Headphones, anyone?

[Lex]

Wow Ovation, that is quite a list. I keep listening to my B & W wireless older model headphones. Different colors, gold, graphite, etc... One of my pairs has a serious get loud issue. I have one I just cleaned, I bought after cleaning with Vinegar, I decided to clean with Windex. We'll see how they smell now. Pity, still smell like smoker. I will repeat cleaning.

I am not sure how many pairs I ditched, I kept buying them off ebay used. Not my first choice used, but after I have worn a while, it's not so bad, but there was one pair I had to send back. They just STUNK.

I have no high volume issues with 2 pairs I am using. Worst thing that happens is blue tooth turns off on them, or musicc stops and I have to restart on phone. I prefer listening to my Sonus faber Extremas really when I want true hi-fi. I use headphones so often to avoid noise pollution, any opportunity not to use them and enjoy music is a treat. But who am I kidding, I stay so busy, that only retirement will really be the time I get to "listen to the music".

[Ovation]

Took WAAAYYYY longer than expected but I finally got my hands on my Grado GS1000i 'phones I found back in November. As it was a private sale and arranged through a buddy of mine (he wanted some other gear from the seller) AND my buddy and I just couldn't seem to connect until about 10 days ago, it was quite the wait. Glad to report that, as far as open-back dynamic 'phones go, I have reached endgame status. Not only sound wonderful, but the woodwork is a beautiful mahogany. As with my wife's Grado 225e 'phones, they are not forgiving of poorly recorded material (though they are a big step up in overall sound--as they should be with a used price of 700$ (double that plus tax when new) vs a 250$ new price for my wife's set). To get equal quality sound from speakers, I think I'd have to spend about 5-7x as much as I paid for the 'phones.

Very lightweight (especially compared to my planar HifiMan set--I'd say half the weight) and, crucially, my only over-ear 'phones that are comfortable with my glasses. They are sublime with well-recorded classical music (of which I have hundreds of SACDs, more hundreds of CDs) and very good to excellent with most other genres (I say most because my collection of speed metal is...shallow. :-y :B ). Bass is excellent for me (clean, articulate and surprisingly deep, but NOT a basshead headphone for dubstep fans). I have old jazz recordings from the 30s to early 50s that are less than pristine--these are not too accommodating for the hiss and other noise (the clarity of the 'phones, usually among its finest qualities, is a bit of a drawback here). Fortunately, my Sennheiser HD6XX (650-clone) take such recordings (and overly compressed modern recordings) in stride. With these two, my serious listening open-back 'phone collection is sufficient until one is lost, broken, or stolen.

I pretty much have one more 'phone (more a type) on my list and then I'm done. I need a good closed-back option (gave my Sennheiser HD630VBs to my son at Christmas). I'm in no rush, but when a good deal on a closed-back over ear planar presents itself, I'll grab it and wrap up my headphone collecting for a while.

Besides, I have to turn my attention to making my home cinema Atmos-capable (not for movies so much--5.1 has worked well enough for me for 20 years now--but for music. I've heard some amazing immersive Atmos mixes and now I wanna have it). Upgradeitus never really ends, does it?

[Ovation]

I pretty much have one more 'phone (more a type) on my list and then I'm done. I need a good closed-back option (gave my Sennheiser HD630VBs to my son at Christmas). I'm in no rush, but when a good deal on a closed-back over ear planar presents itself, I'll grab it and wrap up my headphone collecting for a while.

Well, it wasn't a rush, but I've gone and filled that last type on my list. A very well-reviewed (by a reviewer in which I have a high degree of confidence) closed-back planar option went on sale for a little while (80$ off) at Drop (formerly Massdrop)--a collaboration with Dan Clark Audio. As is frequent with Drop, they gather orders, request a production run, and ship them out. They won't ship until 31 May (and I don't really need a closed back option until the fall when I start spending a lot of time on campus and in libraries again after a couple months hiatus in summer), but that completes the set for now. I've got all the angles covered for headsets--might need one or two headphone amps to complete everything.

(until, of course, the next great thing comes along...:wink: )

[Lex]

I don't think I will ever own open back phones, to me, you want the music inside, but keep the volumn down enough to avoid permenant hearing loss. I already have tinnitus some, so going to get back on this supposed blend of herbs and whatever that are supposed to help. I think I have about a 2.5 month supply. Either it works, or it was wasted money, I don't really believe it will work, but my noise suppression headphones make it easier to enjoy music, and not notice the tinnitus as bad.

I may get a new set of phones, but I don't think I could take wires on headphones now. I need wireless.

[Ovation]

I don't think I will ever own open back phones, to me, you want the music inside, but keep the volumn down enough to avoid permenant hearing loss. I already have tinnitus some, so going to get back on this supposed blend of herbs and whatever that are supposed to help. I think I have about a 2.5 month supply. Either it works, or it was wasted money, I don't really believe it will work, but my noise suppression headphones make it easier to enjoy music, and not notice the tinnitus as bad.

I may get a new set of phones, but I don't think I could take wires on headphones now. I need wireless.

I see the attraction of closed back phones. It's why I got a set to replace the Sennheisers I gave to my son at Christmas. Just got them last week (had them sent to my parents' house in NH to get free shipping and they were here for a week). I've not spent a ton of time with them, but so far, so good. The sound is more laid back than my Senns and Grados, but that's good in a closed back (don't want high frequency harshness bouncing around a closed set). They are perfect for their purpose (for use in my shared office on campus and in libraries). Passive, but quite effective in blocking sound. Very comfortable cushions and headgear. Lighter than I was expecting (another plus for work). Good write-up on them here (article is from 2020, they are now a Drop exclusive--and less expensive for it).

I think that's the end of my headphone journey for a while. Got just about every base covered (anything else would be buying for the sake of buying, not filling a need or even a major want). Unless some fantastic new tech comes along for phones, I think I'll be fine (unless something breaks). Next up (though not for a while--too busy): Atmos capable processing in the man-cave. My buddy has a setup and with Atmos music mixes, it's quite spectacular.

In the headphone category, I'll probably be more interested in amps (but also, not for now).

[Warlock]

My 2 primary headphones are: over-ear Shure SRH 240A , and in-ear Sony MDR "extra bass".

While the Shure has a 'thicker' and bassier overall sound, the bass is more clear and discernible in the Sony in-ear. I was surprised that any in-ear headphone could have such good bass....

[theSven]

I started with some AKG's back in 2013 that were on ear and I still have them which my son uses today. Then I upgraded to the Bowers and Wilkens wireless similar to the wired P7. Now I have upgraded to the Apple air pod max because the noise cancelling was even better than the BWs when flying 8 to 10 hours on a flight. Has anyone else try tried the Apple air pod max? I have a coworker that had them and let me test drive them. After feeling how light they felt on my ears and the noise cancelling I ordered a pair.

[Steve Manning]

I've never really had a good set of headphones. Though back many years ago whilst in the Navy making patrols on boomer subs for months on end, a guy in my department had a set of Stax Earspeakers. They were $700 back then. He had them hooked up to a portable Nakamichi portable cassette player ..... CD's were years off yet. The sound was a religious experience as the saying goes. He was kind enough to let me use them during the patrols.

[JonMarsh]

I started with some AKG's back in 2013 that were on ear and I still have them which my son uses today. Then I upgraded to the Bowers and Wilkens wireless similar to the wired P7. Now I have upgraded to the Apple air pod max because the noise cancelling was even better than the BWs when flying 8 to 10 hours on a flight. Has anyone else try tried the Apple air pod max? I have a coworker that had them and let me test drive them. After feeling how light they felt on my ears and the noise cancelling I ordered a pair.

I have a pair of AirPod Max, bought around this time last year, and I'm still exploring how I feel about them.







That's a weird sounding statement to make, but one must consider the acquisition and usage context. It's a slightly convoluted history...


My younger daughter-in-law received a set of AirPods Pro (1st gen) from the company she used to work for, as part of a Christmas bonus deal a couple of years ago. Being a Samsung phone user, and my wife also in that category, she offered them to me, and I accepted, seeing the utility for outdoor walks and exercise. They've worked well for that, have nice midrange and upper bass clarity even in outdoor conditions, and pretty reasonable focus for a bluetooth headphone. (I'm not fond of bluetooth headphones at all, having even once bought a highly reviewed Sony pair, which in general disappointed. Ok, I'm a bit particular...)

So, since around last Christmas I've used the AirPod Max at times for my exercise stuff, (but mostly switched back to the AirPod Pros for that) and done a bit of video watching with them. They are pretty light, and quite comfortable for this kind of over the ear design. I plan to give them a more serious audition contest this weekend. I have picked up 3.5mm headphone to Lightning adapter, and plan to try them direct into the Soekris DAC1541 headphone output running from Audirvana studio on an M1 Mac mini.

Using them with Bluetooth, well, they sound kind of like an overstuffed sofa. with a presence range dip. And a general level of what I'd call "muffling" of dynamics. And that's in comparison to my B&W wired headphones, so it's sort of not a fair comparison. And this is with all kinds of program. Probably pretty comfy for putting on during a flight and drifting off to sleep with quiet music and noise suppression turned on, which I don't doubt was the primary design intent. Good results for that focus.

I should have time to dig out some of my better wried headphones by this weekend, (I've got one AT set located, but not sure about the others yet, I know they're here SOMEWHERE, having seen them at some point early in the unpacking) and run the AirPods Max wired in direct on the same setup listening for resolution and dynamics. I have a suspicion at this point that that's not their forte... but we'll see.

Stay tuned.

[JonMarsh]

well, tomorrow starts the weekend, and I've only found one of my good wired headphone sets, some Audio Technicas, old favorites. This has been one of those weeks where "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans", to use the old quote, or perhaps it should be updated to "Life is what happens in SPITE of having other plans!"


In keeping with the general level of chaos and upheaval 2022 has brought us, with more things turned upside down than not, I'm also initially planning an off the beaten path choice of program material for listening comparisons- unless your beaten path takes you to a brilliant new prodigy from Eastern Europe by the name of Marcin-Patrzalek.




Though he does now have a recording contract with Sony Music, no album is released yet, but YouTube holds some interesting videos of him. Yes, he is quite young- barely in his 20's.


So, I've picked two test tracks by him, for fun, "Kashmir" (as by Led Zeppelin) and "Sweet Dreams" (as by the Eurythmics), though there are many other styles of recordings he's done based on classical music. He combines two handed finger picking and note hammering with open string work and percussion on the guitar body, which is picked up by special pickups. His songs are not double tracked, and most sound impossible for one person to play that way by themselves.

It will be interesting to see how this works out...

[JonMarsh]

well, it doesn't seem like doing this "shoot out" is going to work out... because it seems that if there is any bluetooth connection available to an apple device in range, the Air Pod Max will play that instead of the direct input. Basically, I can't get the direct input mode with Lightning adapter to work. And further research shows how the analog to digital conversion in the Lightining cable itself will sort of defeat the purpose of a direct connection, well, let's just say it's disappointing.

🙄

Right now I'm just listening with Fidelia, which is my favorite player that still uses the onboard audio system on a Mac. I'm going to install Audirvana today, which provides its own complete audio system driver for optimizing priority.


One good point that doing a bit of headphone listening reminds me of, is the importance of room acoustics and setup if you're using speakers. Folks generally lament the efforts they go to in recording and mastering studios for room acoustics and particularly suppression of ETC issues and comb filtering. DRIAC will NOT fix those issues, all it will do is flatten the RMS amplitude response at the measuring point.

Anyone noting that their Wavecor Ardents don't have the harmonic richness and integrity and imaging of say, a $200 pair of ATH-MSR7 headphones, well, folks, that's a big part of the reason why.

There's a lot more performance waiting to be unlocked in your system, with the right efforts. I discovered this first hand in a home environment in the mid 70's. Used to bring folks over to the the house I rented with our receptionist Lori, just to show them what stuff could sound like. Blew some minds, especially on classical music with sources that had a good acoustic image intact.

[JonMarsh]

So far, so good... a lot of flexibility operating mode, and sound quality is first class. Very good data management, just by pointing the location to my top level library folder. In free trial mode, only considering a local operation license for now. (you know how us cranky anachronistic elders can be...). And yes, there is a dark mode for those that prefer that.

[theSven]

JonMarsh How about a test with Roon streaming to your iphone? Would that be worthy of a test?

[JonMarsh]

Hey Sven,

My Roon setup from 2016 is an old small green computer, don't have an iPad currently setup to work with it, then it would go through a network render to a DAC or USB to AES/EBU.

Then, too, I'm one of those cranky old purists that starts laughing (actually, cackling is probably closer to what happens) when folks talk about DSP electronic crossovers with limited capability biquad filters for network filter design running into some no-name internal 16bit delta sigma DAC chip. Through bluetooth into that signal path also, with it's digital bandwidth problems and jitter, and I start to turn green... (just a reminder, bluetooth cannot do "lossless audio" on headphones. IE., clean 16 bit uncompressed digital audio. So using Roon as a front end for an iPhone, once you figured out how to route the original signal through the necessary networking, would not be a happy situation. Even going through a wired headphone connector, you don't get the real deal according to Apple Support. Yes, they sound very good compared with any other headphone I've heard connected to my iPhone. No, they don't match more conventional solutions, even at times for files like the Marcin recordings. But in a sense, it's not a "fair" comparison, because my "cheapo conventional solution" is an M1 Mac mini with Audirvana Origins running in exclusive mode for digital output and feeding the USB input to my Soekris DAC without reclocking. But playing the same song from the iPhone download, versus that song from a different digital source on the Mac mini is not equivalent even as regards the source, much less what happens after the player.


I spent a number of years researching gear with a colleague of mine in the Munich headquarters - we tried out lots of $10K+ DACs and auxiliary gear to get the best out of them. This was of course with large system playback, and a variety of speakers evolving at his end (pricey Wilson ones last time I visited) and Halcro amps and custom modified preamps by Schnerzinger in Germany. At my end, mainly the 1st gen Isiris and Wavecor Ardents, with Halcro DM10 preamp and DM68 mono blocks. TotalDAC was our final choice, with Brainstorm DCD8 for digital reclocking using rubidium time bases (had to try several of those to find the best bang for the buck; they differ in phase jitter, though all have great long term stability) though we heard some pretty nice other stuff, from MSB and Weiss and others, including a few pieces that play out of their price league to an extent, like the Soekris DAC1541 and the somewhat improved DAC2541. The NADM50 was another budget favorite, as was the Cambridge 851D. My friend's skeptical physician wife was our control and verification subject, her task to keep us honest and not subject to placebo effect.

Note, while I do have a Benchmark HPA4, which is a great combination of preamp and headphone amp, one of the best measuring preamps stereophile has ever seen (lowest noise, lowest distortion, very wide bandwidth), if I'm just doing digital in and headphone or balanced line out, it's hard to beat the value proposition for mere mortals of the Soekris units. You just don't have multiple analog inputs, only multiple digital inputs (PCM or DSD), with three digital filter options.


http://www.soekris.dk/dac2541.html








The HPA4 does not have a DAC, but it has several analog inputs (very low noise and distortion- use it in one of my speaker measuring setups). And it's a good "budget" choice if you want an excellent preamp and headphone capability, and have a high performance DAC and front end already.

If I was just starting out and wanted to get digital playing well on speakers and on a good set of 'phones, I'd give something like the Soekris a close look. Now, if Schitt could just combine the good stuff from the Yiggy LiM and the newer FreyaS preamp, plus a good headphone amp, and figure out a way to sell it for about $1300, that would be interesting competition ... but not in the cards.

So this is still one of my "starter system" recommendations that I find hard to beat... running in the IT Den and used for quick listening evaluations as well as my background music while working.

[technodanvan]

JonMarsh How about a test with Roon streaming to your iphone? Would that be worthy of a test?

While I am far from the experienced critical listener Jon is, perhaps my more casual approach would be helpful as well. Playing ripped FLAC files on my iPhone Roon claims it is a 'lossless' experience, at least through the built in speaker. I find this at least a little laughable, as the same song played through my NAD M12/M22 combo is considered 'lossy' because there is an amplifier in the mix. Unsure how that logic works but whatever, it sounds 'fine' - as in, I'm always impressed with how a tiny phone speaker sounds in a modern phone (in this case I believe it's an iPhone 13, or some variant thereof). I am, however, typically using Bluetooth headphones as I'm only listening to my phone when working out (a rarity these days that I hope to soon resolve).

When I'm at home I could opt to use Roon, but honestly I'm more accustomed to using Plexamp. The major reason being, Plexamp works anywhere there is a phone signal (i.e. the gym). As far as I'm aware Roon does not offer that functionality, you have to be on the same Wi-Fi network (though please correct me if I'm mistaken!). As far as sound quality of Plexamp goes, it is certainly up to snuff for Bluetooth headphones that inevitably find their way only partially in/on my ears when working out. I also periodically use it in my van, though it does not have a hi-fi system it still sounds as good as any other source. But again, I'm not exactly being a 'critical listener' in these venues. If I'm home, I just use my normal stereo. I suppose if I was unable to listen to my stereo at home (maybe the wife complains or I had kids or something) I would research some headphone/amp/DAC combinations as Jon has outlined above, though I think I would probably keep the total value under $1,000 USD. Call it disrespect for headphones if you like, but without being able to feel the music it just isn't the same to me.

Anyway, I just don't see any real reason to use Roon on a phone when you can only use it on your home network, short of having a home gym or doing yardwork or something. But typically when you're doing such things sound quality doesn't matter that much, so Plexamp makes more sense to me, unless you don't already have a Plex server, of course.

[theSven]

While I am far from the experienced critical listener Jon is, perhaps my more casual approach would be helpful as well. Playing ripped FLAC files on my iPhone Roon claims it is a 'lossless' experience, at least through the built in speaker. I find this at least a little laughable, as the same song played through my NAD M12/M22 combo is considered 'lossy' because there is an amplifier in the mix. Unsure how that logic works but whatever, it sounds 'fine' - as in, I'm always impressed with how a tiny phone speaker sounds in a modern phone (in this case I believe it's an iPhone 13, or some variant thereof). I am, however, typically using Bluetooth headphones as I'm only listening to my phone when working out (a rarity these days that I hope to soon resolve).

When I'm at home I could opt to use Roon, but honestly I'm more accustomed to using Plexamp. The major reason being, Plexamp works anywhere there is a phone signal (i.e. the gym). As far as I'm aware Roon does not offer that functionality, you have to be on the same Wi-Fi network (though please correct me if I'm mistaken!). As far as sound quality of Plexamp goes, it is certainly up to snuff for Bluetooth headphones that inevitably find their way only partially in/on my ears when working out. I also periodically use it in my van, though it does not have a hi-fi system it still sounds as good as any other source. But again, I'm not exactly being a 'critical listener' in these venues. If I'm home, I just use my normal stereo. I suppose if I was unable to listen to my stereo at home (maybe the wife complains or I had kids or something) I would research some headphone/amp/DAC combinations as Jon has outlined above, though I think I would probably keep the total value under $1,000 USD. Call it disrespect for headphones if you like, but without being able to feel the music it just isn't the same to me.

Anyway, I just don't see any real reason to use Roon on a phone when you can only use it on your home network, short of having a home gym or doing yardwork or something. But typically when you're doing such things sound quality doesn't matter that much, so Plexamp makes more sense to me, unless you don't already have a Plex server, of course.

The latest update to Roon 2.0 allows you to now stream anywhere. The downside to this is that the Roon core needs to be on the internet at all times. I haven't been able to update my Roon core yet because it's still running on a VM that travels a lot and doesn't have constant network access. A 2023 goal to migrate Roon to a permanent home.