end without living in a magical world with free hardware raining everywhere, these are great :D
Anyway my question - i am using onboard audio on a z87x-ud3h. Is there an affordable sound card/product (think ~£20-30) that would make a significant difference to sound? Is there anything in a price range higher than that which would be completely mind blowing night and day difference? Just in general, now that i have something more than randomly bought cheap headphones, i'm wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Thanks if any replies!
edit: My uses are just listening to various styles of music, gaming etc. Oh and osu! of course! :D
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On June 28 2014 04:21 WindWolf wrote:
I need some help choosing new Headphones primarily for music listening since my other pair broke a while back. Some requirements and such
1) Max 1000 SEK (~150 USD) Budget
2) Closed, Cirumaural Headphones good for a wide range of different music genres
3) Has enough room for a bit bigger head (my head is a bit bigger than average)
Big bonus if the cable/connectors/whatever is a bit better, as these will be used when I'm taking walks or are otherwise on the go
Changed my mind, they don't have to be closed ones. Otherwise everything else still applies
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On July 07 2014 16:08 Cyro wrote:
Anyway my question - i am using onboard audio on a z87x-ud3h. Is there an affordable sound card/product (think ~£20-30) that would make a significant difference to sound? Is there anything in a price range higher than that which would be completely mind blowing night and day difference? Just in general, now that i have something more than randomly bought cheap headphones, i'm wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes.
That price range is quite tight. On the other hand, you have an onboard card, which is generally going to be limited at best even with poor quality speakers/headphones. It's hard to say exactly what your price range will be (taxes and imports and all that), but the Xonar line of cards looks reasonable (can't recommend it personally as I've never owned or worked with one). They each come with a basic headphone amplifier and will undoubtedly sound better in a very noticeable and gripping way than your onboard system.
Once again I'll stress that I can't personally recommend it, but it seems like a reasonable option given your position. The sky's the limit with spending with sound gear so never go at it without a budget. It's quite difficult to find audiocentric reviews for such products since those guys tend to go all out with DACs and amplifiers etc. pretty much bypassing this whole "lower" section of the market.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
On July 07 2014 20:41 DefMatrixUltra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2014 16:08 Cyro wrote:
Anyway my question - i am using onboard audio on a z87x-ud3h. Is there an affordable sound card/product (think ~£20-30) that would make a significant difference to sound? Is there anything in a price range higher than that which would be completely mind blowing night and day difference? Just in general, now that i have something more than randomly bought cheap headphones, i'm wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes. That price range is quite tight. On the other hand, you have an onboard card, which is generally going to be limited at best even with poor quality speakers/headphones. It's hard to say exactly what your price range will be (taxes and imports and all that), but the Xonar line of cards looks reasonable (can't recommend it personally as I've never owned or worked with one). They each come with a basic headphone amplifier and will undoubtedly sound better in a very noticeable and gripping way than your onboard system. Once again I'll stress that I can't personally recommend it, but it seems like a reasonable option given your position. The sky's the limit with spending with sound gear so never go at it without a budget. It's quite difficult to find audiocentric reviews for such products since those guys tend to go all out with DACs and amplifiers etc. pretty much bypassing this whole "lower" section of the market.
Thanks
You can't really compare with prices outside of other regions, i guess you're just looking at whatever we have here on sites like www.overclockers.co.uk and www.amazon.co.uk . US vs UK prices are quite amusing sometimes, such as the same monitor costing $260 in US, while costing $450 here with exchange rates
I could spend some, i'm just trying to maintain a pretty high end system with limited income so any real amount of money and i'd be cutting from something that could be more important to me, for years i had only terrible audio hardware so i can't really make a judgement for what the improvement would be, or what it would be worth to me, which is why i'm a little budget-cautious
Here for example:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?catid=11&groupid=701&sortby=priceAsc
I could spend more than £20-30, but that's my "easy buy" price that i can grab without much thought, if it's completely outside of that budget range then it would have to be "worth" ;p
£30 is like 55 canadian dollars
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On July 07 2014 21:16 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2014 20:41 DefMatrixUltra wrote:On July 07 2014 16:08 Cyro wrote:
Anyway my question - i am using onboard audio on a z87x-ud3h. Is there an affordable sound card/product (think ~£20-30) that would make a significant difference to sound? Is there anything in a price range higher than that which would be completely mind blowing night and day difference? Just in general, now that i have something more than randomly bought cheap headphones, i'm wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes. That price range is quite tight. On the other hand, you have an onboard card, which is generally going to be limited at best even with poor quality speakers/headphones. It's hard to say exactly what your price range will be (taxes and imports and all that), but the Xonar line of cards looks reasonable (can't recommend it personally as I've never owned or worked with one). They each come with a basic headphone amplifier and will undoubtedly sound better in a very noticeable and gripping way than your onboard system. Once again I'll stress that I can't personally recommend it, but it seems like a reasonable option given your position. The sky's the limit with spending with sound gear so never go at it without a budget. It's quite difficult to find audiocentric reviews for such products since those guys tend to go all out with DACs and amplifiers etc. pretty much bypassing this whole "lower" section of the market. Thanks You can't really compare with prices outside of other regions, i guess you're just looking at whatever we have here on sites like www.overclockers.co.uk and www.amazon.co.uk . US vs UK prices are quite amusing sometimes, such as the same monitor costing $260 in US, while costing $450 here with exchange rates I could spend some, i'm just trying to maintain a pretty high end system with limited income so any real amount of money and i'd be cutting from something that could be more important to me, for years i had only terrible audio hardware so i can't really make a judgement for what the improvement would be, or what it would be worth to me, which is why i'm a little budget-cautious Here for example: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?catid=11&groupid=701&sortby=priceAscI could spend more than £20-30, but that's my "easy buy" price that i can grab without much thought, if it's completely outside of that budget range then it would have to be "worth" ;p £30 is like 55 canadian dollars
A friend of mine uses the Sony MDR-V6 with the Xonar DG, and although they sound better than the onboard, the difference is not really night and day, but its there. He has a worse onboard soundcard than you though, so its hard to say how much of an improvement it would be. i would not suggest looking at higher end soundcards though, not for the Sony MDR-V6, as far as i know those cans will not really be worth it, unless you plan on getting better cans in the future.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
On July 09 2014 23:30 issh wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2014 21:16 Cyro wrote:On July 07 2014 20:41 DefMatrixUltra wrote:On July 07 2014 16:08 Cyro wrote:
Anyway my question - i am using onboard audio on a z87x-ud3h. Is there an affordable sound card/product (think ~£20-30) that would make a significant difference to sound? Is there anything in a price range higher than that which would be completely mind blowing night and day difference? Just in general, now that i have something more than randomly bought cheap headphones, i'm wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes. That price range is quite tight. On the other hand, you have an onboard card, which is generally going to be limited at best even with poor quality speakers/headphones. It's hard to say exactly what your price range will be (taxes and imports and all that), but the Xonar line of cards looks reasonable (can't recommend it personally as I've never owned or worked with one). They each come with a basic headphone amplifier and will undoubtedly sound better in a very noticeable and gripping way than your onboard system. Once again I'll stress that I can't personally recommend it, but it seems like a reasonable option given your position. The sky's the limit with spending with sound gear so never go at it without a budget. It's quite difficult to find audiocentric reviews for such products since those guys tend to go all out with DACs and amplifiers etc. pretty much bypassing this whole "lower" section of the market. Thanks You can't really compare with prices outside of other regions, i guess you're just looking at whatever we have here on sites like www.overclockers.co.uk and www.amazon.co.uk . US vs UK prices are quite amusing sometimes, such as the same monitor costing $260 in US, while costing $450 here with exchange rates I could spend some, i'm just trying to maintain a pretty high end system with limited income so any real amount of money and i'd be cutting from something that could be more important to me, for years i had only terrible audio hardware so i can't really make a judgement for what the improvement would be, or what it would be worth to me, which is why i'm a little budget-cautious Here for example: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?catid=11&groupid=701&sortby=priceAscI could spend more than £20-30, but that's my "easy buy" price that i can grab without much thought, if it's completely outside of that budget range then it would have to be "worth" ;p £30 is like 55 canadian dollars A friend of mine uses the Sony MDR-V6 with the Xonar DG, and although they sound better than the onboard, the difference is not really night and day, but its there. He has a worse onboard soundcard than you though, so its hard to say how much of an improvement it would be. i would not suggest looking at higher end soundcards though, not for the Sony MDR-V6, as far as i know those cans will not really be worth it, unless you plan on getting better cans in the future.
They're miles better than what i used to have (or actually anything that i've heard before, as everyone i know just uses like free ipod earphones..) and i heard that i should get a sound card even with bad headphones etc, because it was "more important" than going up to decent headphones
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No, the headphones are much more important unless whatever gear you have spits out gargling noises, hisses, or other very obvious problems.
As for how much better or different a Xonar DG / DGX might be, it depends on the onboard and that's next to impossible to know because audio is analog and thus performance depends on electronics implementations and interactions that you'd never really be able to know without sophisticated testing (or very careful comparisons).
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
Ok, thanks.
Would i have to give up SLI capability on z87 (or any of the similar x16 or x8/x8 chipsets) to use one of those, or do they work in the other pci slots?
I don't really know how to read audio reviews, i'm kinda on the fence because i want one but my main concerns are pricing, having an important pci-e slot taken, if i will actually notice a blind testable difference, the higher audio latency etc. It seems like these sound cards add latency instead of lowering it(?) or are there some that notably lower latency as well? Quality is main concern, but i'd feel bad if latency was massively affected
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Should work fine in any pci slot, ive tested my HD 598 for a week with and without my soundcard, the difference isnt very big for me (using xonar dx) the only issue i have is that my soundcard is very close to my GPU, which makes it that whenever i have both my headphones and microphone plugged into the soundcard i can hear interference from what i think is my GPU (?). But when i only use my headphones it works fine, so i just use my mic through the mobo.
As for latency i dont really know, i dont notice a difference at all. Then again i use different headphones and a different soundcard, i hope somebody that knows more will answer your questions though.
That said i seriously doubt cheap soundcards like the xonar dx/dg will do much for latency, whenever it'd be lowering/higher.
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On July 10 2014 00:30 Cyro wrote:
Ok, thanks.
Would i have to give up SLI capability on z87 (or any of the similar x16 or x8/x8 chipsets) to use one of those, or do they work in the other pci slots?
I don't really know how to read audio reviews, i'm kinda on the fence because i want one but my main concerns are pricing, having an important pci-e slot taken, if i will actually notice a blind testable difference, the higher audio latency etc. It seems like these sound cards add latency instead of lowering it(?) or are there some that notably lower latency as well? Quality is main concern, but i'd feel bad if latency was massively affected
Ok, you'll have to forgive me. Here is a better-researched answer.
I have a baked-in bias against onboard sound because in the early days they were crap. They were slow, they had dropouts, they had terrible specifications and poor implementation of chipsets. There was no redeeming quality they had. But these days, it's different. These days you can put your hands on a decent onboard sound system without necessarily looking for it.
I looked into the specs for your motherboard and found your onboard sound. It's actually pretty good, and there is a minimal difference between using that and getting a Xonar. One thing I'll note is be sure to plug your headphones directly into the onboard card rather than using the extension wire into the front of your case. Those extensions are unshielded and will add tons of noise.
What are the differences between the two? Well it's hard to say exactly as the exact implementation specs for the onboard sound are difficult to find, but probably the Xonar has a better amp. That essentially just means it will be louder at the same system level, not much of an advantage. The other thing the Xonar will have is lots of options (included in its software) to EQ or otherwise process the incoming signal, which it will do using its onboard computational power (i.e. not using your CPU). But that is neither here nor there as that's just coloring the sound the way you like it - in terms of accurate representation of signal, the Xonar will have no real advantage over your onboard chip.
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On the topic of latency:
Every device that does computation (and even some that don't) adds latency to a signal chain. Thankfully, these days this latency is measured in microseconds. The principle behind the Haas effect says that humans basically know no difference between 0 ms and ~20 ms when it comes to listening. So unless you've got over 20,000 microseconds of latency, you probably won't even notice it unless you are doing something like recording + monitoring an instrument or you're trained to find the difference. What happens quite often is people are using tools to measure the latency of their signals and finding "ohdear I've got over a thousand units of latency!!!11" when really it's not that big a deal.
However, I will say that Windowsland is audio hell. This could be a huge-ass post, but to put it briefly, the infrastructure in Windows is terrible for audio (anyone remember the bug in Vista that caused sound playback to slow network speed?). This is exacerbated when companies don't put a lot of QA on their drivers. They can get tripped up by the confusing interactions with Windows when coding their drivers and bugs can go unfixed for ages. So it wouldn't surprise if me e.g. Asus has shit drivers for a sound card they release that cause >20ms latency in some systems. In terms of hardware, sound cards (as hardware) should theoretically never increase latency (unless you are doing some intensive post-processing on them). But hardware is often only as good as its drivers, unfortunately.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
The principle behind the Haas effect says that humans basically know no difference between 0 ms and ~20 ms when it comes to listening.
But i probably play osu! more than any other game, where at the very least you have to manually correct for that kind of offset. If you're hitting beats on average 5ms early to 5ms late.. having that shifted to 15-25ms late is kinda a big deal.
I'd imagine reaction times would be later too, i mean on audio reaction time test i get ~130ms or so. If audio was 20ms later.. wouldn't it show 150? It's the same when reacting to stuff in games, i use audio cue's because it's easier and faster than visual
I don't actually know the raw audio latencies, i only saw data for increased microphone in to sound out latency, so i'm not sure how big it is for just audio played on system, to hearing it
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Can anyone recommend a quality headset with mic monitoring/sidetone (whatever the cool kids call it?)
A long time ago I had a pair of turtlebeach x11's and one thing that I miss on any other headset I try is being able to hear my own voice. The x11's are discontinued so I can't just buy a new pair
(((
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
On July 10 2014 08:51 Thaniri wrote:
Can anyone recommend a quality headset with mic monitoring/sidetone (whatever the cool kids call it?)
A long time ago I had a pair of turtlebeach x11's and one thing that I miss on any other headset I try is being able to hear my own voice. The x11's are discontinued so I can't just buy a new pair
(((
Windows has that feature.. "listen to" that you can enable on any mic, but it sometimes has latency to it which can be disturbing or mess with your brain. I always use it
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On July 10 2014 08:30 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +The principle behind the Haas effect says that humans basically know no difference between 0 ms and ~20 ms when it comes to listening. But i probably play osu! more than any other game, where at the very least you have to manually correct for that kind of offset. If you're hitting beats on average 5ms early to 5ms late.. having that shifted to 15-25ms late is kinda a big deal. I'd imagine reaction times would be later too, i mean on audio reaction time test i get ~130ms or so. If audio was 20ms later.. wouldn't it show 150? It's the same when reacting to stuff in games, i use audio cue's because it's easier and faster than visual I don't actually know the raw audio latencies, i only saw data for increased microphone in to sound out latency, so i'm not sure how big it is for just audio played on system, to hearing it
What I was talking about was aimed at listening. Other things are complicated.
For example, that osu game you're talking about. When you say hitting the beat 5ms early or late, you're making some assumptions. The fact is that the game can teach you to be "on time" even if there is a large delay in the audio chain (and that's assuming you have 0 latency in the visual chain, which you don't) because you will get punished for being late until you don't do it anymore. Once you've trained yourself to do it properly, you will think that everything is synced even though your brain is making up for various kinds of latency. That has a lot less to do with latency (audio or visual) than other factors.
For many applications programs calculate the latency in your chain and try to sync visual cues up with the same delay. Pretty much any DAW will do this, for example. I don't think games or similar do this, but there's not much stopping them if they wanted to.
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EPT
