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this is a Test (Reply to this comment)
by qhlcool
this is a Test
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Sep 03 '06
11:12 pm PDT
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this is a Test (Reply to this comment)
by qhlcool
this is a Test
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Sep 03 '06
11:10 pm PDT
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MP3 (Reply to this comment)
by Ahab1973
Don't take it lightly when you hear that even high bitrate MP3s won't be the greatest on the highs. The high frequency end of the spectrum is exactly where MP3 starts to chop off the sound so I'm not at all surprised that these headphones sounded congested in the highs with an P3 source. I highly recommend trying either APE or FLAC lossless. Assuming everything else is equal and the original source wasn't an MP3, either of those lossless codecs should result in better high frequency response. Overall, high bitrate MP3 really doesn't sound that bad (And to be honest, I really can't hear any difference between 320 MP3 and original) but I just stopped using MP3 altogether when I can use APE or FLAC just as easily (and also free) and be pretty well assured that I'm getting the best compression with the least amount of data loss possible. File sizes are a bit larger (and can be much larger, depending on the compression settings) but hard drives are cheap these days and as you say.....you don't buy $200 headphones merely to get good sound.
Some folks are completely content with MP3 and I don't really have a problem with that. I'd probably still be using it if I cared about storage size for use on a portable player (A 4 GB Apple Nano, for example). I play all my music at home straight from my hard drive. I currently have plenty of hard drive space so I have no reason to use MP3 at all.
Brian
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Nov 24 '05
3:11 pm PST
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More on MP3 (Reply to this comment)
by fewtch
Symbiosis -- it's not only the bitrate, but other factors are involved:
(1) Encoder used. This makes a very big difference in the sound of an MP3. The most highly tuned encoder, to my knowledge, is LAME.
(2) CBR vs VBR. Most people recommend VBR (Variable Bitrate) over CBR (fixed bitrate) for the best fidelity in MP3's. This allows the encoder to use a higher bitrate in portions of a song that need it, and drop the bitrate very low in parts that don't (e.g. silence at the start/end). The result is an excellent sounding MP3 file that isn't much bigger than a 192kbps CBR file.
Check out the LAME encoder (for IMHO best results), and if you want to delve into this topic further I recommend www.hydrogenaudio.org. For more on headphones (more than anybody except fanboy nutcases would want to read :-D) go to www.head-fi.org.
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Oct 18 '05
11:18 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Very detailed review! (Reply to this comment)
by symbiosis
I am aware that MP3 is a lossy compression. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to fit 2,000 songs on a player which is about the same size as a deck of cards :)
You wrote:
"While the MP3 encoding won't necessarily sound bad, but it isn't the same as source and anyone should be able to hear the difference."
Yet on the MP3 information links you provided, the articles say some people cannot tell the difference between MP3s encoded at 128(!)kbps and CD quality. It also said many people could tell the difference at 128 kbps, but that most people could not tell the difference at 160kbps or 192kbps.
I have personally listened to many encoding rates. What I found:
128kbps (awful)
160kbps (not good)
192kbps (getting better, still a lot of noticable compression artifacts.
256kbps (still a few noticeable problems)
320kbps (Very hard to tell a difference, unless going back and forth immediately between CD and MP3. Even then, differences are minimal, with the CD sound sounding perhaps a bit more full.)
Have you done much listening to MP3s yourself? I take it that you are not a fan of the format. It has its advantages, mainly size (and thus variety) and portability. For example, I can have the equivalent of a 200 CD changer in my pocket while I am out working in the yard. The disadvantage is quality. However, the quality is close to CD quality, especially at 320kbps, and especially when compared to portable CD players, which do not usually feature very good quality DACs.
The MP3 pages you referenced also said that MP3 was designed to reflect the limits of human hearing in its compression, compressing most the parts which are unlikely to be heard anyway. I found this interesting tidbit tonight:
"This limit is reflected in the frequency range of musical instruments: The highest note on an orchestral instrument (the piccolo) is about 4500 Hz." (source:http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=4077, author Chris Plack, PhD in Psychoacoustics)
This suggests that most music probably doesn't touch the highest frequencies anyway.
You said:
"We humans hear from 20Hz-20,000Hz through our ears and upto as much as 60,000 Hz through our body, when the hearing gradually fails and depending on the degree of the individuals heightened sense of awareness we tend to switch to listening through our bodies, some hear better some don’t. "
I have never before read anything about sounds up to 60,000 Hz being able to be heard "through the body." I was also unable to find such information through searching, perhaps you could provide a link to a reputable source? I am aware that frequencies below 20 Hz are felt rather than heard, but I have never encountered any information on this occuring at the other end of the frequency range.
And while an average 40 year old's hearing might be able to detect 17kHz sounds, the ability to hear starts to drop off fairly fast after 14kHz, so they are probably not hearing MUCH at 17kHz. Which would explain why the salesman at a local hi-fi shop recently told me that old guys love (in my opinion usually very bright) Klipsh speakers and their horn tweeters.
If anyone else is reading this, they must be bored to tears by now.
But I have one more thing to say. And that is that while these headphones are often considered "audiophile" headphones, and are marketed as such by Sennheiser, the fact that their price has dropped over the years is bringing them into a new market segment. For example, I have read several reviews from teenagers who have purchased Bose's (lousy and over-priced) Triport headphones, which retail for $150. For not much more, they could be purchasing these headphones. Add in a cMoy amp for around $40, and you really can get nice sound for under $200. (I highly recommend that you read the review of the cMoy amp accessible by clicking on the picture of the amp on my member page. It is an excellent review.) And there is almost an entire generation growing up in love with MP3, many of whom are starting to experiment with higher quality headphones.
I don't think MP3 will last forever, but the format of the future is almost certain to be one that can be stored in mass quantity on a hard drive or flash chip or some sort of computer memory. The sheer variety possible when you have 2000 songs loaded and playing on random is intoxicating. Perhaps, in the future, with continuing advances in compression and memory storage, we will have a universally accepted lossless format which will still allow massive quantities of songs to be stored in a very small space. But for now, MP3 represents the best compromise of quality, portability, and availability, at least for portable players.
I believe, at this point, that I have actually written more in this comments section than I did in the review.
Regards,
Jon
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Sep 23 '05
12:25 am PDT
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Re: Re: Very detailed review! (Reply to this comment)
by quadophile
Hi,
IMVHO MP3 is a lossy compression and by nature cannot be identical to the original. If the originality is to be retained or faithful reproduction demanded Lossless compression software is to be used. Having said that, there are many misleading websites and folks who seem to consider themselves as authority and write things about MP3 which are generally not accurate. There are a few sites, however, which give facts about MP3 and do a good job of explaining things. The links are provided here for reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/?page=MP3
I am a frequent visitor to many audiophile forums, besides, being on many groups of individuals involved in particular aspects of Hifi and Audio. The general consensus on those forums where people from the industry interact with each other is that MP3 is not equal to CD, I repeat “not equal to CD quality”. Many who use this format think otherwise. There is no way we can blame them, especially if it gives them as much pleasure as the original medium.
When I posted my message earlier I wrote most of the things from the top of my head and based on my knowledge gained over the years, reading, browsing on the internet and exchanging information from fellow audiophiles. MP3 and other lossy formats (e.g. AAC, M4A, Ogg, WMA, etc) will certainly sound different from the Redbook CD source even at high bitrates (320 kbps). While the MP3 encoding won't necessarily sound bad, but it isn't the same as source and anyone should be able to hear the difference. Encoders of the highest quality still suffer from pre-echo and other artifacts in some cases and will fail on extremely difficult samples already using a very high bitrate. Mainly the difference is noticed in mids and high frequencies which somehow sound a bit pronounced or in other words slightly up front. This attribute of the MP3 can in long run sound a bit fatiguing to say the least. As you know even the CD has been blamed for sounding a bit harsh in comparison to the vinyl. The benefit of these types of encoding is a significant savings in file size (3-4x) while still retaining a reasonable image of the music. You'll need to decide for yourself whether or not the fidelity provided is acceptable.
FLAC and other lossless formats (e.g. ALAC, WMA Lossless, APE, etc) will encode/decode the material from/to the original WAV source precisely. No change in the sound should be heard using these formats. These formats will typically provide between 1.5x and 2x savings in file size, and as such are less space efficient than MP3, but will provide near perfect fidelity.
If you think CDs are perfect sound forever you will love mp3. Both formats are flawed from design to execution.
We humans hear from 20Hz-20,000Hz through our ears and upto as much as 60,000 Hz through our body, when the hearing gradually fails and depending on the degree of the individuals heightened sense of awareness we tend to switch to listening through our bodies, some hear better some don’t. This information can easily be found by a bit of “Googling”.
I have a test disc with various tones and frequencies and based on that my hearing is good upto 16,000Hz though my ears (I am 46), according to a report I had read some time ago, average hearing for a 40 year old is good upto 17,000Hz on the average.
I am a bit busy these days on the office front, but on the home front already in process of evaluating a nice integrated from Primare which I hope to be reviewing soon. Need to find time to be with it and be able to do extensive listening. I never thought of reviewing the 580 since in most of my reviews have mentioned it already, it was actually basking in the limelight when I reviewed the Denon PMA-S10 Integrated Amplifier, which I know you have already read.
I can go on and on but am afraid that someone may object to our ramblings and say that this is not the right place to discuss audiophilia, LOL ;)
Happy Listening!
Anis
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Sep 19 '05
5:37 am PDT
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Re: Very detailed review! (Reply to this comment)
by symbiosis
And a very detailed comment!
You have raised several very good points here.
1) The Price - Today the lowest price that I see in the merchant links is $160, and that is for new headphones. The lowest cost from a store that I would feel comfortable buying from is $199. I think the price of these headphones has come down significantly in the last few years.
2) The congestion issues - I had not actually considered the fact that it might be the MP3s. I had kind of forgotten that there could still be some compression issues, even at 320kbps. So I actually went back to the song in question, and listened with my Grade SR-125s. Same issue. Then I listened to the same song through a CD player. The same issue was still there, with both sets of headphones. So, in the most serious case that I noticed, I now think it was a recording flaw in the original music. I do, however, still feel that the high frequencies can be a bit congested at times.
I have no doubt that the sound would improve with better components. My headphone setup is, admittedly, far from an audiophile setup. With a really nice ($1000+) CD player or transport/DAC combo, and a high quality headphone amp, the sound would probably be much better. But anyone who could afford those things would probably buy the HD600 or HD650.
I would be very interested to hear the various setups that you have tried these with, and how the various components affected the sound. Any chance you might review these in the future?
I had not heard that MP3s do not go beyond 15,000 Hz before. Do you have a source for this information that you could point me to? Anyway, hearing starts dropping off dramatically at about 14,000 Hz for most people, especially adults who have been exposed to loud noises (and thus hearing damage) for many years. I looked at some charts tonight. Hearing ability normally peaks at about 3.5 kHz, and starts dropping off significantly at both extremes of the range of 20-20,000Hz.
Thanks for the comment.
Regards,
Jon
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Sep 19 '05
12:46 am PDT
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Very detailed review! (Reply to this comment)
by quadophile
Agreed the price of this headphone could be as low as $150 but there is a catch, many are REFURBISHED! Anyone who wants to buy these should ensure that they are getting a brandnew unit. I had bought them few years back from specialist online vendor who does not deal in refurbished units. Anyone getting a pair for $150 should consider himself/herself lucky. This is just for information of the prospective buyer.
You mentioned in your review "occasional minor congestion of high frequency sounds during very complex passages". I have tried these with many different units to drive them and I felt that the better the amp and upstream components the better the sound quality from these cans. IMHO these cans have the capability to expose the low quality of MP3's, giving a good account of what compression is all about even if the MP3's are of the highest quality (320k). By the way, MP3's do not go beyond 15,000Hz (far from being accepted as hi-fidelity which we all know is to be specified from 20Hz-20,000Hz).
Receivers are a big NO-NO! These cans would scream at you if they don't like what is being used to drive them. Feed them with sounds from high-end components and they become velvet smooth, like the ear pads you very correctly described in your review.
Thanks for writing the review, it was a pleasure to read yet another one from you. :)
Happy Listening!
Anis
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Sep 18 '05
2:17 pm PDT
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Re: When I am able to justify spending $200 on headphones... (Reply to this comment)
by symbiosis
Hi D.
Thanks for the comment. I see that I have received both the highest and lowest possible ratings on this review. I'm not sure what I did to deserve the lowest rating (maybe that Pop and Country music comment?)
I see that these can be found in the merchant links below for as low as $150. That's really pretty good, since these things originally sold for $300-$350. There is a lot of competition in this price range, and I'd say the 580s are a solid contender. Add a cMoy amp, and that's some mighty fine sound from most portable devices for under $200. Which is still less than many MP3 players.
Regards,
Jon
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Sep 17 '05
1:31 pm PDT
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When I am able to justify spending $200 on headphones... (Reply to this comment)
by dkozin,  in Electronics
...I will definitely check these out, despite the medium "Dorkiness Factor". But of course, I have to get a good receiver first.
MH review indeed,
D
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Sep 17 '05
8:21 am PDT
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