I just put my FM3T up against my Ampero Stage II and I’m enlightened.

[KingsXJJ]

Just noticed the Massdrop went up $20 to $199. Perhaps the have dynamic pricing? I paid $179 earlier today.

 

[0XI0]

Cork sniffing headphones choices. Interesting.

cotton ball sniffing

 

[Sascha Franck]

Cork sniffing headphones choices. Interesting.

Dude. Headphone cork sniffing starts here:

CRBN2 Electrostatic Headphone

Introducing our most advanced headphone yet – CRBN2 – which pairs second-generation carbon-nanotube electrostatic drivers with another new breakthrough technology. Experience the most powerful, tactile bass response of any electrostatic headphone and vividly holographic spatial imaging.

www.audeze.com

So what are you waiting for?

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Headphones are one of those things that just varies person to person, we all have totally different head and ear shapes and perceive things differently. Opinions will always vary wildly. There’s definitely a few technical bits to be aware of but what sounds “right” is totally down to the user. The same goes for the Harman curve (or any other) as a target - there’s no real basis for that sounding correct to everyone, you may like that as a tonal preference or you may not. Quite easy to EQ things yourself usually though.

Just have to try as many as you can before you find ones you bond with.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Just have to try as many as you can before you find ones you bond with.

For me, the main things I want to be covered with headphones for modeler usage are:
- Great midrange definition.
- Proper display of low and high end. No need for the often cited "3D soundstage" or "almost feels like a big speaker" thing, just proper information whether something might get harsh or boomy.
- Should work throughout a relatively broad level range.
- Things I'm adjusting there should transfer well to various live rigs.
- Closed style, should I ever use them live, in loud rehearsals or while tracking under otherwise less than ideal situations.

As said, the best still affordable solution I've found so far has got to be the HD-25s. It's a pretty popular tracking/live device among many people, so if I would recommend something to be included in some listening tests, it'd defenitely be these.
But obviously, as you say, it's the best idea to check plenty of phones.

 

[Sascha Franck]

And fwiw, for longer home usage, things such as wearing comfort are likely more important, once the basic quality is there. You may as well not need closed models. I also have an open AKG K240 MkII, quite affordable, pretty nice to wear (for my head and ears), decent sound, fun to play through. But once I need to listen to something guitar through a lens, the HD-25 is it.

 

[Sedaxel]

I hate playing guitar with headphones... it´s just... baaah...

I use them for tracking and mixing. I wouldn´t if I could avoid it, though.

I´ve found to be surprisingly good the ultra-cheap Superlux HD681. They´re unreliable, though (the cable broke after a couple years... I treated them very bad, to be honest).

On the other hand, I hate the Sennheiser HD280 Pro. They´re uncomfortable and bad sounding (to me). I bought them as a recomendation from a friend, and I regret every time I wear them on.

I´ve heard wonders about the Kiwi Ears Altruva. Curious on those.

 

[OrganicZed]

On the other hand, I hate the Sennheiser HD280 Pro. They´re uncomfortable and bad sounding (to me). I bought them as a recomendation from a friend, and I regret every time I wear them on.

I agree. The HD280 do not sound good for guitar IMO.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I´ve found to be surprisingly good the ultra-cheap Superlux HD681

Got one as well. Amazing for the price but tends to be too harsh and not "exact" - as in "what you hear is not what you get" or so. Still great value, just that the cable connection on the cheaper models seem to be a pretty weak thing. On the more "expensive" ones you can easily replace them for cheap. Bought it as a spare and gave it to my son later on, he's quite happy with it.

 

[Sedaxel]

Got one as well. Amazing for the price but tends to be too harsh and not "exact" - as in "what you hear is not what you get" or so. Still great value, just that the cable connection on the cheaper models seem to be a pretty weak thing. On the more "expensive" ones you can easily replace them for cheap. Bought it as a spare and gave it to my son later on, he's quite happy with it.

Yeah, agree.

Even so, the translation of the mixes are much (but hey... MUCH) more accurate on the Superlux than on the Senns. They´re also much more confortable too.

The expensive Superlux have a better cabling solution, but I´m not sure they sound better. They are tuned differently, and I´m not sure I´d like other tunning, based on what I´ve read here and there.

 

[Los-D]

If it helps, though I hardly play somewhat dry amp+cab alone via headphones, I thought playing my old FM3 through ATH-M40X headphones, with stereo chorus (think Dimension or Tri-Chorus) and reverb enabled, plus decent HF cuts (~8K? but YMMV), was the best headphones guitar tone I had heard. And that included Plugins (NDSP, L6, ML, Sgear, Valhalla), and hardware (L6 Stomp, PODs, QC… yuck, OG Ampero). This was prior to NAM. Same headphones on all, and I did hear a better tone (for me) when adding Headphones EQ via the curves you can find online for the M40X.

Right now NAM (or S-gear) + Valhalla & Eventide plugins does it for me (don’t have the Fractal anymore), but the FM3 tone was glorious. JCM or Atomica amp models (No Friedmans... no comment on that lol).

BTW, I learned the “adjust HF cuts to taste” lesson on my AX8 + Beringturd Headphone amp. That also sounded fantastic (once EQd right). Again, YMMV.

 

[bucephalus]

I've had my helix lt for a little while now but after reading this thought I'd try some of my headphones with it.

I've so far tried AKG K371 (closed back 32ohm) and AKG K702 (open back 62ohms)

The K371 do clip towards top of volume from helix but are very loud, sound pretty good up to about 3 quarter volume.

Strangely, given I've read that 250ohm plus phones are meant to be driven loud enough by helix to keep up with a drummer, the K702 do not clip and are rather quiet even with volume up full on the helix.

I had been considering some beyer DT770 Pro for some 250ohm testing but not sure if that's such a good idea if the 62ohm phones are not that loud.

 

[Frodebro]

This was my primary “parent friendly” rig in the mid-late eighties, with a portable cd player plugged into the aux input. I put in a shit ton of hours playing through that little setup.

 

[OrganicZed]

@bucephalus The impedance of a headphone is not the only factor in determining how loud it can be driven with a particular amplifier. The sensitivity rating (usually reported as a dB per mW) is another aspect to consider. The higher the sensitivity, the more volume a pair of headphones can produce with the same input signal from the amplifier.

 

[TSJMajesty]

I’ve got A-T ATH-M50’s,

Another ATH-M50x user here (based off many positive posts from the Fractal forum), and they're only 38 ohms. I previously had the BD 880's, and they lost signal to one side (less than 2 years old), and I noticed a HUGE improvement in sound quality the moment I put them on.

 

[bucephalus]

@bucephalus The impedance of a headphone is not the only factor in determining how loud it can be driven with a particular amplifier. The sensitivity rating (usually reported as a dB per mW) is another aspect to consider. The higher the sensitivity, the more volume a pair of headphones can produce with the same input signal from the amplifier.

Thanks, must admit don't know that much about headphones for this kind of thing. The 702 have a 105db spl/v and max input 200mW. This compares to the beyer DT770 at 96 to 100 dB/mW (not sure if this is the same as spl/v though)

To be honest the K371s sounds pretty good add that's enough for silent practice really, was just curious how much better a high ohm set may sound.

 

[TSJMajesty]

The way I judge how my headphones sound, is by how close I can get my JP2C presets to sound like JP's guitar, like when he's playing by himself in a gear rundown. It's pretty damn close!

 

[OrganicZed]

I've done some more reading on the subject of damping factor for headphones and it was pretty interesting.

The infamous NwAVGuy wrote very detailed breakdown explaining derivation of the 1/8 guideline that I previously cited. A central assumption of the guideline is that the speaker in question exhibits frequency dependent variations in impedance (in other words; the headphone is a reactive load and has an impedance curve). If a particular set of headphones has highly consistent impedance across the audio frequency spectrum (behaves more like a purely resistive load) then a much smaller damping factor will be required to maintain the intended frequency response behavior. This might explain why some headphones still sound good even when driven by amplifiers with an output impedance similar to the input impedance of the headphone (damping factor of 1).

There are also some who contest the validity of the applying damping factor analysis to headphone systems (though he does concede that the damping factor does need to be taken into account for headphones that exhibit reactance). Here's a quote that I found on the Head-Fi forum:

"Is an amplifier's damping factor important to headphone performance?

With loudspeakers, the lower the amplifier's output impedance, the higher the damping factor into the rated load. Damping factor is given as the ratio of loudspeaker impedance to the amplifier's output impedance. As the theory goes, the higher the damping factor, the better the amplifier's ability to control a loudspeaker's low frequency response (when the motional reactance of the system is at maximum), because the low output impedance of the amplifier allows any back-emf generated by the loudspeaker to be absorbed by the amplifier. That theory has been discharged by members of the audio community as unsubstantiated.

However, even if the theory were correct for loudspeakers, its applicability to headphones is suspect. John Woodgate, a contributor to The Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook (1988), had the following to say about the effect of damping factor on headphone performance:

Headphone transducers are resistance-controlled, not mass-controlled like loudspeaker drivers above the main resonance. In any case 'damping factor' is largely nonsense - most of the resistance in the circuit is the voice-coil resistance and reducing the amplifier source impedance to infinitesimal proportions has an exactly corresponding effect on damping - infinitesimal.

However, the source impedance affects the *frequency response* of a loudspeaker because the motional impedance varies with frequency, and thus so does the voltage drop across the source impedance. This means that the source impedance (including the cable) should be less than about one-twentieth (not one two-hundredth or less!) of the rated impedance of the loudspeaker, to give a *worst-possible change* in frequency response from true voltage-drive of 0.5 dB.

The motional impedance of headphone transducers varies very little (or should vary very little - someone can always do it wrong!) with frequency, so the source impedance can be high with no ill effect.

The IEC 61938 international standard specifies that headphones should be driven by a 120 ohm source - regardless of the impedance of the headphones themselves. If the headphones were designed to this standard, then an amplifier's high output impedance should have little effect on the sound of the headphones. In general, headphones with a flat impedance curve over the audio range will not be affected by high output impedance. For example, in May 1995, Stereo Review published a review of the Grado SR125 headphones. The impedance curve of the SR125s, which have a nominal impedance of 32 ohms, varied from 31 to 36 ohms over the entire 20Hz to 20kHz spectrum. Not all headphones may be as well behaved as the Grados, but neither do they usually have the roller-coaster impedance runs of a loudspeaker. Tube amplifiers (with their high output impedances), it should be noted, have very low damping factors."

My TL;DR summary is that some headphones do not need a large damping factor though it is never a problem to have a high damping factor.

 

[KingsXJJ]

I've done some more reading on the subject of damping factor for headphones and it was pretty interesting.

The infamous NwAVGuy wrote very detailed breakdown explaining derivation of the 1/8 guideline that I previously cited. A central assumption of the guideline is that the speaker in question exhibits frequency dependent variations in impedance (in other words; the headphone is a reactive load and has an impedance curve). If a particular set of headphones has highly consistent impedance across the audio frequency spectrum (behaves more like a purely resistive load) then a much smaller damping factor will be required to maintain the intended frequency response behavior. This might explain why some headphones still sound good even when driven by amplifiers with an output impedance similar to the input impedance of the headphone (damping factor of 1).

There are also some who contest the validity of the applying damping factor analysis to headphone systems (though he does concede that the damping factor does need to be taken into account for headphones that exhibit reactance). Here's a quote that I found on the Head-Fi forum:

"Is an amplifier's damping factor important to headphone performance?

With loudspeakers, the lower the amplifier's output impedance, the higher the damping factor into the rated load. Damping factor is given as the ratio of loudspeaker impedance to the amplifier's output impedance. As the theory goes, the higher the damping factor, the better the amplifier's ability to control a loudspeaker's low frequency response (when the motional reactance of the system is at maximum), because the low output impedance of the amplifier allows any back-emf generated by the loudspeaker to be absorbed by the amplifier. That theory has been discharged by members of the audio community as unsubstantiated.

However, even if the theory were correct for loudspeakers, its applicability to headphones is suspect. John Woodgate, a contributor to The Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook (1988), had the following to say about the effect of damping factor on headphone performance:

Headphone transducers are resistance-controlled, not mass-controlled like loudspeaker drivers above the main resonance. In any case 'damping factor' is largely nonsense - most of the resistance in the circuit is the voice-coil resistance and reducing the amplifier source impedance to infinitesimal proportions has an exactly corresponding effect on damping - infinitesimal.

However, the source impedance affects the *frequency response* of a loudspeaker because the motional impedance varies with frequency, and thus so does the voltage drop across the source impedance. This means that the source impedance (including the cable) should be less than about one-twentieth (not one two-hundredth or less!) of the rated impedance of the loudspeaker, to give a *worst-possible change* in frequency response from true voltage-drive of 0.5 dB.

The motional impedance of headphone transducers varies very little (or should vary very little - someone can always do it wrong!) with frequency, so the source impedance can be high with no ill effect.

The IEC 61938 international standard specifies that headphones should be driven by a 120 ohm source - regardless of the impedance of the headphones themselves. If the headphones were designed to this standard, then an amplifier's high output impedance should have little effect on the sound of the headphones. In general, headphones with a flat impedance curve over the audio range will not be affected by high output impedance. For example, in May 1995, Stereo Review published a review of the Grado SR125 headphones. The impedance curve of the SR125s, which have a nominal impedance of 32 ohms, varied from 31 to 36 ohms over the entire 20Hz to 20kHz spectrum. Not all headphones may be as well behaved as the Grados, but neither do they usually have the roller-coaster impedance runs of a loudspeaker. Tube amplifiers (with their high output impedances), it should be noted, have very low damping factors."

My TL;DR summary is that some headphones do not need a large damping factor though it is never a problem to have a high damping factor.

Jesus Christ that’s a lot to absorb. In other news, my Dropmass HD6XX’s shipped. I will use my ears to evaluate them.

 

[KingsXJJ]

I do like factory patch 100: Solo 99 very much with the Beyerdynamics.