To be honest I think I got bored and started to look for a new headphones I'm not an audiophile and I might be really def to high quality audio, but wanted to try and see if there is more to squeeze from the music I like. I hope you understand. I read different headphones reviews and they all show different samples. There are few that are repeating in those reviews, but they are out of my price range. I was thinking to get a headset up to £200, £100-150 to be more precise. I love the look of beyerdynamic T90, but will never spend £400 on headphones - my wife would literally slice me open... I saw AKG H550, which supposed to be pretty good. I'm really leaning towards Sony MDR-1A - they look very cool, specially silver/brown version. It says on their website that are designed for high res files - anyone can tell if there is noticeable difference between regular mp3 and this high res file, like FLAC etc? Now, I guess I could use those headphones to listen the music on the go, but would also like to use with my PC, gaming, music, etc I guess for those high ohm version I would need a DAC, which would add another £50-100 from what I've seen here on our forum. Oh, most important thing - they need to be closed - don't want to piss people off on the train or plain. I've read about opened ones, that they sound really different, letting you hear the sound like in actual theater - don't know what that really means, cause never tried opened ones. Maybe that would be best option then? What would you guys suggest? Right now I have Denon AH-D1100, which are great, but wanted to know if I missing something not having those really expensive headphones?
Up to a certain point you will notice more detail in your music. I don't know about headphones for thousands of pounds but you will notice a difference between a £50 and a £200 pair of headphones. You will notice the difference even when listening to 320kbs files. However you will need a DAC to match. Onboard sound has improved greatly in the last years but doesn't quite suffice. Maybe it's like building a SLI 980 rig to play at Full HD: Sure the cards will deliver 60fps and you are happy but a single 980 would have been sufficient. I have been using a pair of Sennheiser HD 650 for about five years now and am really happy. Music has quite a bit of fidelity but they are fine for gaming as well. I got them in a sale for below 200 Eur, maybe you can get a similar deal. Can you visit a shop and ask to actually listen to a pair of good headphones before you buy them? There's quite a bit of flavor to the different brands, not all of them sound the same.
My mobo MSI Z97 ACK has headphones amp builtin so for games and music from pc I should be fine. I'm think about some moments outdoors like on train or plain, would like to have some really good quality headphones. I listen to different music, from melo-death metal to classic music so new headphones would need to be covering pretty wide range of tones etc Ill have a look at those 650, thanks.
Ok I'm slowly getting in love with those Sony MDR-1A silver headphones. They look soooo cool, plus I can only find very good reviews of those. £150 on amazon :/
I'm very happy with my AKG K701, but while being fairly low Z headphones (64 ohms) they need a beefy amplifier to keep the dynamics at good level. Are you after closed or opened back ?
I have a pair of AKG K550s which I feed with an Asus Xonar Essence STX soundcard (with different opamps that give me the sound I like). I'm very happy with them, especially at the heavily discounted £99 I paid to Amazon for them. They work best if, like me, you have a largish head, otherwise they can be a bit loose, which leads to compromised bass. BTW, if you are going to be mainly using them on the move buy the K551s. The same cans but, with a shorter cable and inline controls: http://www.whathifi.com/akg/k551/review
AKG look really big, too big for me I think. Not that I have a small head, but i don't like too big cans. Those look like road workers earpads.. Besides Sony MDR1A come with 2 cables, one regular, one with inline remote, phone answer.
Coming back to this subject - those high res files, like FLAC - I know that my phone (Galaxy S4) for example can play them, but is it really playing them prop rely or still decoding them same way as mp3 files, so I will still lose quality? Would I need better player like one of those Sony Walkmans?
I don't know which DAC is is in the S4 so I couldn't say it was decent. But I do know you can connect a USB-DAC like the FiiO E7 and have it convert the audio to analog instead of the phone.
If you are using the S4 DAC or only listening to the music portable, I would say it's not worth using lossless on your phone. a 320k mp3 or aac file is more than sufficient for portable use when the limitation is likely to be environmental noise rather than data quality.
I dont know what sits in S4 to be honest. I played FLAC files yesterday on it and sound ok. Showed 44kHz. I wonder what is the difference between this 44kHz CD quality, which is max for this phone and full 24bit 192kHz high res file on sony walkman for example. Would it be very noticeable? Worth paying £169 for it?
Ummmm... imho that's not a particularly useful description why a flac file is smaller than a wav. instead, for a simple description, i believe it would be better to say that it's like using zip or rar but specifically designed for losslessly compressing audio. Anyway, rather than rewrite it, these are the processes that are done (& there's more info about each stage on the official site) - "Similar to many audio coders, a FLAC encoder has the following stages: • Blocking. The input is broken up into many contiguous blocks. With FLAC, the blocks may vary in size. The optimal size of the block is usually affected by many factors, including the sample rate, spectral characteristics over time, etc. Though FLAC allows the block size to vary within a stream, the reference encoder uses a fixed block size. • Interchannel Decorrelation. In the case of stereo streams, the encoder will create mid and side signals based on the average and difference (respectively) of the left and right channels. The encoder will then pass the best form of the signal to the next stage. • Prediction. The block is passed through a prediction stage where the encoder tries to find a mathematical description (usually an approximate one) of the signal. This description is typically much smaller than the raw signal itself. Since the methods of prediction are known to both the encoder and decoder, only the parameters of the predictor need be included in the compressed stream. FLAC currently uses four different classes of predictors (described in the prediction section), but the format has reserved space for additional methods. FLAC allows the class of predictor to change from block to block, or even within the channels of a block. • Residual coding. If the predictor does not describe the signal exactly, the difference between the original signal and the predicted signal (called the error or residual signal) must be coded losslessy. If the predictor is effective, the residual signal will require fewer bits per sample than the original signal. FLAC currently uses only one method for encoding the residual (see the Residual coding section), but the format has reserved space for additional methods. FLAC allows the residual coding method to change from block to block, or even within the channels of a block."
Thanks for your input. Sorry I didn't mention - I just purchased new headphones - Sony MDR-1A (high res audio capable). I never spent this amount of money on headphones and have to say these are AMAZING! I played some flac files yesterday, on my phone and they sounded sweet! Songs like Love club by Lorde, I suddenly could say where separate sounds were coming from, I felt like I was standing in the middle of band and could point out where each of instrument was playing from. Of course I was listening to it after 1am when family was sleeping and the whole house was silent. Plus, those headphones look sooooooooo sexy! I picked silver/brown version. Like you said - I think for outside listening I guess my S4 phone with cd quality will be enough. I think its better to see if I could get myself some desk DAC/AMP that could give me better experience when listening at home. My mobo - MSI ITX Z97 ACK has special AMP builtin for headphones - what I dont know is if it has DAC builtin too... About year ago I remember reading something about some item called Dragonfly version 2, which I think was a USB DAC. Do you think this device could give a lot different experience listening to music at home?
If the sound coming from your PC/whatever isn't noisy and is loud enough then I don't see what a DAC/amp combo will bring you apart from a hole in your wallet. Likewise for spending money on devices to play high resolution FLAC files - you'll never hear the difference.
Can you hear noise an distortion? If not then it is just as good. You can find signal-to-noise figures for onboard sound chips too.
Best test is to plug the headphone and play no sound. In my case, I can hear a whole lot of different sounds while nothing is played. Sincerly, I only trust my ears. SNR or distortion figures are only marketing figures.
Oh the nightmares. On board audio for every motherboard/laptop I've tried has been junk. Pats USB DAC/AMP lovingly.
The cans In my sig plus mod mic or Samson desktop mic. I use the laptop one. Sent from Bittech Android app
