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Post by gns on Apr 29, 2007 6:01:52 GMT
Parents bring you up, but mates, acquaintances, industry professionals, and life's experiences drag you up.
Having been dragged up in a "musical performance atmosphere" from the early 70's till now, more by accident than by good management - doing things like heavy and progressive disco, normal disco, being occasional roadie and desk driver for some weird strummers in some weird venues, frequenting the now demolished - legend in somebody else's lunchtime - the Halfway Hotel (my old Sunday night local), renowned for performances from Bee-Bop-Deluxe and Burlesque (the original from London as they preferred to be known), witnessing early performances by Ozzie and the Black Sabbath with support bands like Black Oak Arkansas (indeed!), performances from another planet by Roy Harper, remembering the late Alex Harvey and the lone piper doing Anthem live in Sheffield city hall (foretelling his own death...), and many other bands, ending up in broadcast audio design and then being dragged half dead into session studios at silly hours doing sound-effects for the likes of Irn-Bru, Virgin Cola and Options...
...I guess I got to know how performance music actually sounds?
For me, musicality and in particular, melody, is the thing I "get off on" (musical tense).
Often though, in headphone land, what is judged to be good is technical trickery like trying to mimic a good loudspeaker set-up with all its stereo imagery.
Opinion suggests open backed headphones are the only cans to pull-off the trick. Closed back types simply can't, so are often frowned upon.
However, from a musicality-alone standpoint, I find two closed back designs worthy of mention:-
Sennheisers HD250 Linear II are relegated to the "bedroom disco" department by most hi-fi reviewers for not being hi-fi! And even it's manufacturer seems to be too ashamed to be seen in public with it. Maybe it doesn't pull-it-off on the technical performance score, but I find them incredibly musical. It begs the question as to what hi-fi reviewers listen for? Music or Effects? The HD250's go deeper and higher than the HD600/650 - they're very linear and so get chosen for studio work - but it seems nothing that really is musical can be classed as hi-fi. To which I say good! More left for the rest of us! The Sennheiser HD250 gets my vote of appreciation.
Another one you probably have never heard of is the Audio Technica ATH-A900. Very frustrating for Audio Technica, so says the UK rep. Audio Technica looks to have more of a following stateside, but not in the UK. Having heard their "studio monitor" M40, I never expected the A900 to do anything special until I actually heard it - wow! It's like having a tuned-on version of the HD250 - again the bass digs low and the highs just keep going upwards. It's not bright - it's not booming. It is well balanced - very linear, but most of all, it is incredibly musical to my ears.
Neither of these headphones pull-off the loudspeaker sound stage, but neither do they plant the performance inside your head. If you don't like running with the pack, these headphones are worth a try - the HD250 and the A900 are a good alternative if melody seems to be the word lacking from your listening experience.
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Nigel
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Post by Nigel on May 8, 2007 12:52:57 GMT
Anyone else heard the Senn HD250?
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Post by scott on May 10, 2007 13:24:32 GMT
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Post by gns on May 31, 2007 1:03:36 GMT
What did you reckon?
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2007 1:20:39 GMT
Graham That's a pretty convincing review ! Perhaps Scott can't stretch his budget to the 650s ? SandyK
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Post by gns on May 31, 2007 2:14:58 GMT
He's just a working guy like us! That's why I send stuff to people like him rather than some of the hyped up magazines that are so obviously biased, or taking it up the a..... Some magazines are OK though. I found What Hi-Fi are great once you manage to break into the "inner sanctum" via Gramophone. The first samples I sent there went missing and then after 2 years I finally got a half page review - but it was worth the wait (I think...) No actually What Hi-Fi and Hi-Fi News are really nice to me - I don't know why, because I haven't got a bean for them in advertising cash, or a yacht on the med for hospitality purposes, although my missus Diane once set an extra place at our table for a visiting writer, but then again Tony Bolton of Hi-Fi News is an ordinary guy too - really down to earth, not arrogant in any way, drives a beat up old Nova which wasn't out of place next to my old ex-taxi Pug 406. Ooops, probably said too much
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2007 3:08:55 GMT
Graham Perhaps what this forum needs is a guide on what to listen for when auditioning an amplifier. A friend of mine has a mate with a Krell Amplifier and AU$50,000 B&W speakers, but he still doesn't have a soundstage. Many people have never heard a real soundstage. Some commercial equipment can give a stereo image that extends past both speakers, and appears to have some depth.Many people think that this is a soundstage.Perhaps you could inform the forum members on how to compare the performance of different types of equipment ? Why in your opinion do your products sound better than the opposition's products ? What should prospective customers listen for ? Perhaps Mike would care to chip in on this subject too , as his views are well respected in the industry. SandyK
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Post by scott on May 31, 2007 7:12:50 GMT
Hi Guys not had a chance to have a listen yet..the local stores stock all the sennheiser range except the 250s....but i had a subcontract job at the WDR in Cologne for 4 years and know a lot of the sound engineers there so i may pop in tomorrow and have a listen as they use the headphones graham is recomending.
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Sol
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Post by Sol on May 31, 2007 12:35:26 GMT
Some commercial equipment can give a stereo image that extends past both speakers, and appears to have some depth.Many people think that this is a soundstage. Well certainly, that is what I call soundstage! It may be that I got lucky, but there are certain tracks that extend (a good 2ft perceptively - the limit appears to be the wall) well outside left and right speakers. This places instruments on certain CDs/and streamed FLAC files across a wide "soundstage". Likewise, recently, on changing out the opamps for bursons, I have noticed a distinct front to back depth to certain tracks that was not there before. I attribute these recent changes to the bursons, but obviously it could be the interplay between components now they are added, or it could be reflective sound waves boucing from wall to wall and not pure "stereo effect" enabled by the addition. Mind you, it could be caused by the colour of my neighbours undies flapping in the breeze for all I know - either way it doesn't matter - I percieve it as a very satisfying width and depth, since adding bursons, and my perception is king because I'm listening. [wander off mumbling: wonder if this forum exists if I don't log on]
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Post by PinkFloyd on May 31, 2007 20:08:54 GMT
I class a soundstage as something that is deep, wide and with realistic height. If I can sit back and listen to a recording of a live concert and it sounds like I am sitting at the venue then that's what I call soundstage...... all the musicians spread out over the stage with palpable space between them and a sense of back and front (ie: not just a congealed mass of music all eminating from the same place) remember though that the equipment doesn't recreate a convincing soundstage all by itself the recording MUST be have been well engineered and that includes the setting up of the microphones..... please do read this it explains a lot www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/mar97/stereomictechs2.htmlA well set up system with a well recorded piece of music should see the sound extending well past the outer edges of the speakers and should also provide great depth and height. When I listen to Roger waters "amused to death" and the dogs start barking they sound like they are barking 100 yards away and that's the way it should be.... when the sleigh pans from left to right it spans a huge (seemingly) 100 metre gap and not just the 15 feet or so between speakers.... you just don't get this with headphones. If it's a guy coming over a hill 100 yards a way blowing a set of bagpipes then you should be able to picture him 100 yards a way and not as if he's at the end of your nose.... depth. Similarly if it's a violinist sitting in a 3 x 3 toilet cubicle playing his violin it should sound just like that..... "should" being the key word as not all recordings are created equally and some systems are just not set up right, it still amazes me how some people plunk one loudspeaker behind the sofa and the other up on a shelf ;D A good guide on speaker placement is here: www.goodsound.com/howto/2002_05_01.htmTo fully understand terms like depth, soundstage, imaging, placement, ambience etc. etc. it's a good idea to learn a bit about how the recording engineer goes about trying to recreate them faithfully to make our listening experience sound as natural as possible (and sometimes far from natural as the case may be!) Little articles like this are well worth reading www.greatnorthernaudio.com/audio_theater/Sound_Effects.htmlAnother good site is acoustic ecology..... AcousticEcology.org provides access to news, academic research, public policy advocates, and articles and essays about sound and listening. Some very interesting articles (some pretty high brow) but you have to look deeply into the site to find them www.acousticecology.org/index.html
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2007 20:56:14 GMT
Mike I think that very few people have experienced a real soundstage. It is possible to fill the WHOLE listening area with sound , with some recordings,and get , for want of better words , layer after layer,after layer of sound. Very few systems are able to also give an impression of height. I have a Mystic Moods recording, with an approaching thunderstorm mixed in with the music, The thunder starts coming from way behind the speakers, and from up near the ceiling. You have described the sensation far better than I could have. e.g. Kim Carnes recording"Bette Davis Eyes" can be very spectacular, indeed, on a good system. "Papa Doo Run Run" album with the Beach Boys songs such as "Good Vibrations" is another good example. Several people have even asked if I have the rear speakers turned on. SandyK
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Post by largespeakers on Jun 1, 2007 15:17:28 GMT
As far as speakers go the room is the biggest influence on how they sound. Reflections are needed as is absorbtion and the need to break up standing waves etc. Speakers often sound horrible if you play them outside. I am now into headphones as I have just moved and my detached soundproofed acoustic music room was left behind(sob sob!) My new music room has as yet non of the qualities of the old but at least I can learn all about headphone listening! As an ex musician I always find high end sound stages etc fantastic to listen to but most unlike most venues and I have played in many good ones. As others have said the quality of the source material and how it has been miked and mastered has the deciding factor on what comes out of your speakers (or cans I suspect).
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2007 21:53:35 GMT
largespeakers You are not wrong! In the place I am renting, there is a chimney, wooden floor with no carpet, and an open doorway on the RHS. I had to position 50mm thick foam around most of the front (across the unused chimney too) as the sound was shocking due to all the reflections and coupling through the floors. Good quality speaker cones helped greatly with the floor induced problem. Unfortunately, the cat loves to attack the foam ! SandyK
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Post by PinkFloyd on Jun 4, 2007 22:10:22 GMT
Egg cartons guys and not those ones that hold 6 eggs..... get yourself some of the egg trays they use at egg farms (they hold about 36 eggs) what we have here in effect is a 2 foot square tray and my god do they break up standing waves very effectively. In my last house I had a dedicated listening room (haven't got round to fully setting up my listening room in the new place yet) and the walls and ceiling were totally covered with egg trays.... not just thrown on but properly done and all held in place with liquid nails (you could use blue tack if you didn't want the egg carton mod to be semi permanent) Took me quite some time to do properly and once completed and painted looked (and sounded) out of this world! The rear wall I filled in the pockets of the egg trays (the pockets that faced the wall) with a mixture of coconut hair and sheeps wool. All in all it cost me around £30 for the egg cartons (I bought them from a local egg producer) and around 2 weeks armed with a stanley knife and a few tubes of liquid nails. The wall to the rear of the system I also hung a durry (an indian rug thing) on a rail about 10 inches out from the wall which gave the room a nice backdrop. The door was the only thing I didn't egg carton and instead covered it in Deflex acoustic panels (http://www.deflex.co.uk/cgi-bin/deflexshop/deflexshop.cgi?page=Audio/SDPANEL.html&cart_id=947777_3856) The room was furnished pretty sparsely with only my dedicated listening chair, curtains (thick lined jobs) 2 tube traps a solid walnut coffee table and a few racks of CD's..... anyone who visited the house and saw the room always made silly comments like "you could make this into a bedroom" or "why? I don't understand?" as soon as they sat their arse down on my listening chair they soon got the message Nothing expensive about it as audio tweaks go but, by far, the biggest improvements you can realise are from tweaking the room and conditioning yourself into a state where you are ready to receive the music. Unless the equipment is absolute shite on a stick then no reason why it shouldn't sound good with a little bit of effort. Tweaking yourself is the hardest part (no, seriously) I soon found that it was becomming harder and harder to get into the vibes which is when I started to experiment with conditioning / tweaking myself..... this ranged from rainbow foil to alcohol to marijuana to far out lighting....... The system may be making very sweet music but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to hear it or experience an intense moment.... you've got to be in the right frame of mind before you can fully become one with the music. Magical moments (you know, the hairs on the back of your neck sticking up when a piece of music really gets you) are a lot less frequent these days probably cause I'm a lot more stressed and have been over exposed to good quality sound all these years.... the more of a good thing you get the less exciting it becomes..... this is possibly when people start throwing money into audio in the hope that $$$$ will recreate those magical moments they remember..... it won't. What was once simply a case of switching a radio on and and getting the message of the music has now become a full time job for some people wanting to recreate the emotions they used to feel when listening to music.... it's pretty sad but a fact of life that our emotions and senses are dulled the more we are exposed to good things... they soon become the norm and we end up trying to recreate those innocent days but it's never going to be the same.......... Just my take on things ;D
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Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2007 22:34:33 GMT
I find stress is the worst enemy of enjoying good sound. Sometimes when long visiting son's family is out, I can really relax and enjoy the music. Trouble is that I can relax so much, that I can nod off for a while. I used deflex years ago to line the insides of a couple of smaller boxes with good drivers. This got rid of most of the boxy sound.However, once the volume was turned up past a certain point, the Deflex seemed to lose it's control. SandyK
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Post by scott on Sept 27, 2007 10:21:16 GMT
Hi Graham after spending enough money on the LPs the last 6 months i have taken your tip and ordered the Audio Technica ATH-A900....when it arrives i will compare with the Senn 250(which i can get on a 30day trial from a local shop) and my existing Phones Senn 650 / 595 and Goldring 150 Will let you know
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Nigel
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Post by Nigel on Sept 27, 2007 15:39:17 GMT
Nice one Scott. We will be watching this with interest.
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rowuk
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Post by rowuk on Oct 3, 2007 15:55:15 GMT
"soundstage" is an arty word for geometry. As it is not technical in nature, it can mean just about anything to anybody. Geometry on the other hand, is absolute: distance and angles perfectly describable! If we talk about RealFi instead of HiFi, the soundstage should reflect the geometry that the recording engineer/producer desired. This can mean many different things too. John Eargle from Delos for instance, uses a stereo pair of microphones in an ORTF setup that images very well. In addition, he adds 2 omnidirectional mics at the edges of the stage where the performers are. When I listen to his recordings (through headphones for instance), I get an image that seems to be as large as a REAL stage, and imaging that is far superior to what I experience actually while playing on that stage. When playing music through speakers, we can get virtual phantom images outside of the area between the speakers, this is caused by the phase of the left and right signals. Vertical imaging seems to have more to do with EQ than phase. The engineer can use these effects to great (dis)advantage. With studio productions, the geometry is virtual. The recording engineer can place anything anywhere that they want. If we can find out what that exactly is, we are in a position to judge how accurately our system replicates that. That info is very difficult to get for multi track productions! What many HiFi fans call soundstage is the virtual space that they experience when listening to music. That, depending on phase and EQ may or may not be an accurate representation of the recording. Not to worry, if the instruments sound "real" to you, and the space "reasonable" for the sonic event, you have nothing to worry about - unless you have the ability to find out the REAL geometry recorded.
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Post by scott on Oct 12, 2007 18:59:03 GMT
So the ATH-A900 has just arrived and i have had a listen to it with the X-Can and some Peter Gabriel-So....put a smile on my face right away.Will let you guys know what i think of it in a few weeks
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Post by scott on Oct 16, 2007 14:14:08 GMT
Some more initial impressions of my A900s...last night listening to them i had the feeling that i was not looking on and listening at the music but rather that the music was all around me...almost as if i was under water.Its the first time i have listened to closed headphones but they definatly produce the music differently to the Sennheisers.
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Post by charleyphogg on Oct 21, 2007 8:06:18 GMT
Wow, a Black Oak Arkansas reference. I'm dually impressed, I never would of thought they were known across the pond.
I'm fairly new to headphones, and hence I'm just learning hi-fi as you all know it. Open , over the ear (circumaural? can's are what best suit my situation, and from waht I gather, preference. For numerous reasons. Mostly being able to hear (when I need to) whats going on around me, and also comfort. Leakage is not a concern to me, but soundstage, to me, is what its about.
Most of my " hair standing moments" are from audience recordings, when eveything is just aligned, in synch, when you have the sense that you are part of the moment and the band realises that, and feeds off of it.
The HD580\600\650 is along my lines because I prefer an over the ear headphone, but also need an open one that i can hear outside noises. Bleedthrough isnt a concern. So waht would a hd250 offer me in regards to soundstage etc.?
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Nigel
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Post by Nigel on Nov 15, 2007 9:38:13 GMT
How do the ATH-A900's hold up against their bigger brothers? Anyone heard them & the ATH-W1000 or the ATHW5000? I notice the frequency response is the same as the ATH-W1000. What exactly does this mean? That the two will sound very similar? Seen these nice limited edition examples as well......... www.audiocubes.com/category/Headphones_Audiophile,+Hifi/product/Audio-Technica_ATH-A900ti_Limited_Edition_Titanium_Headphones.html Their frequency response are wider still, 5-42 000 Hz. as opposed to 5-40 000 Hz. Sony MDR-SA5000 DJ Stereo Headphones frequency response is the widest I've seen, 5-110 000 Hz. So, two questions then. 1. The ATH-A900 against their bigger bros? 2. Frequency response, does the wider the Hz. necessary equate to greater performance?
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Post by dc on Nov 15, 2007 12:47:09 GMT
1. can't help you
2. Not at all. The theoretical maximum frequency response has about nothing to do with their performance. Normal human hearing is only capable of hearing between 20hz-20,000hz
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Post by wildebassman on Nov 15, 2007 14:27:27 GMT
There's a lot more to it than frequency response alone, but as n active musician and music lover I go for musicality and correct reproduction. (to my ears...) I have heard that the ATH-A900, W-1000 and W-5000 share the same sound signature, the woodies are a bit warmer and more refined. The A900 is a truly great pair of cans and the best bang for the buck. The A950LTD is said to be disappointing. The Sony's are very revealing but you will experience fatigue. I have the ATH-A900 on Graham's recommandation, and I've never regretted buying them, they beat my HD600 and DR-150 hands down.
Cheers,
Dennis.
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rowuk
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Post by rowuk on Nov 21, 2007 10:06:15 GMT
Mike I think that very few people have experienced a real soundstage. It is possible to fill the WHOLE listening area with sound , with some recordings,and get , for want of better words , layer after layer,after layer of sound. Very few systems are able to also give an impression of height. ......... SandyK I would dare to say that a soundstage for most listeners is NOT something desired. The primary use of audio/video today is BACKGROUND NOISE. A stereo system that commands attention to itself comes out of the background into our concious thinking and that distracts from the pseudo communication with our family and friends. The reason that BOSE has such a high WAF is that their equipment does not draw attention to itself, cosmetically, optically, or aurally. I know when my audio system is on, that I am NOT in a mood to communicate with anybody. It is like being at a classical concert and having my neighbor in the audience hum the melody out of tune and loudly enough for me to notice - as if he could improve the performance for free! Actually it is cool that people get drawn in to the music like that, just not when they are sitting next to ME in the concert hall or on my sofa!! Nope, geometry (popularly called imaging or soundstage) is something for real, dedicated listeners!
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