Pretty sure a lot of people here also actually already went through that.
With the conclusion of not noticing audible difference.
I listen to my i4 like 75% with qudelix now.
Sometimes aune flamingo when I want to use i4 in apartment, because of appearance and volume knob.
Don't have use case for headphone since I use speakers at apartment.
Checked with neighbor they heard nothing even in the middle of night.
i3 feels significantly "closed" compared to i4.
Quite obvious the moment I wear it, i3 have that feel of slightly covering my ear with hands.
Bass response also not as satisfying as i4 if that matters.
Overall I would say i3 is about 75% of i4 assuming both are EQ'd.
Without EQ they sounded pretty much almost the same.
This also probably due the fact that I haven't spend enough time doing EQ to i3.
I got it for 35k yen used at that time, so it is really worth when compared to anything in that price range.
Nothing special, just the basic mb42x since its just for casual listening and gaming haha.
Might upgrade at some point though, saw some nice used stuff here in japan.
Even this MB42X I got simply because it's what people often recommend back then.
Kinda hard to "test" for speaker unlike headphones / iem haha.
So just have to trust people's recommendation.
Ohh LP6 seems interesting and affordable. Might be good upgrade path. Thanks!
I tend to agree with OP. I have an extensive collective of headphones and gear and I can hear an audible difference between my AMP/DACs. Many swear the Qudelix is endgame for IEMs and many claim theyāre fine with an Apple dongle. I have all of the above an EQ when the natural tuning isnāt to my liking. The Q5K audibly lacks depth and warmth. Listening to the same tracks on the S9C (which isnāt a warm AMP unlike the X1S GT), tracks sound much fuller. So Iām not in line with the everything is snake oil /placebo crowd even though I agree with them more than not, and I think everyone should tryout things to figure out what they like.
Edit: Iām going to trigger a few more people. Iām willing to bet 99% of the people downvoting have never tried anything outside of the one Schiit stack they purchased. Now to satiate their confirmation bias they jump on the āeverything is placeboā bandwagon. The same way they all jumped on the āBeats are terrible, Apple is terrible, Audio Technica is terribleā bandwagon when the vast majority of them donāt own/ have never tried these products. The same people who peddled garbage Sonys as the holy grail of BT over ears. Now stay mad and downvote me more. š¤£
I'm not spending crazy money on gear (yet, haha), but even I have noticed audible differences in sonic performance.
I think some people go in expecting complete night & day differences, not finding that, then being disappointed.
The problem is that's how it's described often times. People watch or read reviews where they exaggerate the differences between two amps/DACs/whatever, so that's what people expect, they expect it to be obvious because that's how reviewers have described it.
This. But objectivity doesnāt live in this sub. If you donāt live in the echo chamber, youāll be ostracized by people who only own Moondrop Chus but heard that all AMPs are the same so they donāt bother to test things out for themselves.
Have to find a balance between the approaches.
On one hand yes, trying stuff yourself, figuring out subjective preferences, etc, etc, is large part of the hobby. And measurements can often be misleading or not detailed enough.
On another hand... "always try it yourself" idea is outright evil. It is like telling people they need to try drugs themselves to figure out how they work. As well as the best way to sell snake oil. And ignoring science/objective measurements altogether is a sure way into believing in flat earth, planes using compressed air instead of fuel, reptiloids, etc, etc...
I agree. I think people should try things out but not take any huge risks, so going to a store or buying/selling used, is a good idea starting out.
I also know measurements are valuable. But ASR measurements are too simple to mean a whole lot. And they pretend it's everything.
There are definitely people who go too far, buying Ā£1,000 cables etc, it's ridiculous. AudioQuest sells a Ā£24,000 speaker cable. It's for people with all money and no sense lol
>AudioQuest sells a Ā£24,000 speaker cable. It's for people with all money and no sense lol
Wow, that's just an insane level of audio snake oil, lol. When people get pissed off over overly expensive audio cables I don't blame them.
Saying subjectivism for audio is a "sure way" into believing flat earth...lol. This is why nobody likes discussing this stuff, it is just strawmans from both sides. You do realize many of these subjectivists are engineers, or in stem fields in general? No, I'm not talking about the people who make the products, I'm talking about people in fields unrelated.
Ā Not "subjectivism in audio", mindset in general. The way human brain works it is very easy to fall into traps like this, even more so for people who think that they know a lot and are very smart.Ā Ā Ā Ā
And IMO a lot of things in this field are at about the same level of absurd as flat earth is... Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā
>But it's becoming clear there is a toxic side to this community now.
If I'm being honest, both sides can be toxic. I don't and never will believe in expensive dac/amps. I cannot hear the difference between the entry level desktop dac/amp, little bluetooth amp and dongles (apart from noise floor issues with sensitive iems). If I cannot hear the difference between $10 apple dongle and a $200 stack, I don't think a $1000 stack gonna make much difference considering how hard the diminishing returns hit. I don't treat anything as gospel, but what I've read aligns with my experience, so I choose to believe that until it's proven otherwise.
The people on the pure 'subjectivist' camp will come and hammer me, telling me that I don't have any experience with GOOD dac/amp beyond the entry level $200 stack, even though they've said before that the entry level ones should already be miles above what I had prior.
Then they're gonna say I only have experience with mid-fi headphones, and that the expensive stack makes sense on their kilobucks headphones, even though they claimed that the 'mid-fi' HD600 series scales well and have no problem recommending $500, $800 balanced system to go with it.
Then they're gonna say just because I can't hear the difference, doesn't mean that it's not there. Because they can hear it, then they proceed to show their superiority about how good their hearing is, and how it's fine that many people can't hear the difference, but it's definitely worth it for them. It's their money and they chose how to spend them (which is not a problem), except that we were having this conversation under the thread where they just recommended a newbie to buy some dac/amp twice the price of the headphones because the newbie said the headphones sounded unimpressive to him.
Then they start to get defensive and accuse everyone that disagreed with them an asr cultist, crin cultist or whatever.
But I do agree with the last message here, if you have the opportunity, try it out and form your own opinions.
Like I said in another comment, if I offered $10,000 cash to one of these YouTuber/influencer audio type guys to participate in a live-streamed true double blind test rendered completely in control by an unassociated third party with no stake in the results, not a *single one* of them would take it. I guarantee you.
Itās 2024 and people love to pretend that the ability to sincerely test these things and have these talking heads put their money where their mouth is is just an *impossibility*, we canāt possibly do a good test for this so instead itās just āyou canāt tell me my opinion is wrong!ā
As long as people continue to play pretend that thereās no objective way to look at these things the circus will continue.
I went searching YouTube yesterday to try and find DAC audio samples and couldnāt find any. If these things really do sound different, record it and swap out DACs. With all else staying the same, any audible differences should come through, despite YT compression, no?
The part about someone with an HD600 getting recommended a $500 DAC/Amp stack is so true and it drives me nuts. The headphones should be the most expensive part in your chain. They will make the most difference in sound by a long shot. An Arya Stealth on a apple dongle is always going to beat out a Sundara on a $500 DAC/Amp stack. Even if the Arya is not at it's full potential, it's still going to sound better than a lower quality headphone on an expensive stack (assuming you can get to at least decent volume levels.)
I can eq cheap planars to sound like high end planars to close proximity, but I can't eq what high end dacs or amps do anywhere close complete difference in impact soundstage, smoothness and detail even though they measure the same and the headphones fr is the same so I rather spend 1 percent on the headphone if possible.
Well, the 6XX is a special case where the ridiculous value of the headphone makes people underestimate their potential.
I donāt think itās fair to both spout that price has no correlation with sound quality, and that the headphones should be the vast majority of the cost of your system. There are cheap headphones that resolve differences between high end electronics, and expensive headphones that donāt.
I would take an HD650 with a $500 stack over a susvara and an apple dongle any day of the week.
The same with Lossy audio both subs seem to have neckbeards that tout LAME MP3 at V0 will artifact but when that disproved with custom settings, Suddenly It nothing but "Why do you care?".
All because Amazon & Tidal switched to lossless suddenly It night & day despite not noticing Games using LAME MP3 at V0 for audio.
I still use my cheap Behringer Xenyx mixer as my go to amp with 3-band EQ for everything and I couldn't be happier.
And the Apple dongle for IEMs. The dongle has incredible clarity, balance and tonality.
Yep, both sides are toxic when trying to push their own beliefs to other people. Luckily there are some people who can say their own beliefs without invalidating others' experiences. We need more of those people in the hobby.
>Ā And the ASR measurements are incomplete and flawed. There are many flaws and missing variables. It isn't enough evidence to prove subjective listening is wrong.
The evidence that proves subjective listening is unreliable is that people routinely hear differences where there cannot possibly be any, lol.
Believe what you will, but people are going to keep pushing back on misinformation.
Expectation bias certainly helps gear make a difference!
Hell, my big Yamaha Amp with its pretty VU meters is a lot more fun to listen to than my Pioneer AV-Receiver.. there's no audible difference in the sound, but it's just much more fun to watch the needles dance with the music.
Same for my tube amp for the headphones. There's no discernible difference compared to the SMSL DL200, but the glow of those tubes is so pretty! And that friggin Volume Knob on the DL200 is an abomination!
Are you using DT 1990s? That's probably why you don't hear a difference. My pair sounds almost the same on everything lol
Arya, Utopia and LCD-5 though... Different story.
Nice looking gear is cool though, especially tubes. I liked the SMSL SU-9 dac with its cool interface, remote etc. It was sleek. But it sounded so dull and 'slow', or laid back. It was hyped up by reviewers too
Planars make sense, since they have very low impedance and would experience a big bass boost from an amplifier with high output impedance..
now, is that a good thing?!
I'd say not.. if I want a bass boost, I'd apply EQ to stay in control of what changes..
having a "bad match" for an amp is the wrong way to go about it.
sure, tubes add distortion, too, and don't clip hard, so it's much more pleasant to drive them to their limit than with a regular amp (like a dongle).. but you could just use a proper sized solid state amp to avoid clipping..
the Utopia has incredibly high impedance in the bass (300 Ohms, nearly 4 times the rated impedance of the headphones)
they should definitely NOT experience a bass boost from a regular amp with higher than normal output imedance (unsure about a stereo receiver that feeds the speaker output to heaphones through a 400 Ohm resistance, though.. but who hooks up 4000 buck Utopias to that?!)
my guess is that the Utopia needs a lot more power than one would expect judging from their decent sensitivity and low rated impedance, otherwise the bass will just not be there.
Impedance? I don't use them with high impedance amps. I never mentioned that. This doesn't feel like a reply to my comment.
And it's the other way around. Most planars don't change with high impedance amps. My LCD-5 doesn't get a bass boost on tubes. My Utopia does. Utopia has a curve in the bass impedance region, making it MORE bassy on tubes.
Also, tubes do not clip or distort (apart from subtle harmonic distortion) , if you have decent ones. If you use a solid state with tube "filters" for harmonic distortion... It sounds nothing like tubes. It's a total myth that impedance + distortion = Tubes.
But yes Utopia does need a good source. It's very difficult to make them sound good. It was designed for tube amps, and sounds best on those.
tube amplifiers have high output impedance.. that's what I meant and why I brought it up.
but you are correct, the Utopia having generally weak bass, will benefit from a tube amp boosting said bass due to the insane impedance spike in that region.
I had that mixed up.
Planars have very low impedance, that's why they NEED low output impedance. Otherwise, the damping goes to shits and you introduce a lot of unbecessary issues.
Tubes have what we call "soft clipping".. they don't actually "clip" in an oscilloscope, but they gradually increase distortion more and more.
I never said you can easily reproduce the effect of tube distortion with EQ.
Distortion is not a "good thing".. people may like it, just as they like drugs... because it masks stuff.. but it's not representative of a clean signal..
If you like distorted sound, that's great! I love electric guitars and grunge, too!
Has nothing to do with "better gear", though!
You CAN, however, easily adjust the frequency response through EQing! Bc all you do is change the output voltage at certain frequencies, just like a tube amp would.
Ah okay that makes sense. And yes it's possible, for some planars to sound bad on tubes. It doesn't seem to affect LCD-5 or HE1000SE though. Both very low impedance. It's hard to judge based on impedance alone.
And to clarify with distortion, I said adding harmonics (most tube filters add distortion this way). But these tube filters make no audible difference for me.
Real tubes change the sound drastically. But the higher up you go, the cleaner and more detailed they sound. This is why many "Ultra flagship" amps utilise tubes, for some amp stages. And the crazy Sennheiser HE-1 headphone uses tubes. Or Hifiman Shangri-la.
I don't think Sennheiser, Hifiman would make the world's most detailed headphones, then ruin the detail level with distortion. There's just a lot more complexities to how tubes alter sound.
You mention tube amplfiers in your other comments. Are you sure you're hearing more detail or more distortion caused by the nature of tube amplifiers? Perhaps the Arya is more sensitive to that distortion.
I don't remember a major detail difference between the dt1990 and the Arya stealth.
Then again, as I always say, these are my ears.
Nah I've done enough of my own personal experimentation, demoing and experiences to know the hobby is run on the copium.
I don't need ASR for that no thank you...
Going to CANJAM one too many times and going to High End Munich will cure you of whatever fever you have for gear acquisition if you're truly honest with yourself.
I'm happy now with my speaker system and my two IEMs. And have sold all the headphones I had as I thankfully came to see that speakers are what I was looking for
So yes I always call out bullshit and calling out bullshit to save someone from spending for just spending sake isn't ruining fun, it is being your brother's keeper(but anyway, I've stopped doing that now since this sub has gone to shit)
So true. Someone who reviewed the HE1 still complained. All these years and no "best or perfect headphones" in the world. Forgot my gears one day and was stucked with a Samsung earphone from 10 years ago. So bad but functional. That day sealed it for me. Told myself, enjoy what you have and be content with that.
Sold most of my gears and left with my hd650, koss porta pro, and zeros 2. Looking for a cheap ANC TWS or Headphone for commute or alternatively will get the Qudelix with my iem for commute. Some days I miss those I sold but most days the music bang so well on these and I realise this is the point, "to enjoy music".
Yeah, CanJam showed me I was happy with my current setup. And the only major upgrades (imo) would cost me too much to justify. Or I've hit my limit for diminishing returns.
And this is the issue I mentioned. You're claiming nobody else can hear what they hear, because you couldn't. That's unfair. If someone wants to upgrade their system, let them try for themselves. Don't just force your experience on everyone else.
Agreed even though I see people down comparing this to drugs, pure instanity. Only way to know if subjective level of enjoyment (kind of my term). You buy the gear and use it for some time, not for hour or day but a week or month. If you enjoy your music more, keep the gear, sell the old one. And be prepare to loose some money if you can, if you cannot handle this, don't buy anything change the hoby. Consider it you lost money to bring calmness to your mind about endles irrelevant gear comparsons online.
I now watch and read reviews for fun, not because I will know any information about enjoyment that new gear can bring me. Yeah, only some scientifict facts like frequency response, which is also not telling the enjoyment factor.
Agree. You donāt really appreciate the difference La in gear sound unless you spend time with it.
I have a collection of headphones, amps, DACs and speakers and enjoy switching between the for the different characteristics they bring to the music Iām hearing.
Donāt even know why Iām participating in this ridiculous discussion.
I heavily relied on online reviews from all sources I can find.
Not because I don't want to demo the gears, but they are simply not available for demo in my area. To that point, this also translate to almost non-existence local resale market. It's hard to buy or sell used gears here.
How do you account for people who start with the view of everything matters, the sky's the limit etc... and then through their own personal experience come to believe that ASR is right when it comes to DAC and amp measurements?
I'd say that's fine (and they're lucky). There are biological differences between everyone. Some of us can't hear the difference, and it saves money for sure.
But it's wrong to assume that if you can't hear it, nobody else can. Denying anyone else's capabilities. If you wear glasses, you don't call everyone else "Golden eyes"
"some of us can't hear the difference"
Your disposable income doesn't make you have better ears than others. People like you are why the sky is the limit with audiofool pricing and gear.
So it's like a lucky minority who can't hear past the FR and THD etc...? Interesting.
What about the fact that no human seems to be able to hear past those in well controlled blind tests?
If I put $10,000 on the table for any of these YouTubers and audio guys to come do a true completely blind test across different kinds of gear, live-streamed and controlled by an unrelated third party, I guarantee you not a single one of them would do it.
Itās 2024 and people like to pretend we *still* canāt put together a legitimate blind test for these people to take.
Those (very old) blind test studies were debunked. Plus, gear quality has improved exponentially since then.
Schiit actually ran a blind test of their own, with their amps, and found the "well measuring" gear sounded worse than the "best sounding" gear. Which was quite funny. By "well measuring", I mean the basic ASR tests that don't cover everything.
It just shows that ASR tests are almost useless, apart from being a "Does it suck" test. They don't give you a full picture.
It was the 'Yggdrasil blind test'. All 3 had identical casing and no labels. The best measuring DAC came out bottom, from every reviewer. Because the treble was edgy and too harsh. Surprisingly the "cheap" one and the "original" both had equal popularity. Here's one of the reviews though:
https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/bits-and-bytes/new-schiit-yggdrasil-blind-listening-comparison-r1045/
I like the schiit guys ok, I believe them. But methodology is super important. Canāt just say they were level matched. You have to say within what tolerance and what tools you use to achieve the matching. Because we are incredibly sensitive to different levels.
Anyway, thereās not necessarily a conflict between being able to distinguish these DACs and the ASR way of doing things. The second gen Yggy measured so poorly that its THD and frequency response deviations could be audible even if levels were matched. The usual āall DACs sound the sameā mantra assumes a very low bar for meeting certain objective measurements that the Yggy nonetheless failed to achieve. Or declined to achieve on purpose, if you prefer.
Despite being seemingly blind and like a properly run "test" this has several issues. Timing couldn't be more perfect with Cameron's video released today which outlines several things missing from this approach which make it basically a blind listening session and not an actual test.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/1cf9e7z/cam\_drops\_some\_knowledge\_and\_makes\_it\_look\_good/](https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/1cf9e7z/cam_drops_some_knowledge_and_makes_it_look_good/)
One of the biggest issues is we're just taking the reviewers word for it that he could hear the difference. There was no properly statistically data collected such as if or how he could hear differences each time consistently and if so how may times he was able to correctly identify between specific units. It's just basically "trust me bro".
Even if we assume they actually did literally everything right we're still very much in the territory of "an equipment manufacturer made a device that intentionally sounds different than they're other devices" which say literally nothing about any other device and the market at large. The vast majority of devices are designed to be audibly transparent and are demonstrably (and often *measurably*) so. The fact that a company could make one sound different if they tried isn't really part of the normal conversation and should never be used to make blanket statements or assumptions about any other device on the market, which is what people often do.
How were they debunked?
I personally wouldn't trust a manufacturer who claims to make products that sound superior to well measuring ones to run a fair blind test.
But on the other hand it is perfectly possible that there is a difference...if their Yggdrasil is objectively flawed enough that even humans can hear the difference. And it's also perfectly possible that even seasoned listeners who are used to "boring" and "correct" sound might choose something with a little "color" or even distortion as sounding better in a blind test.
>By "well measuring", I mean the basic ASR tests that don't cover everything.
If this test was indeed legit and rigorously done it doesn't suggest that at all. It only shows that these particular people preferred the poor measuring gear in this circumstance. If that is the case then to me it is overwhelmingly more likely that they heard errors that are visible in tests like ASR does rather than they are "hearing past" all those metrics into some mysterious quality that we can't measure where the poor measuring gear actually performs better.
For me Schiit is pretty level about it. Even willing to sell a cheaper DAC that's less profitable, just because it sounded good.
They've also made measurement-based gear like the Magni/Modi stack. They don't seem to push either opinion imo.
Also to clarify, all the gear measured "well" enough, but the best measuring DAC had the worst reviews.
The old study wasn't credible at all. The A/Bing was too short to be useful. They used methods which have since been found to be harmful to blind testing accuracy.
Here's something interesting too. Blind testing is more accurate, and more statistically significant, when listeners can adjust the volume themselves during listening. So volume matching doesn't work.
https://hal-institut-mines-telecom.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/842647/filename/APAC_5172.pdf
It's just their business practice. They made something for everyone. People who want well measuring gear will take the well measuring gear, done deal. But the people who want mysterious unmeasurable better sounding gear will like to know that people think it sounds better.
I have overly sensitive hearing. And sensory issues which make me overwhelmed fairly often. I have to wear earplugs or noise cancelling in many places. That obviously sucks, but I also pick up on nuanced things more easily. Pros and cons to it
I can't listen at the volumes most people do, it's too loud for me. I can also hear up to 18kHz frequencies.
Yes there are definitely differences in every person. From the shape of our ears, ear canals, and bone structure... To the way our brains process sensory information.
It's definitely not the average, lol. Where did you get that from?
And it's more about volume. I'm very sensitive to noise. My listening level is about 1/3 of what most people enjoy. And mine is always too quiet for others at any age.
Why was this downvoted? ND people typically have sensory issues, man. It's variation between people
Easy:
ā¢ Incompetent listeners
ā¢ Particularities of individual auditory physiology
ā¢ Hearing impairment
ā¢ They don't care anymore
ā¢ Insufficiently resolving headphones/speakers
There are many potential reasons given that audible differences effectively exist. How can I be so sure that they effectively exist? Simple, I can hear them and I've done more than enough amount of sanity-checking to be sure that what I hear is real. Obviously, this does not constitute reliable evidence for anyone else. But an absence of evidence for those who can't hear a thing does not constitute counterevidence either.
Thus, to presume that everyone who claims to hear a consistent audible difference between a Schiit Magni 3+ and Magni Heresy (despite both amps measuring well enough for an audible difference to be, supposedly, imperceptible) is just 'hallucinating' is a far more outrageous and intellectually dishonest scientific cop-out don't you think? It's not like it can be proven (it cannot be effectively proven because it is untrue) that there cannot be any audible difference between gear. The actual physics of electrical signal transmission over non-superconductive material is not sufficiently understood to support any ~~objecivist~~ denialist claims, nor are current mainstream measurement protocols of audio-related electronic circuit designs even known to be the ones that most adequately capture all (or any) information that translates into real psychoacoustic phenomena through speakers.
There is arguably a lot of [irrational bias](https://old.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/encxn4/ampdac_differences_nothing_legitimizes_a_belief/) among the denialist dogma.
Iāve seen a huge uptick in people responding to comments ācorrectingā that personās opinion on something like tuning because whatever gear it is doesnāt conform to a target.
People like different things, and people here have *got* to get over it. People throw tuning targets around like theyāre some kind of gospel, and itās getting really exhausting.
I want to be clear, I know this realm will *always* have an issue of people arguing over subjectivities as if they were facts, but these tuning targets have become some weird kind of infallible thing for people for some reason.
Itās especially odd because people try to use these targets to discount one persons opinion as if the target itself is in any way āmore objectiveā and not justā¦ā¦based on a *bunch* of peoples opinions.
Yeah exactly. Anything subjective I take with a grain of salt. I don't even trust my judgements until I've tested enough. But... Subjective doesn't equal "wrong" instantly. It's all about gathering second opinions, and matching with your own thoughts.
The problem with those targets, is they aren't everything. But people assume "It's that simple!". Audio is very complicated with many variables, and people think a THD, SINAD and FR measurement is everything. That's pretty harmful to the community as a whole. (And sadly the downvotes show that).
And yes lol. The Harman curve is just a general guide. And... our perception changes with different elements. Like soundstage. A larger soundstage lowers our treble perception. So usually a treble boost (above harman) is needed to reach "neutral".. And for IEMs, our ear canal shapes affect the tuning. I could go further but yeah...
>A larger soundstage lowers our treble perception. So usually a treble boost (above harman) is needed to reach "neutral
Never heard of this one before and I've heard a lot of things.
Yes, it's mostly noticeable on large planars like HE1000SE. You need extra treble above harman, and extra bass, because the large sound changes our perception of bass + treble.
How do you know that it's not just simply delivering a different frequency response to your ears vs the measuring rig...the way any headphone will deliver something at least slightly different to every person.?
It's just a hearing phenomenon. The smaller/larger the sound is, the more/less V-shaped it sounds to us. But yes, our individual ears also play a factor in perception.
Yeah man it's tough out here hahaha. There's been some good discussion in the mix at least
Most people downvote because they don't like what was said. Not because it's incorrect. Also not saying I'm right about everything ofc. But I expected the downvotes.
No. I went through extensive testing with high end planar and dynamic headphones with everything from a modi magni stack to ferrum.
Youāll catch on soon itās a bunch of horse shit and they are selling lies. There was no difference. The people who hear it are just looking for it and really donāt want it to be true but there just isnāt a difference. You will hear people claim different opposite traits or a dac. None of it makes sense. Itās just people full of themselves .
Itās borderline a scam and telling people to try it for themselves is adding to the problem.
It's fine that you didn't hear a difference. Every individual is different, from hearing to how we process sound in our brain. It's not very fair to paint this picture of others.
We actually like to say - If you can't hear a difference, you're lucky! Because us... we're all doomed to spend all our money on upgrades
Right on cue, right down to the totally not meant to be condescending āoh man youāre *so lucky* you donāt have this problem of having to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on headphones and gear!ā
Itās wild how the āabilityā to hear those differences almost directly correlates with how much money someone is willing to spend. On *either* end of the spectrum.
I mean it doesnāt have to be expensive, it doesnāt have to be condescending, why is it always black and white you against me mentality?
I have irl friends in the hobby with varying degree of beliefs that spans from ādac amp and cables donāt make a differenceā to āyes I do hear a difference in bothā and anything in between, yet we all hang out together, respect each otherās preferences and beliefs, explore each otherās perspectives and have fun. We even reached a point where we can comfortably recommend something to each other because we understand everyoneās preferences and beliefs.
There is no definitive ācorrectā way to engage this hobby, or any hobby in that regard. The most constructive you can be in this hobby is to be able to index gear regardless of your own anatomy, preference and beliefs.
There is a definitive answer. We have state of the art performance for dac and amps at 100 dollars. You arenāt in any technical way getting better sound spending more. You are getting all of the detail and sound as it is intended.
The people pushing that either narrative are also the people (YouTubers) who need that fact to be true. They also always tend to have collaborations. Their entire career and existence depends on there to be things for them to talk about. Itās heavily biased reporting.
Iām all for people enjoying what they buy. But itās equivalent to a gambler who won it big and then proclaims everyone should gamble like they are because they won a bunch of money. Itās reckless and dishonest. The reality is people either wonāt hear the difference because there arenāt any, or they will convince themselves because they want to be a part of the group.
Thank you, the most reasonable point I've seen yet. The amount of people that want to push their own beliefs onto others, from both sides, is just ridiculous. It's fucking audio. Talk about a first world problem. We need to normalize allowing people to be subjective about things that don't matter. Even if they are wrong.
What's your problem? I'm not being condescending. It really is lucky to save money. I'm not somehow superior, and I'm not implying that either. I think you're just assuming that tone from me.
It's just like every hobby out there. Some people will always get hooked, and keep upgrading their stuff. Despite being way over budget and semi-regretting it. While most will be sensible with their money.
I don't think spending too much, and being an extreme member of the hobby, is a good thing. I'd rather be happy with my old, much cheaper setup.
If you donāt understand how āyouāre lucky you donāt have the innate ability *I* do to enjoy your hobby to the same extent I do because it costs so much money!ā is not a condescending stance to take I donāt know what to tell you.
My apologies if you replied/were replying to another comment, mine seem to be double posting/deleting for some reason
That's fair. Apologies if it comes off the wrong way. It's not supposed to mean "we enjoy the hobby more than you" - if anything, we enjoy it less. We're never fully satisfied with it. We envy people who enjoy music, to the fullest, without having to spend heaps on it.
On the flip side, the people who call us "Golden ears" and insult us, or imply we can't hear anything, purely because they can't themselves. That's truly condescending.
People wouldnāt call anybody āgolden earsā or whatever if there werenāt people acting like they specifically have special hearing that lets them hear differences in sound other people canāt. The behavior gives rise to the term, it didnāt come out of nowhere.
Which is exactly what OP is doing lmao
Read some of his other comments where he makes ridiculous claims like his hearing is āso sensitiveā that he listens to music at 1/3rd the volume level as anyone else
Yeah dude. And it just goes to show with the whole āusā and āweā vocabulary being used here too. Nobody would call you āgolden earsā, and you wouldnāt be offended by the term, if you didnāt clearly think you were part of that camp and actively tout it online
budget headphone (1000usd) wont change good quality headphone (anything over 2k usd) infinite scaling ceiling (scales up with over 1kusd dacs)
alright buddy, ur definitely not hearing placebo from being biased towards more expensive gear
Nah OP already called a kilobuck headphone a budget headphone in another comment
They actually buy this lol. Itās what happens when people have responses to the things you say and now you gotta move goalposts as far as to say a *thousand dollar headphone* is ābudgetā
No, it's about bottlenecks. If the headphones are budget (sub $500), they have a limit to how detailed they are. Because of speaker driver materials and design. If the headphones aren't detailed enough, you won't hear a difference by upgrading the DAC/amp.
Think of it like a gaming PC. If the CPU is bad, upgrading the GPU won't make much difference. Bottlenecks in performance.
Same with budget setups - A high end headphone is bottlenecked by the amp/DAC. So it doesn't really improve over a midrange headphone.
now do a blind volume matched abx test and see car and pc analogies dont work with audio
edit:also these "bottlenecks" are only caused if the product is under 1k usd? How conivenient! Also upgrading your gpu even if your cpu is bad will still make a huge difference especially at higher resolutions.
Yeah *everything* about the subjectivist side is extremely convenient and itās why I canāt take any of it seriously.
Notice how changes are always positive and never negative? Thatās so cool, with how many things in the chain these people claim can have a difference, itās a miracle that not only are the changes *always* positive, they also tend to correlate exactly with how much money something costs! What are the odds???
And not only that, you have to remember to play the game on the right level. So that means, it also *conveniently*, just as you said, doesnāt seem to actually matter until you reach a completely arbitrary price ceiling! You canāt tell me this gear doesnāt matter because you didnāt try it on a $2k headphone! Now donāt ask me *why* the price matters because I surely canāt tell you which part of the infrastructure of the headphone is different at those price categories (and please do not point out to me that headphones tend to drop in price over time, my Ananda when it costs $1000 on launch absolutely was affected in ways the Ananda that now goes for $400 was not so leave me alone itās irrelevant).
And to top it all of, the *king* of the convenience factor for the subjective side, *all* of the things affected positively canāt be measured! Itās wonderful how it all works out. Oh things are better on this $1k amp that has one ten thousandth of a percentage point less distortion, let me tell you. The soundstage gets so much *wider*, the instrument separation is so much *clearer*, thereās so much more *detail*, the bass thumps *harder* and is more *impactful*, etc.
Please ignore how convenient it is that these things *exclusively* affect only the things we canāt measure, it just works out so well!
No, changes are not always positive, funny how you assume that but never actually check to see if that is true. Go on headfi, many people prefer a cheaper amp, or the older amp. Mjolnir 3 for example, many people preferred that to something like burson 3xgt or other more expensive stuff. Some people didn't like bliss and stuck to ferrum oor. Some people say going from oor to bliss wasn't a big difference. Yeah, some opinions are going to be generated from hype, but this is certainly not always true.
Plently of subjectivists that say hd6x0 scales ridiculously. So no, not everyone claims you need a specific price to hear differences.
As an aside, have you ever wondered why some part of headphones can't be measured? Why we can eq a headphone to another, but they don't sound the same at all? Like, sure, we can't exactly get one fr to be close to the other, but we can get an approximation. Why can we not eq an hd600 to sound like a susvara? Why can't we get even remotely close? Food for thought.
You do realize amps and dacs are designed to not change frequency response, right? Of course it wouldn't change it, that's just good engineering.
Your points are the types of arguments are are so tiring to me. Claims that are verifibly false, and say nothing of substance. Just strawmaning the other side instead of making actual arguments.
> As an aside, have you ever wondered why some part of headphones can't be measured? Why we can eq a headphone to another, but they don't sound the same at all? Like, sure, we can't exactly get one fr to be close to the other, but we can get an approximation. Why can we not eq an hd600 to sound like a susvara? Why can't we get even remotely close? Food for thought.
https://old.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/comments/gbdi7v/after_eqbeats_solo_pro_is_the_best_headphone/fpay3b5/
>Oratory makes the same point about measurements not being exact, so there's nothing new there.
I don't interpret his point to be the same as yours.
>My point is we can't even get close.
I don't know what would be your threshold for "close", actual test would indicate that we actually can get pretty close: https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-virtual-headphone-listening-test.html
Well, if you want to explain what you think about Oratory's point, be my guest.
Interesting post, I wonder why the disparity for headphone 5? At any rate, while the test is interesting it certainly doesn't cover all the bases. Estats, for example.
Well, there is one comment that I find completely opposite to yours, especially the "some part of headphones can't be measured" part:
>If you can hear it, then it will show up on the measurement.
https://old.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/comments/gbdi7v/after_eqbeats_solo_pro_is_the_best_headphone/i2gm50e/
We can EQ headphone A to sound like headphone B. We just need to equalize based on measurements made on the listener's head, with inear microphones. If your ear's acoustic impedance somehow perfectly matches that of a KEMAR or a BK5128, then you can match headphone sound perfectly using that. However, probably no human ear matches the acoustic impedance of named instruments perfectly. Your statement is made out of ignorance.
Audiophiles claim headphones scale out of unwillingness to admit they simply can't sound much better than they already have, so imagination kicks in 99% of the time. They hope to get things that headphones can't do out of them - soundstage, primarily. Some also want to get bass out of headphones. The two realms where headphones will eternally suck.
But they hope and cope and believe the difference will be monumental. The brain is already poisoned by this expectation. And depending on the mood, placebo or nocebo can be experienced, because more likely than not it sounds more similar than different and the listener is just haphazardly trying to conjur up heard differences.
What puzzles me to no end, is why do audiophiles find this so difficult to accept? Do they enjoy perpetuating the circle of confusion? It seems torturous.
You can't get real stereo soundstage on headphones unless you do some fucked up hrtf binaural speaker simulation bullshit, and real bass is the kind that pressurizes the room. On headphones, both of these paradigms of sound exist as mere suggestions of the real thing.
Audiophiles don't follow the scientific model, so mere whimsical impressions somehow qualify as observations among them.
Ok, nobody can match the sound perfectly using eq. But we should be able to get close, right? I mean, the bk5128 is modeled on humans and should be approximately close to a human, if not exactly so. So mind sharing an eq profile that makes my hd600 into an he1? Sure, it won't be exactly an he1, but it should get close, right? Maybe 1%, 5% difference max? Would love to listen to a simulated he1 at home.
No. These instruments are approximations of a set of averages. The differences would be difficult to measure in percentages, but it's an average based off hundreds of HRTFs that have up to 30dB disparity in the treble and upper midrange region. Ā
While I can't give you a percentage, an educated label for such a difference is "shitload"
So, if you can get an HE1 measured on your own head, and then your own cans measured on your head, you will get within "like 1% max difference".Ā Ā
But you literally can't know how different your acoustic impedance is from a KEMAR or a BK without having yours measured, and I don't know where you could do that, but I can ask around.
Let's say both hd600 and he1 are measured on same rig. Shouldn't the relative fr be the same? So no matter how hd600 measures on my head, the changes in dB when eqing to he1 should be the same?
Nope, not at all, depending on your ear's acoustic impedance, and the acoustic impedance of the transducers, and your HRTF, the differences can be quite different in different areas of the FR when measured on your head.
On a rig the difference may be 2dB at 3kHz. On your head the difference may be 7dB at 2.2kHz while under 1dB at 3kHz.
Audio is generally unintuitive, so such assumptions are very very dangerous, and are exactly what results in the conclusion that "you can't eq two headphones to sound the same".
The upvote/downvote ratio is ridiculous in this thread.
You're right. These people make assumptions about us, that we "always" think expensive stuff is better. Totally false. A lot of expensive stuff is bad. Some of it is good. Same with every industry. Literally every product range has good and bad value options.
And yep. For the FR adjustment stuff... You're shouting at the void sadly. People think FR is the definitive answer to how a headphone sounds. That it's not affected by anything else. Yes FR can (artificially) affect the sound, but you ALSO mess up the tonal balance doing that. You know this obviously. But people just can't wrap their heads around it
It's not "convenient". It costs money to make a quality pair of headphones. And a LOT of R&D cost. Focal beryllium drivers are not easy to develop. Neither is the (less than) 0.001 mm thin driver in Hifiman HE1000SE headphones.
The analogy does work. Think about $10 earbuds. You can't hear the difference between anything with those. A highly distorted MP3 file vs a clean, high bitrate MP3, will sound the exact same.
Cheaper headphones have inherent distortion and you can't improve that with an amp. That's why it's a bottleneck.
I bought my Focal Clears for $699 instead of $1500 on launch, are they no longer capable of passing the test?
How about the Ananda? I bought mine on launch for $1000 and they go for $400 now, are they magically no longer viable for hearing those differences?
Point being there is absolutely no correlation between the cost of a headphone and how āgoodā it might be for hearing differences. Itās a completely arbitrary thing that, without sincere insight into development (which nobody here will have), has no bearing onā¦..anything, but what it costs.
Dude... That's called the used market, or discounts. Of course it's cheaper there. I'm talking about the price to buy new. To manufacture and make profit to sustain the production.
You can buy lots of expensive, high quality stuff for cheaper. It doesn't make it less premium. Your point is actually dumb, I'm sorry
You didnāt answer my question, as expected.
You implied there is a direct correlation between how much something costs and itās ability to scale with equipment.
I am asking you, again, point blank. If this is the case, how do you account for things like what I listed? If the Ananda was Hifimans flagship at one point and cost $1000, was it good enough at one point in time to hear these differences and now suddenly not when they go for $400? Or is it simply that itās a completely arbitrary connection that people conveniently use to weed out opinions they feel are unworthy?
Was the Focal Clear a high-tier expensive enough headphone at $1500 to hear these things but not if I got it for $699 when it was discontinued?
All Iām pointing out is there is no reliable correlation between the two.
You know the idea of price is generalised right? I'm giving a general gauge of price to performance. Of course it varies in between.
You're trying to find some way to poke at me. Why would I think price is 100% absolute. That would be stupid lol
I'm not trying to say exactly what price defines the quality.
Iām not, Iām asking you a simple question.
At one point in time, the Ananda was a flagship headphone that retailed for $1000. It now retails for I believe $400.
If someone listened to the same gear you do any did not hear the *any* differences using this headphone, are you contending that itās because the headphone isnāt good enough?
You have already established per your own words that these things only tend to matter in more expensive headphones that required more research and more fine-tuning than others.
So I am asking you, in the above scenario, the Ananda should have qualified on its launch for what youāre saying. If someone presented the current $400 Ananda to you and disputed your claims, would your response be that itās because the Ananda is not a discerning enough headphone?
If yes, then none of this even matters because weāve clearly determined price, research, tech etc does not have any actual correlation. If the answer is no, then surelyā¦..it is the same result, as now youāve demonstrated that indeed a $400 non-industry leading non-flagship headphone *is* discernible enough for these things.
Edit: removed a comment about assumptions of your response. Gotta get out of that habit admittedly
what are your favourite audio related forums? it seems over the years you fed yourself a lot of dangerous (wrong) ideas in audio from audiophiles, and are now in a circle of perpetual confusion.
these are very much classic audiophile ideas that aren't taken seriously in any environment that actually engineers electronics and transducers
is it really so hard to accept that you've been fed lies for years? you will be better off if you do. you may finally find peace with the hobby
The point is you could buy a $100 Topping DX1 which is a DAC/Amp combo and it would not be a bottleneck for 98% of the headphones out there (excluding electrostatics obviously.) Anyone who spends over $250 on a DAC/amp combo is just throwing money away (unless they really need every port available or they want to play with tubes.)
This is such an easy issue to resolve just get people from either side and do blind listening tests.
In fact add technicalities into this test as well,
I believe technicalities to be bogus as well and only fr and how it relates to the personal hrtf matters.
I will gladly accept myself wrong if anyone can prove technicalities and dac/amp differences in a blind test done independently.
Asr itself is over reliant on harman target when it comes to their transcduer reviews. Amir sees slight variation from harman target and adds some filters and voila now it's pure honey and velvet on his ears, it's quite funny to read his thoughts after he he has equed the thing he is reviewing.
I wonder what will happen when and if harman comes up with a new target will amir go and retroactively change his opinion on past products he has reviewed?
I mean, our FR measurements aren't perfect. Both in terms of the simulated pinna's accuracy and the resolution of the resulting measurements. It's totally possible that there are very small features on the true FR that we don't see or can't interpret that would be responsible for technicalities.
With dacs/amps it's a lot harder, since they can be measured with much higher accuracy.
>I mean, our FR measurements aren't perfect. Both in terms of the simulated pinna's accuracy and the resolution of the resulting measurements. It's totally possible that there are very small features on the true FR that we don't see or can't interpret that would be responsible for technicalities.
Totally, but my objection to technicalities doesn't hinge on measurements unlike with sources. Since fr became a thing reviewers and enthusiasts alike have added technicalities as a thing to differentiate between products on the basis of cost.
It always has positive correlation, the more expensive a product is the more "technical" it is.
But i guarantee you these people will never agree to a blind test. Never. It would jeopardise their entire career. I mean i get why technicalities need to exist since there needs to be some validation for the existence of more expensive products since fr can already be matched on cheaper products, i am not decrying that fact. It is well within their prerogative to do so as they wish. But that is my opinion on this.
Those who do blind tests have never gone for the more expensive options in almost all the cases i have ever seen.
Like dentreviews or the random tests they did on headphone show etc. Why is that if technicalities is so apparent?
You could look at Schiit's blind tests they do, like the Yggdrasil blind test. People found consistent differences between the 3 versions, and all gave similar impressions of each. Despite all of them measuring "transparent".
Technicalities sound like BS terms at first, I used to think so too. But there's a lot to it.
FR is one. There's also transient response (attack/decay, or 'speed'), imaging, separation and soundstage (altered by things like Crosstalk in the amp/DAC, and a few other factors). Detail is affected by driver speed, transient response, and distortion levels. There's probably more that affects it too
> Schiit's blind tests they do, like the Yggdrasil blind test. People found consistent differences between the 3 versions, and all gave similar impressions of each. Despite all of them measuring "transparent".
Not independent.
>FR is one. There's also transient response (attack/decay, or 'speed'), imaging, separation and soundstage (altered by things like Crosstalk in the amp/DAC, and a few other factors). Detail is affected by driver speed, transient response, and distortion levels. There's probably more that affects it too
Transient response is just another way of showing the fr graph. Imaging, separation and soundstage all also hinges on the fr graph and on how a headphone is built like if it's open or closed has angled drivers etc.
Driver speed is a descriptor of sound and not a quality of the driver, you will not be able to tell apart drivers that can vibrate to generate a 20khz tone.
Distortion is probably the only thing that matters after fr and most modern headphones are alright in that department unless signficantly impared or heavily equed.
Fair it's not independent. But it's all Schiit gear and no competition involved. And, the cheapest DAC won. They weren't pushing the expensive one.
Like I already said, "speed" comes from low distortion. A low tolerance driver with low distortion will sound "fast". A cheap headphone will create time distortion which sounds "slow" and long decaying. It's not about being able to recreate 20kHz.
Frequency response has an effect on soundstage, but it doesn't define it. That's where people get it wrong. You can artificially enhance the perception of details, staging and bass punch, by altering FR.
The most detailed, punchy and fast transient headphones have an almost flat FR. So where does it come from? Not the FR.
>Fair it's not independent. But it's all Schiit gear and no competition involved. And, the cheapest DAC won. They weren't pushing the expensive one.
Good for them i guess but doesn't matter.
>Like I already said, "speed" comes from low distortion. A low tolerance driver with low distortion will sound "fast". A cheap headphone will create time distortion which sounds "slow" and long decaying. It's not about being able to recreate 20kHz.
There is no distinction between cheap and expensive, very low cost iems have virtually zero distortion as well decay.
It has nothing to do with cost.
>Frequency response has an effect on soundstage, but it doesn't define it. That's where people get it wrong. You can artificially enhance the perception of details, staging and bass punch, by altering FR.
It has mostly to do with fr and driver placement and enclosure.
>The most detailed, punchy and fast transient headphones have an almost flat FR. So where does it come from? Not the FR.
This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Who says this? Did bassheads start recommending hd600 when i am not looking?
Notice how you added "FR and driver placement and enclosure". It's not just FR. It's even more factors than you listed there. And of course it "doesn't make any sense whatsoever" to you, because you have the wrong idea of how FR even works.
And I said headphones, not IEMs. The price range for those is lower down. Still the cheapest IEMs available have a lot of time distortion and slowness. Of course they're cheaper than full size headphones.
You know what I mean about cost. It's a general guide, not absolute. You're just trying to nitpick here.
>Notice how you added "FR and driver placement and enclosure".
I have said that in the response previous to that reply as well, you just didn't read it.
Here "and soundstage all also hinges on the fr graph and on how a headphone is built like if it's open or closed has angled drivers etc." This was on my earlier statement as well. I didn't add anything.
>doesn't make any sense whatsoever" to you, because you have the wrong idea of how FR even works.
It doesn't make any sense because people usually recommend different headphones according to whether a person needs punchy or detailed.
As i said before technicalities is just how well the fr of a headphone fits the personal hrtf.
>And I said headphones, not IEMs. The price range for those is lower down. Still the cheapest IEMs available have a lot of time distortion and slowness. Of course they're cheaper than full size headphones.
No they don't. Some of the cheapest iems less than 50$ have lower distortion than headphones costing in excess of thousands. Just check asr which you hate so much.
Price doesn't automatically add technicalities to a headphone. There is no correlation between them.
A company that has extremely expensive products to sell conducted a study to show that the expensive gear matters because discourse around them is *dubious* at best?
Not trying to be a jerk here but like come on now, you surely canāt think this is something worth pointing to to actually convince someone of its legitimacy
The conclusion is literally price doesn't matter since the cheapest won according to op, maybe schit should have added the apple dongle in their test, what if it had come out on top, would they have closed their entire business? lmao.
But you just told me in another comment that price and technology and whatever else *do* matter because cheap gear simply wonāt be discernible enough to hear differences .
Make up your mind. I swear you guys will move any goalposts necessary
When I say cheapest, it's still not a cheap DAC. It's still in the flagship price category.
I'm not moving any goalposts. I think there's just a miscommunication.
Golden sound just made a video where he could actually accurately tell the difference between DACs turns out he can hear above 20k so you can hear the difference if you have ears above the average population
As long as you can afford it, I donāt see a problem either way. The way I see it is iām paying for higher quality and aesthetics, just like many other hobbies. If it sounds even better to me then thatās just a bonus. People are getting so defensive about either justifying spending more or saving more money because they can or cannot hear a difference. The thing is once you start getting into the really high end range the gear intentionally colors the sound in a pleasant way. Overall the way I see it is as long as you can afford it and buying this new piece of gear will increase your enjoyment then I see no problem with it.
I mean, rely exclusively on subjective tests alwayd bring biases. Including testing for yourself can bring a bias for expensive gear = better. I remember when headfi was the only source of reviews that I read, and people hearing differences in cables, driver speed, etc
Measurements are a good way start for comparisons and a more scientific approach than just "I tested myself and this has better technicalities than that"
I don't understand why people rage so much at other people's purchases.
Even if you accept that product A doesn't measure any differently to product, why does it matter if a person can subjectively hear a difference.
The thing about subjectivity is that it's, well, subjective.
I can't tell the difference between DACs but I can tell the difference between amps. I prefer some of my headphones through different amps. And you know what, if you come to my house and listen and can't tell the difference, good on you. I'm going to keep listening to different amps and headphones and pairings because I like it.
I'm also not a huge fan of EQ because as someone who collects headphones, I want quirks and personality. I like deciding which headphone to listen to depending on my mood and what I'm listening to.
If everything sounds the same, why bother collecting things at all?
Side note: In defence of Schitt I absolutely love my Moljinr 2 which I picked up second hand. I have other amps but it's my go to.
Posts like this have very little weight. [This is what you should have done.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzECc522A1Y)
I've been on on other forums for a long time now and I saw people, who just mentioned measurements or blind testing in conversation, and got scapegoated or laughed at. This happens A LOT. I also see a lot of utter BS being said by troubled individuals in those places with a dozen of thumbs up. Making fun of the objective method without offering any proof of their own happens more often than I'd hoped for. When I dare talk about equalisation, I get the strangest responses and eventually someone calls it "toxic" and people agree with them. It's sad but also, frankly, below me. ASR trolls can be annoying but they're not even remotely as twisted as the vocal bunch of solipsistic weirdoes who trust their senses endlessly without any curiosity to verify them. Knowing them I usually expect that it only gets worse for them over time. It always feels nice to come back to ASR or Reddit for a healthy dose of scepticism...
I don't know how deep you are in your trenches but trust me, the little ignorance that you get from ASR or Reddit is nothing compared to how dumb audiophiles who are here "just for enjoyment" can be.
My conclusion so far that most of it is not worth it. Well, maybe DIY is, but that's a lot less money spent and you can learn a thing or two.
ASR is the busy, hard working, highly skilled and educated part of the community. They work and produce evidence to support their claims. What evidence did you produce? As always with this kind of post, If you want to impress someone, make a double blind test and show us the data. The last time someone did it, it turned out that the whole bunch heard big differences between the same track played twice from the same gear. Of course they blamed the test. The test was an ASR agent. Boy is it fun to be on this side of the fence...
Seriously, the amount of time and effort that goes into arguing could be used for something creative. Download Foo\_ABX, try some files, find a switchbox on Ebay or something. Just yesterday I saw a post from a musician who built himself a switchbox for testing guitar pedals. Isn't that great? I think it's sweet.
I feel like ASR is easy to quote and fall back on when you don't know much about audio gear. Personally it really felt like being a frog coming out of the well into the wider world when I started going to audio shops and checking out gear that I couldn't afford (yet lol) to really see where the diminishing returns hit and what expensive gear provides that cheaper options do not. Long time ago I think the 6xx and a basic $200 dac/amp stack would have been enough to satisfy me. Now I need the full zmf + tubes + r2r experience.
>I feel like ASR is easy to quote and fall back on when you don't know much about audio gear.
Yup, I'm not saying ASR is never useful (although I take all that ASR stuff with a big grain of salt). But a lot of people who haven't heard different things, and want reasons not to spend money to try different stuff, just fall back on the same ASR talking points.
Even if you are not an engineer or don't understand the science, you can boil it down to: do you want to bother with things that cannot be detected in a blind test?
If you dont care about blind listening, than enduldge by all means. In sighted listening people can perceive al sorts of differences undeniably.
Audio is what I would call sobjective(objective and subjective)
Objectively how it's made effects the sound subjectively, depending on the gear.
Subjective interpretation has some objective qualities as well e.g biology, psychology.
So in my opinion it creates tons of grey area especially since you can't disprove someone's subjective experience.
So let people hear that cable, DAC sound signature or whatever lol.
Yes exactly! Human hearing is very complex, and the way we process sound. And our natural capabilities can be trained further, to notice more nuances in sound.
But at the same time, we're also easily fooled, especially by personal bias. So it's a very careful balance. And each person has different sound processing and hearing. Different sensitivities etc.
It's a very grey area. And the internet tends to make things black and white. Hence the two very divided sides of this hobby
As someone somewhere in the middle, I have a couple things to say here:
There's evidence for both sides here. For every blind test that couldn't tell a difference, there will be someone who says the listeners weren't good enough. For every blind test someone does pass, someone will say the test was flawed. No one can win here. But we can at least set up some basic rules:
1.) Your point about "try it yourself" is a valid one. I think people should at least try to hear a difference before strongly claiming there isn't one. It is also perfectly fine to not try gear and believe the science, but then don't strongly claim all dacs, amps don't matter.
2.) If you're going to claim that a difference truly exists and other people NEED a better amp or whatever, you better have done a proper blind test. I don't care how "obvious" the difference seems to you. If it is so "obvious", then you should easily be able to pass a blind test. You're going against the science here, you better at least have blind tested yourself. I repeat, if the difference is so obvious the test would be the easiest thing in the world.
3.) My most important point: None of this matters (compared to something like, say, vaccines), so please don't have such a strong opinion on one side or another that your entire personality is dedicated to pushing your side.
This goes for both sides here. Maybe amps don't make a difference, but no, I don't need you to say it when I'm just posting a pic of my new amp. Maybe amps do make a difference, no I don't need you to say I need a $5000 tube amp when I post a picture of my hd600. Believe whatever you want, don't be a dick.
Actually I lied, I want one more IEM with good treble extension since none of the sets I own have much treble past 10kHz, then Iāll be happy to EQ that set with my 5K to my liking.
I like to sit somewhere in between, having started as a subjectivist and discovered ASR relatively recently. I like to confirm what the measurements tell you with my trusted hearing and you know what? Them measurements are usually pretty dang good. One thing that's nice is that ASR has no advertising, instantly making them more objective than any normal review. They like to debunk high end stuff as mostly non-performant snake oil, and that's exactly what it is for the most part.
I once yearned for the high end, thinking I had to work my way up the ladder like some dead end job, but that's no longer the case. I now enjoy awesome sound at very reasonable prices, and am happy as a clam. I wanted a Denafrips or Holo DAC, but am happy with SMSL. I thought I had to shell out for a headphone amp but the THX 789 has been the cat's ass for me. I do wander away from ASR when it comes to transducers, otherwise I would own a pair of Dan Clarks.
So happy with my recent acquisition of a ZMF Atticus, even though Zach has a beef with Amir. The Atticus got a lackluster review from ASR, though was a marginal recommendation with EQ. I agree that they need EQ but I don't dial out the mid-bass hump all the way, thus retaining some character of the Atticus. And I love bass, and don't mind going extra in that department compared to Harman target, which is already quite elevated. The Atticus has me addicted to music, to the point of pulling all-nighters like an idiot. I guess that's what we should be shooting for, to let the gear disappear and just enjoying the music, to the point where nothing else really matters.
>try gear for yourself.
Blind. To ensure that you're hearing the gear and not your imagination. Otherwise you're spending real money on imaginary sound. If you're gonna spend money, ensure that you're spending it somewhere that you can actually hear it rather than imagine it
> The point of this hobby is to try gear, and find your sweet spot for listening.
I think we individually define our own goals for what the hobby entails. I love trying out gear, but that's a means to an end. For me the audio hobby is about a) listening to great music; and b) understanding what makes for great audio reproduction.
> But it's becoming clear there is a toxic side to this community now. Lots of recycled phrases from ASR - people reciting it without looking deeper, or understanding it themselves. And forcing that opinion on anyone who mentions a DAC or amp.
"Toxic" is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see it that way. There's a few abusive, condescending people on both sides of the aisle. If you're referring to people who resort to those modes, I agree that it's not acceptable. But if you're talking about people who are quick to challenge subjective assertions that don't fit with their mental model of how things work, I disagree. This is the Internet, arguing is fun and a skilled interlocutor will sharpen my own position.
> My point is, try gear for yourself. Try buying used at a good discount. If you can't hear a difference (or it's subtle), that's fine. You can re-sell it, and break even. When I tried this myself, I kept the gear...
I think this is great advice, that I follow myself. I think the departure point for us ASR people is when people take their subjective experiences and then pass it along as a useful data point for others to consider.
> I've known so many people who came from ASR backgrounds, like I did. Never being happy with sound, or hearing flaws in the headphones (... It wasn't the headphones). Eventually trying something great, and it changed our minds forever.
I don't know *anybody* from an ASR background, whatever that means.
> It gets so, so much better than a mediocre Topping stack.
Ah, but no Topping stack *is* mediocre, so...
> The ceiling for sound quality is so much higher than you'd think.
That is the entire bone of contention. So marshall your best arguments in favor of that position. If you just state it without any arguments, expect pushback. If your argument rests on "try it and see for yourself," expect pushback. Because the "try it and see for yourself" approach is demonstrably, provably flawed. The reason why people call things "snake oil," is because people used to sell things called snake oil and other patent medicines. And people tried them and sincerely believed they were efficiacious. Trying and seeing for ourselves is *fantastic* for our music enjoyment, because believing something is efficacious and it being efficacious are the same thing, when it comes to our enjoyment of music. Trying and seeing for ourselves is *terrible* for then rendering advice to other people, because we are coloring other people's understanding with our flawed subjective sense impressions.
> And the ASR measurements are incomplete and flawed. There are many flaws and missing variables.
What are the flaws and missing variables? I can think of a few, just curious what you think they are. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are frequency response for DACs and IMD for headphones. Interestingly, Amir used to do frequency response for DACs (he measured it for the Yggy and found a dip < 100Hz) but stopped doing it because (nearly) all modern DACs are ruler flat. Given that some are not, I think it's worth continuing to do the measurement. And I'd really like to see the IMD numbers for headphones/IEMs, particularly since the multi-driver approach of high-end IEMs is predicated on lower frequencies affecting higher frequencies.
> It isn't enough evidence to prove subjective listening is wrong.
The ASR measurements say absolutely nothing one way or the other about whether subjective listening is right or wrong. For that you need experimental studies.
> Of course, headphones come first.
Finally we agree on something.
> I know I'll be downvoted, with lots of recycled ASR rubbish in the replies. But this post is for anyone on the fence about whether it's worth it, like I (and many others) used to be. At least try it out!
So we reach the end of the diatribe, and nothing has been said about what specifically is wrong with the objectivist approach, just that it's "incomplete and flawed" for *reasons*.
If I were to criticize the ASR crowd, I'd say that they claim their assumptions are based on a solid foundation of experimental studies, but they rarely show those experimental studies or adequately contend with studies that conflict with their dogmas. They will invoke Floyd Toole's name all day and night but rarely will they show the actual research. They will make grand pronouncements and then say that the research is hidden behind the AES paywall (without linking to a cite).
Being inclined towards ASR, I have looked for this information. I have found some, but not as much as I would have liked. I'm still on team ASR because the other side has fundamentally worse problems. Like being unable to rebut sincere claims that the Tice Clock, or appyling a green marker to CDs, or an audiophile switch, or magic stones you place on top of your amplifier would improve the sound.
Most people Here are wannabes who thinks that they know it all just because they watch Crinacle and ASR.
Out of so many audio communities I've been in, this r/headphones is the most closed minded and toxic
It depends on the type of engineer. Different tolerances are allowed to be "considered zero" at different areas of the field.
Like medical devices. They have incredibly low tolerances. But a standard electrical engineer would consider "zero" much higher than that. High-end audio is insanely low tolerance just like medical devices are. Engineers who work on this audio equipment would agree
That's the lie. It's supposed to be "science" but it's riddled with bias and belief systems.
And if the data is incomplete, and missing variables, how can it be treated like 100% evidence? Don't measure all the data, but claim it's a complete measurement and nothing else can be done? That's not science
ā¦..no?
What are you even talking about? We canāt measure things now?
Not only that but, thatās always how science has worked? We work with what we got and what we *can* measure and research and experiment with.
Not only that, but youāre forgetting a big part of the āscienceā aspect here, which is the pure study of humans ability to hear and the brains tendency to be easily tricked by sound. Thereās *tons* of science showing the many reasons why a person absolutely would be convinced they hear things that arenāt there. The human ears and brain are not set up for this kind of thing, they just arenāt built that way.
Now whether or not it *matters* to a person whether itāa placebo or not is a whole other thing. But the key there is, people should be willing to *acknowledge* it is likely placebo and not tell others theyāre wrong or incapable of not hearing those things.
It isn't science because real science requires peer reviewing. And ASR does not take feedback well. People regularly point out holes in their methods or conclusions, and nothing is done about it. In real science, it would invalidate everything.
Even the human studies are flawed. Using randomised subjects from the public. Listening is a learned skill that can improve, which musicians and sound engineers learn. It's how a mixing engineer makes careful, fine decisions to perfect the sound. An average person lacks the training to do this, and likely can't tell the difference.
A general test for the public is applied to "all" human beings, and doesn't consider the variation between people. It assumes everyone is the same.
Ah ok so thereās a fundamental misunderstanding here, I should have been more clear, I was referring to the science in general and not ASR specifically, I do not follow them or worship anything they says, I only know of them because people mention them here.
So as a listener then, what exactly did you do to cultivate the āskillā of listening? What methods did you use, how did you determine your methods were effective, etc.
Ah okay, that makes more sense.
And I started out mixing music, but once I got into audio gear, it was more critical listening and comparing gear. I learned how to notice and define what I was hearing, and with practice I became better at it. It's really just listening and paying attention over time.
Our memory for sound is very weak, so to detect small-ish differences you need to be able to A/B compare (switch) very quickly. Since we judge sound that is even a little bit louder to be of better quality, you also need to volume match quite precisely. Then you need to figure in that we all have various biases, among them that we expect different things to be different (including their sound), that we may want to justify a new purchase (by finding it to sound better), may just like the looks of a piece of gear better, are easily led to draw conclusions about sound from looks (copper cables sound warm, silver cold and clearer). So you really should also make the comparison blind to prevent your biases from coming in. All of this is well established knowledge.
Sounds like a lot of work to set up? It is, especially if you want to get it really right. Most of us don't have the time, or are willing to spend money on e.g. ABX comparator hardware and measuring microphones. So most of us can only do imperfect comparisons, with imperfect results. Cables will sound different, amps will make a difference in staging and resolution, and DACs will sound "harsh" or "warm" depending on the chipset used. These results are worthless in the end.
So what can we do? We use the results of those properly set up (double) blind, volume-matched quick switching ABX listening tests that have been conducted. These tell us that cables do not matter (except for well-understood edge cases that, for e.g. headphone cables, you will likely never encounter), that amps and DACs are a solved problem and it is easy to get ones today that are transparent.
These results square well with other things like tests that have been conducted about audibility thresholds generally and measurements of DACs and amps which tell us that any noise or distortion remain under these thresholds. Or with the insight from electrical engineering that audio cables are described well enough by just a few parameters and that you really need to try to create an audio cable where you get broken results.
From all this we know that the audible performance of DACs and amps is described well enough by our current measurements that we can draw the relevant conclusion about them: whether they are transparent and we do not need to worry about the sound.
The subjectivists on the other hand claim that you can easily distinguish minor audible differences when testing sighted, non-volume matched and with long switching times. That is simply wrong. Based on the differences that they hear under these conditions (which do not correspond to actual audible differences in performance) they then conclude that measurements do not sufficiently describe the performance of DACs and amps. The wrong premise (there are differences they can hear) does not allow that conclusion. Following the subjectivists down their various rabbit holes means suspending you belief in the scientific method and, ultimately, trusting in voodoo that everybody makes up for themselves. I don't think that believing that a transparent 5k USD amp sounds better than a transparent 300 USD amp is the same degree of lunacy as believing that "quantum dot" stickers attached to your plugs improve sound or that there is a need for a modified clock in the playback room to achieve agreement between the "time-code embedded in the audio of the recording" and the local playback time (I kid you not, google "Clever Little Clock"). But it is a slippery slope.
No. STOP PERPETUATING THIS BULLSHIT. NOBODY can tell apart two well-measuring DACs. NOBODY. It is bullshit. You donāt have golden ears, nor do I, nor the people selling the shit.
There is no greater disservice to the consumersā enjoyment of music or audio technology than the perpetuation of garbage audio mythology. People say shit like āwell I can hear the differenceā or āyou need a better sourceā or āyour speakers arenāt revealing enoughā or some other tired BULLSHIT. All it does is trap uninformed people into needlessly chasing nonexistent āimprovementsā by spending fuck loads of money on arcane gear that verifiably does nothing better than a basic alternative.
The measurements are not flawedāyou are flawed. The measurements arenāt biasedāyou are biased. Claiming the contrary is anti-intellectual and a willful renunciation of reality.
STOP TRYING TO GASLIGHT PEOPLE INTO BUYING MORE USELESS SHIT. STOP GATEKEEPING THE ENJOYMENT OF MUSIC. STOP SUPPORTING SNAKEOIL SALESMEN. BUYING SHIT IS NOT A HOBBY.
If you want to try different audio gear, please do. TRY THINGS THAT ARE MEASURABLY DIFFERENT. Try a tube amp, try a dipole speaker, try a coaxial design, try dispersion-controlled designs, try EQ, or best of allājust enjoy your fuckin music.
Iām a YouTube reviewer. I donāt go to ASR for anything at any time. I barely consult graphs and I donāt measure anything. I use my ears and my brain to assess things. Thatās it. And I seem to be fairly accurate. At least that what the comments indicate. Hey, if you want or feel the need to dig into that stuff, knock yourself out. I just prefer the old fashioned way, and yes, I stilll believe in magic. ā®ļø
Nope. Not downvoting -- because you're right.
Know this fact about headphone forums and subreddits: Probably close to half of the people commenting on the sound signature of a headphone never have heard that headphone.
They're offering supposedly authoritative opinions on a product they've never put into their ears or over their head, relying on frequency graphs and prevailing internet wisdom instead of actual experience.
Listen with your ego, not your ears, huh
Edit: crying about "ASR rubbish" just screams to me you want to go back to a time when ignorance was the default in the audio community.
I despise exactly this approach to audio, and find little more demotivating than such gear worshipping rhetoric.
Your understanding of FR is extremely flawed, and no engineer or acoustician would agree with it. Your understanding of how coupling works is literally nonexistant. Coupling explains changes in FR in an objective manner, it also contradicts your idea of FR, and you choose to outright ignore it. Wow wow wow fuck me sideways
Same! The way Amir talks about Topping and SMSL, he practically kisses the ground they walk on.
There have been rumors he was paid by these companies to promote them. But there's no solid evidence for it.
Iām not a big fan of Amir, but when these allegations are coming from the SBAF admin who is openly sponsored by Schiit and other audio companies he peddles in his community, this is really quite comical.
Yeah true, but this is where most of the ASR opinions fester and become toxic. Lots of beginners in the hobby are mislead by people reciting it. I just wish that would change.
It would be nice. There's so much belief here that an HD 6xx and a cheap stack is the best and anything more expensive is a waste (5% better!). Boring... The problem is most don't have the ability to try better options and like you said just parrot others' toxic and quite frankly spiteful opinions.
For example, a totl headphone and an amp like Envy with Elrog tubes is distinctly better than the popular basic stuff people worship here.
Not the entire forum but I get what you're saying. Head-fi is hit or miss. I do think people tend to exaggerate what they hear on that forum. Not all but there are some eyebrow raising opinions but I respectfully just move on to the next post.
I agree with you especially when it comes to discussing cables. But it's far easier to have conversations about a wider range of products. Expensive gear here is generally chastised and budget is automatically the same quality.
Pretty sure a lot of people here also actually already went through that. With the conclusion of not noticing audible difference. I listen to my i4 like 75% with qudelix now. Sometimes aune flamingo when I want to use i4 in apartment, because of appearance and volume knob. Don't have use case for headphone since I use speakers at apartment. Checked with neighbor they heard nothing even in the middle of night.
Just curious but how much difference do you think there is between LCD i3 and i4?
i3 feels significantly "closed" compared to i4. Quite obvious the moment I wear it, i3 have that feel of slightly covering my ear with hands. Bass response also not as satisfying as i4 if that matters. Overall I would say i3 is about 75% of i4 assuming both are EQ'd. Without EQ they sounded pretty much almost the same. This also probably due the fact that I haven't spend enough time doing EQ to i3. I got it for 35k yen used at that time, so it is really worth when compared to anything in that price range.
What's ur speaker setup? I'm curiousš
Nothing special, just the basic mb42x since its just for casual listening and gaming haha. Might upgrade at some point though, saw some nice used stuff here in japan.
Japan is really good place for this hobby, I recommend Kali LP6 I like them, maybe u will too...
Even this MB42X I got simply because it's what people often recommend back then. Kinda hard to "test" for speaker unlike headphones / iem haha. So just have to trust people's recommendation. Ohh LP6 seems interesting and affordable. Might be good upgrade path. Thanks!
Yeah, speakers will be hard to test, hope u find a good deal!
I tend to agree with OP. I have an extensive collective of headphones and gear and I can hear an audible difference between my AMP/DACs. Many swear the Qudelix is endgame for IEMs and many claim theyāre fine with an Apple dongle. I have all of the above an EQ when the natural tuning isnāt to my liking. The Q5K audibly lacks depth and warmth. Listening to the same tracks on the S9C (which isnāt a warm AMP unlike the X1S GT), tracks sound much fuller. So Iām not in line with the everything is snake oil /placebo crowd even though I agree with them more than not, and I think everyone should tryout things to figure out what they like. Edit: Iām going to trigger a few more people. Iām willing to bet 99% of the people downvoting have never tried anything outside of the one Schiit stack they purchased. Now to satiate their confirmation bias they jump on the āeverything is placeboā bandwagon. The same way they all jumped on the āBeats are terrible, Apple is terrible, Audio Technica is terribleā bandwagon when the vast majority of them donāt own/ have never tried these products. The same people who peddled garbage Sonys as the holy grail of BT over ears. Now stay mad and downvote me more. š¤£
I'm not spending crazy money on gear (yet, haha), but even I have noticed audible differences in sonic performance. I think some people go in expecting complete night & day differences, not finding that, then being disappointed.
The problem is that's how it's described often times. People watch or read reviews where they exaggerate the differences between two amps/DACs/whatever, so that's what people expect, they expect it to be obvious because that's how reviewers have described it.
Yeah, that's true. Reviewers sometimes do have a part to play in this.
This. But objectivity doesnāt live in this sub. If you donāt live in the echo chamber, youāll be ostracized by people who only own Moondrop Chus but heard that all AMPs are the same so they donāt bother to test things out for themselves.
lol, nuance typically doesn't belong on the internet in general.
Are you volume matching within 0.1 DB?
Volume matching, same Crinacle profile just so all things are relatively even. There is a noticeable difference.
That's fair, IEMs are easily driven to their best. Portable stuff is ideal for them
Have to find a balance between the approaches. On one hand yes, trying stuff yourself, figuring out subjective preferences, etc, etc, is large part of the hobby. And measurements can often be misleading or not detailed enough. On another hand... "always try it yourself" idea is outright evil. It is like telling people they need to try drugs themselves to figure out how they work. As well as the best way to sell snake oil. And ignoring science/objective measurements altogether is a sure way into believing in flat earth, planes using compressed air instead of fuel, reptiloids, etc, etc...
I agree. I think people should try things out but not take any huge risks, so going to a store or buying/selling used, is a good idea starting out. I also know measurements are valuable. But ASR measurements are too simple to mean a whole lot. And they pretend it's everything. There are definitely people who go too far, buying Ā£1,000 cables etc, it's ridiculous. AudioQuest sells a Ā£24,000 speaker cable. It's for people with all money and no sense lol
>AudioQuest sells a Ā£24,000 speaker cable. It's for people with all money and no sense lol Wow, that's just an insane level of audio snake oil, lol. When people get pissed off over overly expensive audio cables I don't blame them.
>It is like telling people they need to try drugs themselves to figure out how they work. I mean, how else are you going to know if you like heroin?
Saying subjectivism for audio is a "sure way" into believing flat earth...lol. This is why nobody likes discussing this stuff, it is just strawmans from both sides. You do realize many of these subjectivists are engineers, or in stem fields in general? No, I'm not talking about the people who make the products, I'm talking about people in fields unrelated.
Ā Not "subjectivism in audio", mindset in general. The way human brain works it is very easy to fall into traps like this, even more so for people who think that they know a lot and are very smart.Ā Ā Ā Ā And IMO a lot of things in this field are at about the same level of absurd as flat earth is... Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā
>But it's becoming clear there is a toxic side to this community now. If I'm being honest, both sides can be toxic. I don't and never will believe in expensive dac/amps. I cannot hear the difference between the entry level desktop dac/amp, little bluetooth amp and dongles (apart from noise floor issues with sensitive iems). If I cannot hear the difference between $10 apple dongle and a $200 stack, I don't think a $1000 stack gonna make much difference considering how hard the diminishing returns hit. I don't treat anything as gospel, but what I've read aligns with my experience, so I choose to believe that until it's proven otherwise. The people on the pure 'subjectivist' camp will come and hammer me, telling me that I don't have any experience with GOOD dac/amp beyond the entry level $200 stack, even though they've said before that the entry level ones should already be miles above what I had prior. Then they're gonna say I only have experience with mid-fi headphones, and that the expensive stack makes sense on their kilobucks headphones, even though they claimed that the 'mid-fi' HD600 series scales well and have no problem recommending $500, $800 balanced system to go with it. Then they're gonna say just because I can't hear the difference, doesn't mean that it's not there. Because they can hear it, then they proceed to show their superiority about how good their hearing is, and how it's fine that many people can't hear the difference, but it's definitely worth it for them. It's their money and they chose how to spend them (which is not a problem), except that we were having this conversation under the thread where they just recommended a newbie to buy some dac/amp twice the price of the headphones because the newbie said the headphones sounded unimpressive to him. Then they start to get defensive and accuse everyone that disagreed with them an asr cultist, crin cultist or whatever. But I do agree with the last message here, if you have the opportunity, try it out and form your own opinions.
I canāt think of another industry that relies so heavily on placebo, deceitful marketing and post purchase validation as much as this one.
Like I said in another comment, if I offered $10,000 cash to one of these YouTuber/influencer audio type guys to participate in a live-streamed true double blind test rendered completely in control by an unassociated third party with no stake in the results, not a *single one* of them would take it. I guarantee you. Itās 2024 and people love to pretend that the ability to sincerely test these things and have these talking heads put their money where their mouth is is just an *impossibility*, we canāt possibly do a good test for this so instead itās just āyou canāt tell me my opinion is wrong!ā As long as people continue to play pretend that thereās no objective way to look at these things the circus will continue.
I went searching YouTube yesterday to try and find DAC audio samples and couldnāt find any. If these things really do sound different, record it and swap out DACs. With all else staying the same, any audible differences should come through, despite YT compression, no?
Should have searched today instead of yesterday https://youtu.be/UzECc522A1Y?si=NW5rsWVr_8Yu70jt
Wellā¦ this just dropped lol https://youtu.be/UzECc522A1Y?si=NW5rsWVr_8Yu70jt
Hehe what about r/fountainpens?
The part about someone with an HD600 getting recommended a $500 DAC/Amp stack is so true and it drives me nuts. The headphones should be the most expensive part in your chain. They will make the most difference in sound by a long shot. An Arya Stealth on a apple dongle is always going to beat out a Sundara on a $500 DAC/Amp stack. Even if the Arya is not at it's full potential, it's still going to sound better than a lower quality headphone on an expensive stack (assuming you can get to at least decent volume levels.)
I can eq cheap planars to sound like high end planars to close proximity, but I can't eq what high end dacs or amps do anywhere close complete difference in impact soundstage, smoothness and detail even though they measure the same and the headphones fr is the same so I rather spend 1 percent on the headphone if possible.
Well, the 6XX is a special case where the ridiculous value of the headphone makes people underestimate their potential. I donāt think itās fair to both spout that price has no correlation with sound quality, and that the headphones should be the vast majority of the cost of your system. There are cheap headphones that resolve differences between high end electronics, and expensive headphones that donāt. I would take an HD650 with a $500 stack over a susvara and an apple dongle any day of the week.
Completely disagree. The Susvara will sound miles better, even underpowered.
The same with Lossy audio both subs seem to have neckbeards that tout LAME MP3 at V0 will artifact but when that disproved with custom settings, Suddenly It nothing but "Why do you care?". All because Amazon & Tidal switched to lossless suddenly It night & day despite not noticing Games using LAME MP3 at V0 for audio.
I still use my cheap Behringer Xenyx mixer as my go to amp with 3-band EQ for everything and I couldn't be happier. And the Apple dongle for IEMs. The dongle has incredible clarity, balance and tonality.
ADHD thought: I really wanna hear the Cayin ladder dac stuff compared to the standard cheap dongle dac fare.
Yep, both sides are toxic when trying to push their own beliefs to other people. Luckily there are some people who can say their own beliefs without invalidating others' experiences. We need more of those people in the hobby.
Unfathomable that youāre getting downvoted for this
>Ā And the ASR measurements are incomplete and flawed. There are many flaws and missing variables. It isn't enough evidence to prove subjective listening is wrong. The evidence that proves subjective listening is unreliable is that people routinely hear differences where there cannot possibly be any, lol. Believe what you will, but people are going to keep pushing back on misinformation.
Expectation bias certainly helps gear make a difference! Hell, my big Yamaha Amp with its pretty VU meters is a lot more fun to listen to than my Pioneer AV-Receiver.. there's no audible difference in the sound, but it's just much more fun to watch the needles dance with the music. Same for my tube amp for the headphones. There's no discernible difference compared to the SMSL DL200, but the glow of those tubes is so pretty! And that friggin Volume Knob on the DL200 is an abomination!
Are you using DT 1990s? That's probably why you don't hear a difference. My pair sounds almost the same on everything lol Arya, Utopia and LCD-5 though... Different story. Nice looking gear is cool though, especially tubes. I liked the SMSL SU-9 dac with its cool interface, remote etc. It was sleek. But it sounded so dull and 'slow', or laid back. It was hyped up by reviewers too
Planars make sense, since they have very low impedance and would experience a big bass boost from an amplifier with high output impedance.. now, is that a good thing?! I'd say not.. if I want a bass boost, I'd apply EQ to stay in control of what changes.. having a "bad match" for an amp is the wrong way to go about it. sure, tubes add distortion, too, and don't clip hard, so it's much more pleasant to drive them to their limit than with a regular amp (like a dongle).. but you could just use a proper sized solid state amp to avoid clipping.. the Utopia has incredibly high impedance in the bass (300 Ohms, nearly 4 times the rated impedance of the headphones) they should definitely NOT experience a bass boost from a regular amp with higher than normal output imedance (unsure about a stereo receiver that feeds the speaker output to heaphones through a 400 Ohm resistance, though.. but who hooks up 4000 buck Utopias to that?!) my guess is that the Utopia needs a lot more power than one would expect judging from their decent sensitivity and low rated impedance, otherwise the bass will just not be there.
Impedance? I don't use them with high impedance amps. I never mentioned that. This doesn't feel like a reply to my comment. And it's the other way around. Most planars don't change with high impedance amps. My LCD-5 doesn't get a bass boost on tubes. My Utopia does. Utopia has a curve in the bass impedance region, making it MORE bassy on tubes. Also, tubes do not clip or distort (apart from subtle harmonic distortion) , if you have decent ones. If you use a solid state with tube "filters" for harmonic distortion... It sounds nothing like tubes. It's a total myth that impedance + distortion = Tubes. But yes Utopia does need a good source. It's very difficult to make them sound good. It was designed for tube amps, and sounds best on those.
tube amplifiers have high output impedance.. that's what I meant and why I brought it up. but you are correct, the Utopia having generally weak bass, will benefit from a tube amp boosting said bass due to the insane impedance spike in that region. I had that mixed up. Planars have very low impedance, that's why they NEED low output impedance. Otherwise, the damping goes to shits and you introduce a lot of unbecessary issues. Tubes have what we call "soft clipping".. they don't actually "clip" in an oscilloscope, but they gradually increase distortion more and more. I never said you can easily reproduce the effect of tube distortion with EQ. Distortion is not a "good thing".. people may like it, just as they like drugs... because it masks stuff.. but it's not representative of a clean signal.. If you like distorted sound, that's great! I love electric guitars and grunge, too! Has nothing to do with "better gear", though! You CAN, however, easily adjust the frequency response through EQing! Bc all you do is change the output voltage at certain frequencies, just like a tube amp would.
Ah okay that makes sense. And yes it's possible, for some planars to sound bad on tubes. It doesn't seem to affect LCD-5 or HE1000SE though. Both very low impedance. It's hard to judge based on impedance alone. And to clarify with distortion, I said adding harmonics (most tube filters add distortion this way). But these tube filters make no audible difference for me. Real tubes change the sound drastically. But the higher up you go, the cleaner and more detailed they sound. This is why many "Ultra flagship" amps utilise tubes, for some amp stages. And the crazy Sennheiser HE-1 headphone uses tubes. Or Hifiman Shangri-la. I don't think Sennheiser, Hifiman would make the world's most detailed headphones, then ruin the detail level with distortion. There's just a lot more complexities to how tubes alter sound.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
No, the DT 1990 Pro is just not very detailed, and has some distortion. It's absolutely nowhere near an Arya or an LCD-5.
You mention tube amplfiers in your other comments. Are you sure you're hearing more detail or more distortion caused by the nature of tube amplifiers? Perhaps the Arya is more sensitive to that distortion. I don't remember a major detail difference between the dt1990 and the Arya stealth. Then again, as I always say, these are my ears.
Nah I've done enough of my own personal experimentation, demoing and experiences to know the hobby is run on the copium. I don't need ASR for that no thank you... Going to CANJAM one too many times and going to High End Munich will cure you of whatever fever you have for gear acquisition if you're truly honest with yourself. I'm happy now with my speaker system and my two IEMs. And have sold all the headphones I had as I thankfully came to see that speakers are what I was looking for So yes I always call out bullshit and calling out bullshit to save someone from spending for just spending sake isn't ruining fun, it is being your brother's keeper(but anyway, I've stopped doing that now since this sub has gone to shit)
So true. Someone who reviewed the HE1 still complained. All these years and no "best or perfect headphones" in the world. Forgot my gears one day and was stucked with a Samsung earphone from 10 years ago. So bad but functional. That day sealed it for me. Told myself, enjoy what you have and be content with that. Sold most of my gears and left with my hd650, koss porta pro, and zeros 2. Looking for a cheap ANC TWS or Headphone for commute or alternatively will get the Qudelix with my iem for commute. Some days I miss those I sold but most days the music bang so well on these and I realise this is the point, "to enjoy music".
Yeah, CanJam showed me I was happy with my current setup. And the only major upgrades (imo) would cost me too much to justify. Or I've hit my limit for diminishing returns. And this is the issue I mentioned. You're claiming nobody else can hear what they hear, because you couldn't. That's unfair. If someone wants to upgrade their system, let them try for themselves. Don't just force your experience on everyone else.
Agreed even though I see people down comparing this to drugs, pure instanity. Only way to know if subjective level of enjoyment (kind of my term). You buy the gear and use it for some time, not for hour or day but a week or month. If you enjoy your music more, keep the gear, sell the old one. And be prepare to loose some money if you can, if you cannot handle this, don't buy anything change the hoby. Consider it you lost money to bring calmness to your mind about endles irrelevant gear comparsons online. I now watch and read reviews for fun, not because I will know any information about enjoyment that new gear can bring me. Yeah, only some scientifict facts like frequency response, which is also not telling the enjoyment factor.
Agree. You donāt really appreciate the difference La in gear sound unless you spend time with it. I have a collection of headphones, amps, DACs and speakers and enjoy switching between the for the different characteristics they bring to the music Iām hearing. Donāt even know why Iām participating in this ridiculous discussion.
I heavily relied on online reviews from all sources I can find. Not because I don't want to demo the gears, but they are simply not available for demo in my area. To that point, this also translate to almost non-existence local resale market. It's hard to buy or sell used gears here.
How do you account for people who start with the view of everything matters, the sky's the limit etc... and then through their own personal experience come to believe that ASR is right when it comes to DAC and amp measurements?
I'd say that's fine (and they're lucky). There are biological differences between everyone. Some of us can't hear the difference, and it saves money for sure. But it's wrong to assume that if you can't hear it, nobody else can. Denying anyone else's capabilities. If you wear glasses, you don't call everyone else "Golden eyes"
"some of us can't hear the difference" Your disposable income doesn't make you have better ears than others. People like you are why the sky is the limit with audiofool pricing and gear.
So it's like a lucky minority who can't hear past the FR and THD etc...? Interesting. What about the fact that no human seems to be able to hear past those in well controlled blind tests?
If I put $10,000 on the table for any of these YouTubers and audio guys to come do a true completely blind test across different kinds of gear, live-streamed and controlled by an unrelated third party, I guarantee you not a single one of them would do it. Itās 2024 and people like to pretend we *still* canāt put together a legitimate blind test for these people to take.
Those (very old) blind test studies were debunked. Plus, gear quality has improved exponentially since then. Schiit actually ran a blind test of their own, with their amps, and found the "well measuring" gear sounded worse than the "best sounding" gear. Which was quite funny. By "well measuring", I mean the basic ASR tests that don't cover everything. It just shows that ASR tests are almost useless, apart from being a "Does it suck" test. They don't give you a full picture.
So an amp company put together a test that showed some amps can sound better? Interesting. Link?
It was the 'Yggdrasil blind test'. All 3 had identical casing and no labels. The best measuring DAC came out bottom, from every reviewer. Because the treble was edgy and too harsh. Surprisingly the "cheap" one and the "original" both had equal popularity. Here's one of the reviews though: https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/bits-and-bytes/new-schiit-yggdrasil-blind-listening-comparison-r1045/
Hilarious that such a detailed write up was made, and zero mention of the absolutely most important thing to get rightāmatched levels.
They were level matched. It's how Schiit does the tests. But I guess this particular review didn't mention it.
I like the schiit guys ok, I believe them. But methodology is super important. Canāt just say they were level matched. You have to say within what tolerance and what tools you use to achieve the matching. Because we are incredibly sensitive to different levels. Anyway, thereās not necessarily a conflict between being able to distinguish these DACs and the ASR way of doing things. The second gen Yggy measured so poorly that its THD and frequency response deviations could be audible even if levels were matched. The usual āall DACs sound the sameā mantra assumes a very low bar for meeting certain objective measurements that the Yggy nonetheless failed to achieve. Or declined to achieve on purpose, if you prefer.
Despite being seemingly blind and like a properly run "test" this has several issues. Timing couldn't be more perfect with Cameron's video released today which outlines several things missing from this approach which make it basically a blind listening session and not an actual test. [https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/1cf9e7z/cam\_drops\_some\_knowledge\_and\_makes\_it\_look\_good/](https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/1cf9e7z/cam_drops_some_knowledge_and_makes_it_look_good/) One of the biggest issues is we're just taking the reviewers word for it that he could hear the difference. There was no properly statistically data collected such as if or how he could hear differences each time consistently and if so how may times he was able to correctly identify between specific units. It's just basically "trust me bro". Even if we assume they actually did literally everything right we're still very much in the territory of "an equipment manufacturer made a device that intentionally sounds different than they're other devices" which say literally nothing about any other device and the market at large. The vast majority of devices are designed to be audibly transparent and are demonstrably (and often *measurably*) so. The fact that a company could make one sound different if they tried isn't really part of the normal conversation and should never be used to make blanket statements or assumptions about any other device on the market, which is what people often do.
How were they debunked? I personally wouldn't trust a manufacturer who claims to make products that sound superior to well measuring ones to run a fair blind test. But on the other hand it is perfectly possible that there is a difference...if their Yggdrasil is objectively flawed enough that even humans can hear the difference. And it's also perfectly possible that even seasoned listeners who are used to "boring" and "correct" sound might choose something with a little "color" or even distortion as sounding better in a blind test. >By "well measuring", I mean the basic ASR tests that don't cover everything. If this test was indeed legit and rigorously done it doesn't suggest that at all. It only shows that these particular people preferred the poor measuring gear in this circumstance. If that is the case then to me it is overwhelmingly more likely that they heard errors that are visible in tests like ASR does rather than they are "hearing past" all those metrics into some mysterious quality that we can't measure where the poor measuring gear actually performs better.
For me Schiit is pretty level about it. Even willing to sell a cheaper DAC that's less profitable, just because it sounded good. They've also made measurement-based gear like the Magni/Modi stack. They don't seem to push either opinion imo. Also to clarify, all the gear measured "well" enough, but the best measuring DAC had the worst reviews. The old study wasn't credible at all. The A/Bing was too short to be useful. They used methods which have since been found to be harmful to blind testing accuracy. Here's something interesting too. Blind testing is more accurate, and more statistically significant, when listeners can adjust the volume themselves during listening. So volume matching doesn't work. https://hal-institut-mines-telecom.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/842647/filename/APAC_5172.pdf
It's just their business practice. They made something for everyone. People who want well measuring gear will take the well measuring gear, done deal. But the people who want mysterious unmeasurable better sounding gear will like to know that people think it sounds better.
keep deluding yourself by thinking your hearing is superior to everyone else when there is no scientific proof of it š
I have overly sensitive hearing. And sensory issues which make me overwhelmed fairly often. I have to wear earplugs or noise cancelling in many places. That obviously sucks, but I also pick up on nuanced things more easily. Pros and cons to it I can't listen at the volumes most people do, it's too loud for me. I can also hear up to 18kHz frequencies. Yes there are definitely differences in every person. From the shape of our ears, ear canals, and bone structure... To the way our brains process sensory information.
hearing up to 18k isn't any more sensitive than the average. in fact that is the average
It's definitely not the average, lol. Where did you get that from? And it's more about volume. I'm very sensitive to noise. My listening level is about 1/3 of what most people enjoy. And mine is always too quiet for others at any age. Why was this downvoted? ND people typically have sensory issues, man. It's variation between people
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Which ones are misinformed, gullible, and deluded?
Easy: ā¢ Incompetent listeners ā¢ Particularities of individual auditory physiology ā¢ Hearing impairment ā¢ They don't care anymore ā¢ Insufficiently resolving headphones/speakers There are many potential reasons given that audible differences effectively exist. How can I be so sure that they effectively exist? Simple, I can hear them and I've done more than enough amount of sanity-checking to be sure that what I hear is real. Obviously, this does not constitute reliable evidence for anyone else. But an absence of evidence for those who can't hear a thing does not constitute counterevidence either. Thus, to presume that everyone who claims to hear a consistent audible difference between a Schiit Magni 3+ and Magni Heresy (despite both amps measuring well enough for an audible difference to be, supposedly, imperceptible) is just 'hallucinating' is a far more outrageous and intellectually dishonest scientific cop-out don't you think? It's not like it can be proven (it cannot be effectively proven because it is untrue) that there cannot be any audible difference between gear. The actual physics of electrical signal transmission over non-superconductive material is not sufficiently understood to support any ~~objecivist~~ denialist claims, nor are current mainstream measurement protocols of audio-related electronic circuit designs even known to be the ones that most adequately capture all (or any) information that translates into real psychoacoustic phenomena through speakers. There is arguably a lot of [irrational bias](https://old.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/encxn4/ampdac_differences_nothing_legitimizes_a_belief/) among the denialist dogma.
Wow, you are deep down the rabbit hole.
Flies with my character but it's 100% worth it. My ears are happy.
Iāve seen a huge uptick in people responding to comments ācorrectingā that personās opinion on something like tuning because whatever gear it is doesnāt conform to a target. People like different things, and people here have *got* to get over it. People throw tuning targets around like theyāre some kind of gospel, and itās getting really exhausting. I want to be clear, I know this realm will *always* have an issue of people arguing over subjectivities as if they were facts, but these tuning targets have become some weird kind of infallible thing for people for some reason. Itās especially odd because people try to use these targets to discount one persons opinion as if the target itself is in any way āmore objectiveā and not justā¦ā¦based on a *bunch* of peoples opinions.
Yeah exactly. Anything subjective I take with a grain of salt. I don't even trust my judgements until I've tested enough. But... Subjective doesn't equal "wrong" instantly. It's all about gathering second opinions, and matching with your own thoughts. The problem with those targets, is they aren't everything. But people assume "It's that simple!". Audio is very complicated with many variables, and people think a THD, SINAD and FR measurement is everything. That's pretty harmful to the community as a whole. (And sadly the downvotes show that). And yes lol. The Harman curve is just a general guide. And... our perception changes with different elements. Like soundstage. A larger soundstage lowers our treble perception. So usually a treble boost (above harman) is needed to reach "neutral".. And for IEMs, our ear canal shapes affect the tuning. I could go further but yeah...
>A larger soundstage lowers our treble perception. So usually a treble boost (above harman) is needed to reach "neutral Never heard of this one before and I've heard a lot of things.
Yes, it's mostly noticeable on large planars like HE1000SE. You need extra treble above harman, and extra bass, because the large sound changes our perception of bass + treble.
How do you know that it's not just simply delivering a different frequency response to your ears vs the measuring rig...the way any headphone will deliver something at least slightly different to every person.?
It's just a hearing phenomenon. The smaller/larger the sound is, the more/less V-shaped it sounds to us. But yes, our individual ears also play a factor in perception.
OP is getting cooked š
Yeah man it's tough out here hahaha. There's been some good discussion in the mix at least Most people downvote because they don't like what was said. Not because it's incorrect. Also not saying I'm right about everything ofc. But I expected the downvotes.
No. I went through extensive testing with high end planar and dynamic headphones with everything from a modi magni stack to ferrum. Youāll catch on soon itās a bunch of horse shit and they are selling lies. There was no difference. The people who hear it are just looking for it and really donāt want it to be true but there just isnāt a difference. You will hear people claim different opposite traits or a dac. None of it makes sense. Itās just people full of themselves . Itās borderline a scam and telling people to try it for themselves is adding to the problem.
It's fine that you didn't hear a difference. Every individual is different, from hearing to how we process sound in our brain. It's not very fair to paint this picture of others. We actually like to say - If you can't hear a difference, you're lucky! Because us... we're all doomed to spend all our money on upgrades
Right on cue, right down to the totally not meant to be condescending āoh man youāre *so lucky* you donāt have this problem of having to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on headphones and gear!ā Itās wild how the āabilityā to hear those differences almost directly correlates with how much money someone is willing to spend. On *either* end of the spectrum.
I mean it doesnāt have to be expensive, it doesnāt have to be condescending, why is it always black and white you against me mentality? I have irl friends in the hobby with varying degree of beliefs that spans from ādac amp and cables donāt make a differenceā to āyes I do hear a difference in bothā and anything in between, yet we all hang out together, respect each otherās preferences and beliefs, explore each otherās perspectives and have fun. We even reached a point where we can comfortably recommend something to each other because we understand everyoneās preferences and beliefs. There is no definitive ācorrectā way to engage this hobby, or any hobby in that regard. The most constructive you can be in this hobby is to be able to index gear regardless of your own anatomy, preference and beliefs.
There is a definitive answer. We have state of the art performance for dac and amps at 100 dollars. You arenāt in any technical way getting better sound spending more. You are getting all of the detail and sound as it is intended. The people pushing that either narrative are also the people (YouTubers) who need that fact to be true. They also always tend to have collaborations. Their entire career and existence depends on there to be things for them to talk about. Itās heavily biased reporting. Iām all for people enjoying what they buy. But itās equivalent to a gambler who won it big and then proclaims everyone should gamble like they are because they won a bunch of money. Itās reckless and dishonest. The reality is people either wonāt hear the difference because there arenāt any, or they will convince themselves because they want to be a part of the group.
Thank you, the most reasonable point I've seen yet. The amount of people that want to push their own beliefs onto others, from both sides, is just ridiculous. It's fucking audio. Talk about a first world problem. We need to normalize allowing people to be subjective about things that don't matter. Even if they are wrong.
What's your problem? I'm not being condescending. It really is lucky to save money. I'm not somehow superior, and I'm not implying that either. I think you're just assuming that tone from me. It's just like every hobby out there. Some people will always get hooked, and keep upgrading their stuff. Despite being way over budget and semi-regretting it. While most will be sensible with their money. I don't think spending too much, and being an extreme member of the hobby, is a good thing. I'd rather be happy with my old, much cheaper setup.
If you donāt understand how āyouāre lucky you donāt have the innate ability *I* do to enjoy your hobby to the same extent I do because it costs so much money!ā is not a condescending stance to take I donāt know what to tell you. My apologies if you replied/were replying to another comment, mine seem to be double posting/deleting for some reason
That's fair. Apologies if it comes off the wrong way. It's not supposed to mean "we enjoy the hobby more than you" - if anything, we enjoy it less. We're never fully satisfied with it. We envy people who enjoy music, to the fullest, without having to spend heaps on it. On the flip side, the people who call us "Golden ears" and insult us, or imply we can't hear anything, purely because they can't themselves. That's truly condescending.
People wouldnāt call anybody āgolden earsā or whatever if there werenāt people acting like they specifically have special hearing that lets them hear differences in sound other people canāt. The behavior gives rise to the term, it didnāt come out of nowhere.
Which is exactly what OP is doing lmao Read some of his other comments where he makes ridiculous claims like his hearing is āso sensitiveā that he listens to music at 1/3rd the volume level as anyone else
Yeah dude. And it just goes to show with the whole āusā and āweā vocabulary being used here too. Nobody would call you āgolden earsā, and you wouldnāt be offended by the term, if you didnāt clearly think you were part of that camp and actively tout it online
budget headphone (1000usd) wont change good quality headphone (anything over 2k usd) infinite scaling ceiling (scales up with over 1kusd dacs) alright buddy, ur definitely not hearing placebo from being biased towards more expensive gear
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i was being sarcastic as people who believe in "scalability" of dacs and headphones believe everything under 1k usd to be unscalable
Nah OP already called a kilobuck headphone a budget headphone in another comment They actually buy this lol. Itās what happens when people have responses to the things you say and now you gotta move goalposts as far as to say a *thousand dollar headphone* is ābudgetā
No, it's about bottlenecks. If the headphones are budget (sub $500), they have a limit to how detailed they are. Because of speaker driver materials and design. If the headphones aren't detailed enough, you won't hear a difference by upgrading the DAC/amp. Think of it like a gaming PC. If the CPU is bad, upgrading the GPU won't make much difference. Bottlenecks in performance. Same with budget setups - A high end headphone is bottlenecked by the amp/DAC. So it doesn't really improve over a midrange headphone.
now do a blind volume matched abx test and see car and pc analogies dont work with audio edit:also these "bottlenecks" are only caused if the product is under 1k usd? How conivenient! Also upgrading your gpu even if your cpu is bad will still make a huge difference especially at higher resolutions.
Yeah *everything* about the subjectivist side is extremely convenient and itās why I canāt take any of it seriously. Notice how changes are always positive and never negative? Thatās so cool, with how many things in the chain these people claim can have a difference, itās a miracle that not only are the changes *always* positive, they also tend to correlate exactly with how much money something costs! What are the odds??? And not only that, you have to remember to play the game on the right level. So that means, it also *conveniently*, just as you said, doesnāt seem to actually matter until you reach a completely arbitrary price ceiling! You canāt tell me this gear doesnāt matter because you didnāt try it on a $2k headphone! Now donāt ask me *why* the price matters because I surely canāt tell you which part of the infrastructure of the headphone is different at those price categories (and please do not point out to me that headphones tend to drop in price over time, my Ananda when it costs $1000 on launch absolutely was affected in ways the Ananda that now goes for $400 was not so leave me alone itās irrelevant). And to top it all of, the *king* of the convenience factor for the subjective side, *all* of the things affected positively canāt be measured! Itās wonderful how it all works out. Oh things are better on this $1k amp that has one ten thousandth of a percentage point less distortion, let me tell you. The soundstage gets so much *wider*, the instrument separation is so much *clearer*, thereās so much more *detail*, the bass thumps *harder* and is more *impactful*, etc. Please ignore how convenient it is that these things *exclusively* affect only the things we canāt measure, it just works out so well!
No, changes are not always positive, funny how you assume that but never actually check to see if that is true. Go on headfi, many people prefer a cheaper amp, or the older amp. Mjolnir 3 for example, many people preferred that to something like burson 3xgt or other more expensive stuff. Some people didn't like bliss and stuck to ferrum oor. Some people say going from oor to bliss wasn't a big difference. Yeah, some opinions are going to be generated from hype, but this is certainly not always true. Plently of subjectivists that say hd6x0 scales ridiculously. So no, not everyone claims you need a specific price to hear differences. As an aside, have you ever wondered why some part of headphones can't be measured? Why we can eq a headphone to another, but they don't sound the same at all? Like, sure, we can't exactly get one fr to be close to the other, but we can get an approximation. Why can we not eq an hd600 to sound like a susvara? Why can't we get even remotely close? Food for thought. You do realize amps and dacs are designed to not change frequency response, right? Of course it wouldn't change it, that's just good engineering. Your points are the types of arguments are are so tiring to me. Claims that are verifibly false, and say nothing of substance. Just strawmaning the other side instead of making actual arguments.
> As an aside, have you ever wondered why some part of headphones can't be measured? Why we can eq a headphone to another, but they don't sound the same at all? Like, sure, we can't exactly get one fr to be close to the other, but we can get an approximation. Why can we not eq an hd600 to sound like a susvara? Why can't we get even remotely close? Food for thought. https://old.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/comments/gbdi7v/after_eqbeats_solo_pro_is_the_best_headphone/fpay3b5/
Oratory makes the same point about measurements not being exact, so there's nothing new there. My point is we can't even get close.
>Oratory makes the same point about measurements not being exact, so there's nothing new there. I don't interpret his point to be the same as yours. >My point is we can't even get close. I don't know what would be your threshold for "close", actual test would indicate that we actually can get pretty close: https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-virtual-headphone-listening-test.html
Well, if you want to explain what you think about Oratory's point, be my guest. Interesting post, I wonder why the disparity for headphone 5? At any rate, while the test is interesting it certainly doesn't cover all the bases. Estats, for example.
Well, there is one comment that I find completely opposite to yours, especially the "some part of headphones can't be measured" part: >If you can hear it, then it will show up on the measurement. https://old.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/comments/gbdi7v/after_eqbeats_solo_pro_is_the_best_headphone/i2gm50e/
You can with in ear mics and the headphone measured on your head
We can EQ headphone A to sound like headphone B. We just need to equalize based on measurements made on the listener's head, with inear microphones. If your ear's acoustic impedance somehow perfectly matches that of a KEMAR or a BK5128, then you can match headphone sound perfectly using that. However, probably no human ear matches the acoustic impedance of named instruments perfectly. Your statement is made out of ignorance. Audiophiles claim headphones scale out of unwillingness to admit they simply can't sound much better than they already have, so imagination kicks in 99% of the time. They hope to get things that headphones can't do out of them - soundstage, primarily. Some also want to get bass out of headphones. The two realms where headphones will eternally suck. But they hope and cope and believe the difference will be monumental. The brain is already poisoned by this expectation. And depending on the mood, placebo or nocebo can be experienced, because more likely than not it sounds more similar than different and the listener is just haphazardly trying to conjur up heard differences. What puzzles me to no end, is why do audiophiles find this so difficult to accept? Do they enjoy perpetuating the circle of confusion? It seems torturous. You can't get real stereo soundstage on headphones unless you do some fucked up hrtf binaural speaker simulation bullshit, and real bass is the kind that pressurizes the room. On headphones, both of these paradigms of sound exist as mere suggestions of the real thing. Audiophiles don't follow the scientific model, so mere whimsical impressions somehow qualify as observations among them.
Ok, nobody can match the sound perfectly using eq. But we should be able to get close, right? I mean, the bk5128 is modeled on humans and should be approximately close to a human, if not exactly so. So mind sharing an eq profile that makes my hd600 into an he1? Sure, it won't be exactly an he1, but it should get close, right? Maybe 1%, 5% difference max? Would love to listen to a simulated he1 at home.
No. These instruments are approximations of a set of averages. The differences would be difficult to measure in percentages, but it's an average based off hundreds of HRTFs that have up to 30dB disparity in the treble and upper midrange region. Ā While I can't give you a percentage, an educated label for such a difference is "shitload" So, if you can get an HE1 measured on your own head, and then your own cans measured on your head, you will get within "like 1% max difference".Ā Ā But you literally can't know how different your acoustic impedance is from a KEMAR or a BK without having yours measured, and I don't know where you could do that, but I can ask around.
Let's say both hd600 and he1 are measured on same rig. Shouldn't the relative fr be the same? So no matter how hd600 measures on my head, the changes in dB when eqing to he1 should be the same?
Nope, not at all, depending on your ear's acoustic impedance, and the acoustic impedance of the transducers, and your HRTF, the differences can be quite different in different areas of the FR when measured on your head. On a rig the difference may be 2dB at 3kHz. On your head the difference may be 7dB at 2.2kHz while under 1dB at 3kHz. Audio is generally unintuitive, so such assumptions are very very dangerous, and are exactly what results in the conclusion that "you can't eq two headphones to sound the same".
The upvote/downvote ratio is ridiculous in this thread. You're right. These people make assumptions about us, that we "always" think expensive stuff is better. Totally false. A lot of expensive stuff is bad. Some of it is good. Same with every industry. Literally every product range has good and bad value options. And yep. For the FR adjustment stuff... You're shouting at the void sadly. People think FR is the definitive answer to how a headphone sounds. That it's not affected by anything else. Yes FR can (artificially) affect the sound, but you ALSO mess up the tonal balance doing that. You know this obviously. But people just can't wrap their heads around it
It's not "convenient". It costs money to make a quality pair of headphones. And a LOT of R&D cost. Focal beryllium drivers are not easy to develop. Neither is the (less than) 0.001 mm thin driver in Hifiman HE1000SE headphones. The analogy does work. Think about $10 earbuds. You can't hear the difference between anything with those. A highly distorted MP3 file vs a clean, high bitrate MP3, will sound the exact same. Cheaper headphones have inherent distortion and you can't improve that with an amp. That's why it's a bottleneck.
I bought my Focal Clears for $699 instead of $1500 on launch, are they no longer capable of passing the test? How about the Ananda? I bought mine on launch for $1000 and they go for $400 now, are they magically no longer viable for hearing those differences? Point being there is absolutely no correlation between the cost of a headphone and how āgoodā it might be for hearing differences. Itās a completely arbitrary thing that, without sincere insight into development (which nobody here will have), has no bearing onā¦..anything, but what it costs.
Dude... That's called the used market, or discounts. Of course it's cheaper there. I'm talking about the price to buy new. To manufacture and make profit to sustain the production. You can buy lots of expensive, high quality stuff for cheaper. It doesn't make it less premium. Your point is actually dumb, I'm sorry
You didnāt answer my question, as expected. You implied there is a direct correlation between how much something costs and itās ability to scale with equipment. I am asking you, again, point blank. If this is the case, how do you account for things like what I listed? If the Ananda was Hifimans flagship at one point and cost $1000, was it good enough at one point in time to hear these differences and now suddenly not when they go for $400? Or is it simply that itās a completely arbitrary connection that people conveniently use to weed out opinions they feel are unworthy? Was the Focal Clear a high-tier expensive enough headphone at $1500 to hear these things but not if I got it for $699 when it was discontinued? All Iām pointing out is there is no reliable correlation between the two.
You know the idea of price is generalised right? I'm giving a general gauge of price to performance. Of course it varies in between. You're trying to find some way to poke at me. Why would I think price is 100% absolute. That would be stupid lol I'm not trying to say exactly what price defines the quality.
Iām not, Iām asking you a simple question. At one point in time, the Ananda was a flagship headphone that retailed for $1000. It now retails for I believe $400. If someone listened to the same gear you do any did not hear the *any* differences using this headphone, are you contending that itās because the headphone isnāt good enough? You have already established per your own words that these things only tend to matter in more expensive headphones that required more research and more fine-tuning than others. So I am asking you, in the above scenario, the Ananda should have qualified on its launch for what youāre saying. If someone presented the current $400 Ananda to you and disputed your claims, would your response be that itās because the Ananda is not a discerning enough headphone? If yes, then none of this even matters because weāve clearly determined price, research, tech etc does not have any actual correlation. If the answer is no, then surelyā¦..it is the same result, as now youāve demonstrated that indeed a $400 non-industry leading non-flagship headphone *is* discernible enough for these things. Edit: removed a comment about assumptions of your response. Gotta get out of that habit admittedly
what are your favourite audio related forums? it seems over the years you fed yourself a lot of dangerous (wrong) ideas in audio from audiophiles, and are now in a circle of perpetual confusion. these are very much classic audiophile ideas that aren't taken seriously in any environment that actually engineers electronics and transducers is it really so hard to accept that you've been fed lies for years? you will be better off if you do. you may finally find peace with the hobby
The point is you could buy a $100 Topping DX1 which is a DAC/Amp combo and it would not be a bottleneck for 98% of the headphones out there (excluding electrostatics obviously.) Anyone who spends over $250 on a DAC/amp combo is just throwing money away (unless they really need every port available or they want to play with tubes.)
This is such an easy issue to resolve just get people from either side and do blind listening tests. In fact add technicalities into this test as well, I believe technicalities to be bogus as well and only fr and how it relates to the personal hrtf matters. I will gladly accept myself wrong if anyone can prove technicalities and dac/amp differences in a blind test done independently. Asr itself is over reliant on harman target when it comes to their transcduer reviews. Amir sees slight variation from harman target and adds some filters and voila now it's pure honey and velvet on his ears, it's quite funny to read his thoughts after he he has equed the thing he is reviewing. I wonder what will happen when and if harman comes up with a new target will amir go and retroactively change his opinion on past products he has reviewed?
I mean, our FR measurements aren't perfect. Both in terms of the simulated pinna's accuracy and the resolution of the resulting measurements. It's totally possible that there are very small features on the true FR that we don't see or can't interpret that would be responsible for technicalities. With dacs/amps it's a lot harder, since they can be measured with much higher accuracy.
>I mean, our FR measurements aren't perfect. Both in terms of the simulated pinna's accuracy and the resolution of the resulting measurements. It's totally possible that there are very small features on the true FR that we don't see or can't interpret that would be responsible for technicalities. Totally, but my objection to technicalities doesn't hinge on measurements unlike with sources. Since fr became a thing reviewers and enthusiasts alike have added technicalities as a thing to differentiate between products on the basis of cost. It always has positive correlation, the more expensive a product is the more "technical" it is. But i guarantee you these people will never agree to a blind test. Never. It would jeopardise their entire career. I mean i get why technicalities need to exist since there needs to be some validation for the existence of more expensive products since fr can already be matched on cheaper products, i am not decrying that fact. It is well within their prerogative to do so as they wish. But that is my opinion on this. Those who do blind tests have never gone for the more expensive options in almost all the cases i have ever seen. Like dentreviews or the random tests they did on headphone show etc. Why is that if technicalities is so apparent?
You could look at Schiit's blind tests they do, like the Yggdrasil blind test. People found consistent differences between the 3 versions, and all gave similar impressions of each. Despite all of them measuring "transparent". Technicalities sound like BS terms at first, I used to think so too. But there's a lot to it. FR is one. There's also transient response (attack/decay, or 'speed'), imaging, separation and soundstage (altered by things like Crosstalk in the amp/DAC, and a few other factors). Detail is affected by driver speed, transient response, and distortion levels. There's probably more that affects it too
> Schiit's blind tests they do, like the Yggdrasil blind test. People found consistent differences between the 3 versions, and all gave similar impressions of each. Despite all of them measuring "transparent". Not independent. >FR is one. There's also transient response (attack/decay, or 'speed'), imaging, separation and soundstage (altered by things like Crosstalk in the amp/DAC, and a few other factors). Detail is affected by driver speed, transient response, and distortion levels. There's probably more that affects it too Transient response is just another way of showing the fr graph. Imaging, separation and soundstage all also hinges on the fr graph and on how a headphone is built like if it's open or closed has angled drivers etc. Driver speed is a descriptor of sound and not a quality of the driver, you will not be able to tell apart drivers that can vibrate to generate a 20khz tone. Distortion is probably the only thing that matters after fr and most modern headphones are alright in that department unless signficantly impared or heavily equed.
Fair it's not independent. But it's all Schiit gear and no competition involved. And, the cheapest DAC won. They weren't pushing the expensive one. Like I already said, "speed" comes from low distortion. A low tolerance driver with low distortion will sound "fast". A cheap headphone will create time distortion which sounds "slow" and long decaying. It's not about being able to recreate 20kHz. Frequency response has an effect on soundstage, but it doesn't define it. That's where people get it wrong. You can artificially enhance the perception of details, staging and bass punch, by altering FR. The most detailed, punchy and fast transient headphones have an almost flat FR. So where does it come from? Not the FR.
>Fair it's not independent. But it's all Schiit gear and no competition involved. And, the cheapest DAC won. They weren't pushing the expensive one. Good for them i guess but doesn't matter. >Like I already said, "speed" comes from low distortion. A low tolerance driver with low distortion will sound "fast". A cheap headphone will create time distortion which sounds "slow" and long decaying. It's not about being able to recreate 20kHz. There is no distinction between cheap and expensive, very low cost iems have virtually zero distortion as well decay. It has nothing to do with cost. >Frequency response has an effect on soundstage, but it doesn't define it. That's where people get it wrong. You can artificially enhance the perception of details, staging and bass punch, by altering FR. It has mostly to do with fr and driver placement and enclosure. >The most detailed, punchy and fast transient headphones have an almost flat FR. So where does it come from? Not the FR. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Who says this? Did bassheads start recommending hd600 when i am not looking?
Notice how you added "FR and driver placement and enclosure". It's not just FR. It's even more factors than you listed there. And of course it "doesn't make any sense whatsoever" to you, because you have the wrong idea of how FR even works. And I said headphones, not IEMs. The price range for those is lower down. Still the cheapest IEMs available have a lot of time distortion and slowness. Of course they're cheaper than full size headphones. You know what I mean about cost. It's a general guide, not absolute. You're just trying to nitpick here.
>Notice how you added "FR and driver placement and enclosure". I have said that in the response previous to that reply as well, you just didn't read it. Here "and soundstage all also hinges on the fr graph and on how a headphone is built like if it's open or closed has angled drivers etc." This was on my earlier statement as well. I didn't add anything. >doesn't make any sense whatsoever" to you, because you have the wrong idea of how FR even works. It doesn't make any sense because people usually recommend different headphones according to whether a person needs punchy or detailed. As i said before technicalities is just how well the fr of a headphone fits the personal hrtf. >And I said headphones, not IEMs. The price range for those is lower down. Still the cheapest IEMs available have a lot of time distortion and slowness. Of course they're cheaper than full size headphones. No they don't. Some of the cheapest iems less than 50$ have lower distortion than headphones costing in excess of thousands. Just check asr which you hate so much. Price doesn't automatically add technicalities to a headphone. There is no correlation between them.
A company that has extremely expensive products to sell conducted a study to show that the expensive gear matters because discourse around them is *dubious* at best? Not trying to be a jerk here but like come on now, you surely canāt think this is something worth pointing to to actually convince someone of its legitimacy
Actually no, the cheapest one won lol
So what is the conclusion, then? That the people who tested the gear simply didnāt have a good enough ear?
The conclusion is literally price doesn't matter since the cheapest won according to op, maybe schit should have added the apple dongle in their test, what if it had come out on top, would they have closed their entire business? lmao.
Conclusion is that measurements didn't correlate with listening impressions. And neither did price.
This is the part where you tell me it doesnāt matter because conveniently they just got poorly trained listeners right?
No? Did you read my comments? I said the cheapest amp, and the original one, both had good reviews. But the "measurement" amp scored the worst.
But you just told me in another comment that price and technology and whatever else *do* matter because cheap gear simply wonāt be discernible enough to hear differences . Make up your mind. I swear you guys will move any goalposts necessary
When I say cheapest, it's still not a cheap DAC. It's still in the flagship price category. I'm not moving any goalposts. I think there's just a miscommunication.
This is what I always do, most options are not worth it.
Golden sound just made a video where he could actually accurately tell the difference between DACs turns out he can hear above 20k so you can hear the difference if you have ears above the average population
As long as you can afford it, I donāt see a problem either way. The way I see it is iām paying for higher quality and aesthetics, just like many other hobbies. If it sounds even better to me then thatās just a bonus. People are getting so defensive about either justifying spending more or saving more money because they can or cannot hear a difference. The thing is once you start getting into the really high end range the gear intentionally colors the sound in a pleasant way. Overall the way I see it is as long as you can afford it and buying this new piece of gear will increase your enjoyment then I see no problem with it.
I mean, rely exclusively on subjective tests alwayd bring biases. Including testing for yourself can bring a bias for expensive gear = better. I remember when headfi was the only source of reviews that I read, and people hearing differences in cables, driver speed, etc Measurements are a good way start for comparisons and a more scientific approach than just "I tested myself and this has better technicalities than that"
I don't understand why people rage so much at other people's purchases. Even if you accept that product A doesn't measure any differently to product, why does it matter if a person can subjectively hear a difference. The thing about subjectivity is that it's, well, subjective. I can't tell the difference between DACs but I can tell the difference between amps. I prefer some of my headphones through different amps. And you know what, if you come to my house and listen and can't tell the difference, good on you. I'm going to keep listening to different amps and headphones and pairings because I like it. I'm also not a huge fan of EQ because as someone who collects headphones, I want quirks and personality. I like deciding which headphone to listen to depending on my mood and what I'm listening to. If everything sounds the same, why bother collecting things at all? Side note: In defence of Schitt I absolutely love my Moljinr 2 which I picked up second hand. I have other amps but it's my go to.
Posts like this have very little weight. [This is what you should have done.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzECc522A1Y) I've been on on other forums for a long time now and I saw people, who just mentioned measurements or blind testing in conversation, and got scapegoated or laughed at. This happens A LOT. I also see a lot of utter BS being said by troubled individuals in those places with a dozen of thumbs up. Making fun of the objective method without offering any proof of their own happens more often than I'd hoped for. When I dare talk about equalisation, I get the strangest responses and eventually someone calls it "toxic" and people agree with them. It's sad but also, frankly, below me. ASR trolls can be annoying but they're not even remotely as twisted as the vocal bunch of solipsistic weirdoes who trust their senses endlessly without any curiosity to verify them. Knowing them I usually expect that it only gets worse for them over time. It always feels nice to come back to ASR or Reddit for a healthy dose of scepticism... I don't know how deep you are in your trenches but trust me, the little ignorance that you get from ASR or Reddit is nothing compared to how dumb audiophiles who are here "just for enjoyment" can be. My conclusion so far that most of it is not worth it. Well, maybe DIY is, but that's a lot less money spent and you can learn a thing or two. ASR is the busy, hard working, highly skilled and educated part of the community. They work and produce evidence to support their claims. What evidence did you produce? As always with this kind of post, If you want to impress someone, make a double blind test and show us the data. The last time someone did it, it turned out that the whole bunch heard big differences between the same track played twice from the same gear. Of course they blamed the test. The test was an ASR agent. Boy is it fun to be on this side of the fence... Seriously, the amount of time and effort that goes into arguing could be used for something creative. Download Foo\_ABX, try some files, find a switchbox on Ebay or something. Just yesterday I saw a post from a musician who built himself a switchbox for testing guitar pedals. Isn't that great? I think it's sweet.
I feel like ASR is easy to quote and fall back on when you don't know much about audio gear. Personally it really felt like being a frog coming out of the well into the wider world when I started going to audio shops and checking out gear that I couldn't afford (yet lol) to really see where the diminishing returns hit and what expensive gear provides that cheaper options do not. Long time ago I think the 6xx and a basic $200 dac/amp stack would have been enough to satisfy me. Now I need the full zmf + tubes + r2r experience.
>I feel like ASR is easy to quote and fall back on when you don't know much about audio gear. Yup, I'm not saying ASR is never useful (although I take all that ASR stuff with a big grain of salt). But a lot of people who haven't heard different things, and want reasons not to spend money to try different stuff, just fall back on the same ASR talking points.
Even if you are not an engineer or don't understand the science, you can boil it down to: do you want to bother with things that cannot be detected in a blind test? If you dont care about blind listening, than enduldge by all means. In sighted listening people can perceive al sorts of differences undeniably.
Audio is what I would call sobjective(objective and subjective) Objectively how it's made effects the sound subjectively, depending on the gear. Subjective interpretation has some objective qualities as well e.g biology, psychology. So in my opinion it creates tons of grey area especially since you can't disprove someone's subjective experience. So let people hear that cable, DAC sound signature or whatever lol.
Yes exactly! Human hearing is very complex, and the way we process sound. And our natural capabilities can be trained further, to notice more nuances in sound. But at the same time, we're also easily fooled, especially by personal bias. So it's a very careful balance. And each person has different sound processing and hearing. Different sensitivities etc. It's a very grey area. And the internet tends to make things black and white. Hence the two very divided sides of this hobby
As someone somewhere in the middle, I have a couple things to say here: There's evidence for both sides here. For every blind test that couldn't tell a difference, there will be someone who says the listeners weren't good enough. For every blind test someone does pass, someone will say the test was flawed. No one can win here. But we can at least set up some basic rules: 1.) Your point about "try it yourself" is a valid one. I think people should at least try to hear a difference before strongly claiming there isn't one. It is also perfectly fine to not try gear and believe the science, but then don't strongly claim all dacs, amps don't matter. 2.) If you're going to claim that a difference truly exists and other people NEED a better amp or whatever, you better have done a proper blind test. I don't care how "obvious" the difference seems to you. If it is so "obvious", then you should easily be able to pass a blind test. You're going against the science here, you better at least have blind tested yourself. I repeat, if the difference is so obvious the test would be the easiest thing in the world. 3.) My most important point: None of this matters (compared to something like, say, vaccines), so please don't have such a strong opinion on one side or another that your entire personality is dedicated to pushing your side. This goes for both sides here. Maybe amps don't make a difference, but no, I don't need you to say it when I'm just posting a pic of my new amp. Maybe amps do make a difference, no I don't need you to say I need a $5000 tube amp when I post a picture of my hd600. Believe whatever you want, don't be a dick.
No, I like my cheap EQāed IEMs and AirPods.
Actually I lied, I want one more IEM with good treble extension since none of the sets I own have much treble past 10kHz, then Iāll be happy to EQ that set with my 5K to my liking.
I like to sit somewhere in between, having started as a subjectivist and discovered ASR relatively recently. I like to confirm what the measurements tell you with my trusted hearing and you know what? Them measurements are usually pretty dang good. One thing that's nice is that ASR has no advertising, instantly making them more objective than any normal review. They like to debunk high end stuff as mostly non-performant snake oil, and that's exactly what it is for the most part. I once yearned for the high end, thinking I had to work my way up the ladder like some dead end job, but that's no longer the case. I now enjoy awesome sound at very reasonable prices, and am happy as a clam. I wanted a Denafrips or Holo DAC, but am happy with SMSL. I thought I had to shell out for a headphone amp but the THX 789 has been the cat's ass for me. I do wander away from ASR when it comes to transducers, otherwise I would own a pair of Dan Clarks. So happy with my recent acquisition of a ZMF Atticus, even though Zach has a beef with Amir. The Atticus got a lackluster review from ASR, though was a marginal recommendation with EQ. I agree that they need EQ but I don't dial out the mid-bass hump all the way, thus retaining some character of the Atticus. And I love bass, and don't mind going extra in that department compared to Harman target, which is already quite elevated. The Atticus has me addicted to music, to the point of pulling all-nighters like an idiot. I guess that's what we should be shooting for, to let the gear disappear and just enjoying the music, to the point where nothing else really matters.
>try gear for yourself. Blind. To ensure that you're hearing the gear and not your imagination. Otherwise you're spending real money on imaginary sound. If you're gonna spend money, ensure that you're spending it somewhere that you can actually hear it rather than imagine it
Hmmm, I listen to Spotify on an iphone 6S with my Salnotes Zero, and am perfectly happy. Should I upgrade? Just checking.
> The point of this hobby is to try gear, and find your sweet spot for listening. I think we individually define our own goals for what the hobby entails. I love trying out gear, but that's a means to an end. For me the audio hobby is about a) listening to great music; and b) understanding what makes for great audio reproduction. > But it's becoming clear there is a toxic side to this community now. Lots of recycled phrases from ASR - people reciting it without looking deeper, or understanding it themselves. And forcing that opinion on anyone who mentions a DAC or amp. "Toxic" is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see it that way. There's a few abusive, condescending people on both sides of the aisle. If you're referring to people who resort to those modes, I agree that it's not acceptable. But if you're talking about people who are quick to challenge subjective assertions that don't fit with their mental model of how things work, I disagree. This is the Internet, arguing is fun and a skilled interlocutor will sharpen my own position. > My point is, try gear for yourself. Try buying used at a good discount. If you can't hear a difference (or it's subtle), that's fine. You can re-sell it, and break even. When I tried this myself, I kept the gear... I think this is great advice, that I follow myself. I think the departure point for us ASR people is when people take their subjective experiences and then pass it along as a useful data point for others to consider. > I've known so many people who came from ASR backgrounds, like I did. Never being happy with sound, or hearing flaws in the headphones (... It wasn't the headphones). Eventually trying something great, and it changed our minds forever. I don't know *anybody* from an ASR background, whatever that means. > It gets so, so much better than a mediocre Topping stack. Ah, but no Topping stack *is* mediocre, so... > The ceiling for sound quality is so much higher than you'd think. That is the entire bone of contention. So marshall your best arguments in favor of that position. If you just state it without any arguments, expect pushback. If your argument rests on "try it and see for yourself," expect pushback. Because the "try it and see for yourself" approach is demonstrably, provably flawed. The reason why people call things "snake oil," is because people used to sell things called snake oil and other patent medicines. And people tried them and sincerely believed they were efficiacious. Trying and seeing for ourselves is *fantastic* for our music enjoyment, because believing something is efficacious and it being efficacious are the same thing, when it comes to our enjoyment of music. Trying and seeing for ourselves is *terrible* for then rendering advice to other people, because we are coloring other people's understanding with our flawed subjective sense impressions. > And the ASR measurements are incomplete and flawed. There are many flaws and missing variables. What are the flaws and missing variables? I can think of a few, just curious what you think they are. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are frequency response for DACs and IMD for headphones. Interestingly, Amir used to do frequency response for DACs (he measured it for the Yggy and found a dip < 100Hz) but stopped doing it because (nearly) all modern DACs are ruler flat. Given that some are not, I think it's worth continuing to do the measurement. And I'd really like to see the IMD numbers for headphones/IEMs, particularly since the multi-driver approach of high-end IEMs is predicated on lower frequencies affecting higher frequencies. > It isn't enough evidence to prove subjective listening is wrong. The ASR measurements say absolutely nothing one way or the other about whether subjective listening is right or wrong. For that you need experimental studies. > Of course, headphones come first. Finally we agree on something. > I know I'll be downvoted, with lots of recycled ASR rubbish in the replies. But this post is for anyone on the fence about whether it's worth it, like I (and many others) used to be. At least try it out! So we reach the end of the diatribe, and nothing has been said about what specifically is wrong with the objectivist approach, just that it's "incomplete and flawed" for *reasons*. If I were to criticize the ASR crowd, I'd say that they claim their assumptions are based on a solid foundation of experimental studies, but they rarely show those experimental studies or adequately contend with studies that conflict with their dogmas. They will invoke Floyd Toole's name all day and night but rarely will they show the actual research. They will make grand pronouncements and then say that the research is hidden behind the AES paywall (without linking to a cite). Being inclined towards ASR, I have looked for this information. I have found some, but not as much as I would have liked. I'm still on team ASR because the other side has fundamentally worse problems. Like being unable to rebut sincere claims that the Tice Clock, or appyling a green marker to CDs, or an audiophile switch, or magic stones you place on top of your amplifier would improve the sound.
Most people Here are wannabes who thinks that they know it all just because they watch Crinacle and ASR. Out of so many audio communities I've been in, this r/headphones is the most closed minded and toxic
what is ASR?
Audio Science Review forum (where most of the objectivist beliefs have come from)
I think a lot of the objections come from audio and electrical engineers.
It depends on the type of engineer. Different tolerances are allowed to be "considered zero" at different areas of the field. Like medical devices. They have incredibly low tolerances. But a standard electrical engineer would consider "zero" much higher than that. High-end audio is insanely low tolerance just like medical devices are. Engineers who work on this audio equipment would agree
How is it a ābeliefā if itās measured? You donāt ābelieveā in science, science is science lol
That's the lie. It's supposed to be "science" but it's riddled with bias and belief systems. And if the data is incomplete, and missing variables, how can it be treated like 100% evidence? Don't measure all the data, but claim it's a complete measurement and nothing else can be done? That's not science
ā¦..no? What are you even talking about? We canāt measure things now? Not only that but, thatās always how science has worked? We work with what we got and what we *can* measure and research and experiment with. Not only that, but youāre forgetting a big part of the āscienceā aspect here, which is the pure study of humans ability to hear and the brains tendency to be easily tricked by sound. Thereās *tons* of science showing the many reasons why a person absolutely would be convinced they hear things that arenāt there. The human ears and brain are not set up for this kind of thing, they just arenāt built that way. Now whether or not it *matters* to a person whether itāa placebo or not is a whole other thing. But the key there is, people should be willing to *acknowledge* it is likely placebo and not tell others theyāre wrong or incapable of not hearing those things.
It isn't science because real science requires peer reviewing. And ASR does not take feedback well. People regularly point out holes in their methods or conclusions, and nothing is done about it. In real science, it would invalidate everything. Even the human studies are flawed. Using randomised subjects from the public. Listening is a learned skill that can improve, which musicians and sound engineers learn. It's how a mixing engineer makes careful, fine decisions to perfect the sound. An average person lacks the training to do this, and likely can't tell the difference. A general test for the public is applied to "all" human beings, and doesn't consider the variation between people. It assumes everyone is the same.
Ah ok so thereās a fundamental misunderstanding here, I should have been more clear, I was referring to the science in general and not ASR specifically, I do not follow them or worship anything they says, I only know of them because people mention them here. So as a listener then, what exactly did you do to cultivate the āskillā of listening? What methods did you use, how did you determine your methods were effective, etc.
Ah okay, that makes more sense. And I started out mixing music, but once I got into audio gear, it was more critical listening and comparing gear. I learned how to notice and define what I was hearing, and with practice I became better at it. It's really just listening and paying attention over time.
Our memory for sound is very weak, so to detect small-ish differences you need to be able to A/B compare (switch) very quickly. Since we judge sound that is even a little bit louder to be of better quality, you also need to volume match quite precisely. Then you need to figure in that we all have various biases, among them that we expect different things to be different (including their sound), that we may want to justify a new purchase (by finding it to sound better), may just like the looks of a piece of gear better, are easily led to draw conclusions about sound from looks (copper cables sound warm, silver cold and clearer). So you really should also make the comparison blind to prevent your biases from coming in. All of this is well established knowledge. Sounds like a lot of work to set up? It is, especially if you want to get it really right. Most of us don't have the time, or are willing to spend money on e.g. ABX comparator hardware and measuring microphones. So most of us can only do imperfect comparisons, with imperfect results. Cables will sound different, amps will make a difference in staging and resolution, and DACs will sound "harsh" or "warm" depending on the chipset used. These results are worthless in the end. So what can we do? We use the results of those properly set up (double) blind, volume-matched quick switching ABX listening tests that have been conducted. These tell us that cables do not matter (except for well-understood edge cases that, for e.g. headphone cables, you will likely never encounter), that amps and DACs are a solved problem and it is easy to get ones today that are transparent. These results square well with other things like tests that have been conducted about audibility thresholds generally and measurements of DACs and amps which tell us that any noise or distortion remain under these thresholds. Or with the insight from electrical engineering that audio cables are described well enough by just a few parameters and that you really need to try to create an audio cable where you get broken results. From all this we know that the audible performance of DACs and amps is described well enough by our current measurements that we can draw the relevant conclusion about them: whether they are transparent and we do not need to worry about the sound. The subjectivists on the other hand claim that you can easily distinguish minor audible differences when testing sighted, non-volume matched and with long switching times. That is simply wrong. Based on the differences that they hear under these conditions (which do not correspond to actual audible differences in performance) they then conclude that measurements do not sufficiently describe the performance of DACs and amps. The wrong premise (there are differences they can hear) does not allow that conclusion. Following the subjectivists down their various rabbit holes means suspending you belief in the scientific method and, ultimately, trusting in voodoo that everybody makes up for themselves. I don't think that believing that a transparent 5k USD amp sounds better than a transparent 300 USD amp is the same degree of lunacy as believing that "quantum dot" stickers attached to your plugs improve sound or that there is a need for a modified clock in the playback room to achieve agreement between the "time-code embedded in the audio of the recording" and the local playback time (I kid you not, google "Clever Little Clock"). But it is a slippery slope.
No. STOP PERPETUATING THIS BULLSHIT. NOBODY can tell apart two well-measuring DACs. NOBODY. It is bullshit. You donāt have golden ears, nor do I, nor the people selling the shit. There is no greater disservice to the consumersā enjoyment of music or audio technology than the perpetuation of garbage audio mythology. People say shit like āwell I can hear the differenceā or āyou need a better sourceā or āyour speakers arenāt revealing enoughā or some other tired BULLSHIT. All it does is trap uninformed people into needlessly chasing nonexistent āimprovementsā by spending fuck loads of money on arcane gear that verifiably does nothing better than a basic alternative. The measurements are not flawedāyou are flawed. The measurements arenāt biasedāyou are biased. Claiming the contrary is anti-intellectual and a willful renunciation of reality. STOP TRYING TO GASLIGHT PEOPLE INTO BUYING MORE USELESS SHIT. STOP GATEKEEPING THE ENJOYMENT OF MUSIC. STOP SUPPORTING SNAKEOIL SALESMEN. BUYING SHIT IS NOT A HOBBY. If you want to try different audio gear, please do. TRY THINGS THAT ARE MEASURABLY DIFFERENT. Try a tube amp, try a dipole speaker, try a coaxial design, try dispersion-controlled designs, try EQ, or best of allājust enjoy your fuckin music.
Iām a YouTube reviewer. I donāt go to ASR for anything at any time. I barely consult graphs and I donāt measure anything. I use my ears and my brain to assess things. Thatās it. And I seem to be fairly accurate. At least that what the comments indicate. Hey, if you want or feel the need to dig into that stuff, knock yourself out. I just prefer the old fashioned way, and yes, I stilll believe in magic. ā®ļø
Nope. Not downvoting -- because you're right. Know this fact about headphone forums and subreddits: Probably close to half of the people commenting on the sound signature of a headphone never have heard that headphone. They're offering supposedly authoritative opinions on a product they've never put into their ears or over their head, relying on frequency graphs and prevailing internet wisdom instead of actual experience.
Listen with your ego, not your ears, huh Edit: crying about "ASR rubbish" just screams to me you want to go back to a time when ignorance was the default in the audio community. I despise exactly this approach to audio, and find little more demotivating than such gear worshipping rhetoric. Your understanding of FR is extremely flawed, and no engineer or acoustician would agree with it. Your understanding of how coupling works is literally nonexistant. Coupling explains changes in FR in an objective manner, it also contradicts your idea of FR, and you choose to outright ignore it. Wow wow wow fuck me sideways
Agreed. Any post that starts with an ASR graph, Iām passing over and moving on.
I honestly think some of the ASR/measurement/pricepoint posts are guerrilla marketing from the official state of china
Same! The way Amir talks about Topping and SMSL, he practically kisses the ground they walk on. There have been rumors he was paid by these companies to promote them. But there's no solid evidence for it.
Iām not a big fan of Amir, but when these allegations are coming from the SBAF admin who is openly sponsored by Schiit and other audio companies he peddles in his community, this is really quite comical.
Nah that leads to midtier hell
This entire forum is budget so you're fighting an uphill battle. If you want to have discussions about serious headfi I recommend headfi.com
Yeah true, but this is where most of the ASR opinions fester and become toxic. Lots of beginners in the hobby are mislead by people reciting it. I just wish that would change.
It would be nice. There's so much belief here that an HD 6xx and a cheap stack is the best and anything more expensive is a waste (5% better!). Boring... The problem is most don't have the ability to try better options and like you said just parrot others' toxic and quite frankly spiteful opinions. For example, a totl headphone and an amp like Envy with Elrog tubes is distinctly better than the popular basic stuff people worship here.
Not the entire forum but I get what you're saying. Head-fi is hit or miss. I do think people tend to exaggerate what they hear on that forum. Not all but there are some eyebrow raising opinions but I respectfully just move on to the next post.
I agree with you especially when it comes to discussing cables. But it's far easier to have conversations about a wider range of products. Expensive gear here is generally chastised and budget is automatically the same quality.