Headphone lovers, what do you love, what do you have, Head-Fi fans 2019-21 edition.*

It does, but it also sounds wrong for too many speakers. The problem is not having bass itself. It is more the insistence of people wanting to force more bass, where there is no bass.

I liked the sound of my HE 400's. I found them clear, dynamic and well balanced. I did not find them particularly uncomfortable but neither did I find them particularly comfortable either. They are quite large on the head but planer designs due to tend to be large.

I think that does hold true for headgear. As soon as you increase the bass, you really begin to obscure the midrange.

Not so much with the treble due to the inherent over use of "V" shaped curves in most consumer headphones.

Just a note, while they are not high end in-ear monitors (and neither is their price), I found that 1More Quad Drivers are about the best in-ear on the market for their reduced price of under $110.



For $40 dollars less, their triple driver version are an excellent value for those in the market for wired in-ear designs.



The Hi-Fi Man wired RE-400's are a good choice for under $50 and sometimes you can find them on Amazon for under $30 (like now), which is a stupid good price for these quality IEM designs. Another plus, is that they are very small and lightweight.

 

Update regarding the Stellia, a bit over a year later... several months ago I started using the EQ profile recommended by the user Chrono on the headphones.com forum: Chrono's EQ Profile Compilation

Copying the profile here in case the link goes stale:

• Peak at 1000hz, -2dB Q of 2
• Peak at 2000hz, -2dB Q of 3
• Peak at 4000hz, 4dB Q of 1.41
• Peak at 6000hz, -2dB Q of 2
• Peak at 8000hz, -1dB Q of 4
• High Shelf at 11000hz, +3dB Q of 3

With this profile, the Stellia now sounds amazingly good on almost any recording. To my ears, this equalization successfully removes a bit of treble harshness that the unequalized Stellia either produces or reveals in some recordings, without sacrificing any of the detail retrieval or other characteristics that make the Stellia so enjoyable. I highly recommend trying out this EQ profile if you own the Stellia and have playback software or hardware that supports parametric equalization!

Btw, I bought the Stellia because it's regarded as one of the best sounding closed-back headphones. At that time, my employer had just moved my team into a new office with an open-plan layout, with 100+ desks, no walls, and 2-3 other people within a ten foot radius of almost every desk. In a word, horrible. In another word, noisy. Thus the need for closed-back headphones.

Fortunately(?) the pandemic struck before I even got around to bringing the Stellia to the office, and I've been working from home ever since. I'm planning to retire in about six weeks and don't expect ever to see the office again! Definitely keeping the Stellia, though.

 

If you're going to listen to IEMs, you need to look into the KZ ZS10 pro on Amazon. This company makes IEMs of various flavors, at various prices. While I only use IEMs when over-the-ear headphones aren't practical, these are exceptional for the money.

 

the focal clear looks even more beautiful, imo.

 

I simply couldn't resist and bit the bullet on a pair of open-box Clears! That pretty silver was calling my name

 

how many headphones do you own?

 

Just got a Graham Slee Solo Ultra Linear amp, to go on the end of Audiolab M-Dac or Chord Mojo, with Grado GS1000e.
Lots of A-B'ing to be done.

 

I own the following currently;

Sennheiser HD6XX
Hifiman Sundara
EMU Ebony (basically Fostex TH-X00 Ebony)
AKG K371
Etymotic ER4XR

My plan is, assuming I like the Clear, to sell the HD6XX and Sundara as I do find owning two open backs a little redundant and should be a great upgrade. But I will keep everything else as they have their use case. The Ebony is my favorite sealed headphone, but I can only really use it at home because it doesn't have the best isolation. It's enough to not bother my girlfriend but probably wouldn't work well in the office, and I'm worried about it getting damaged at work. I love that headphone, the bass is so fun. I use the AKG K371 at work, cheap closed back with surprisingly good sound quality, and the ER4XR for out and about, fantastic IEM.

 

Quite a few, but the ones seeing the most use are the Focal Elear (bought before the release of the Clear), Oppo PM-2, Sony WH1000-XM3, and Jabra-65t. Haven't upgraded in almost 2 years..

 

I owned both of these. I remember buying the Quad Driver for $150 a few years ago along with the Triple Driver for $100. Unfortunately the Triple Driver's didn't last too long, the right side stopped working five months after purchase with moderate use. I remember them sounding really good for the money. I still have the Quad Driver's which were used heavily for about 1.5 years and still sound amazing. I don't use them too much nowadays as I've moved onto wireless earbuds/headphones, but keep them around for gaming/calls. They're fantastic for what they offer and even better now at $106 and $62 respectively, although I'd be a bit leery about buying the Triple Driver's based on my experience.

 

Sennheiser HD800S and Audeze LCD-XC.

 

I like the sound of over-the-ear designs but I refuse to wear them no matter how good they may be.

One thing that I can say, is that today you can get some incredible in-ear designs for dirt cheap!

It wasn't that long ago that everyone was listening through $1.98 Apple earbuds, with their expensive iPhones.

People today don't know how lucky they are when it comes to head gear.

 

Or in your case, ear gear.

 

Just got the Focal Clear today and...

...hoo boy. I was gonna have a comparison session with the HD6XX and Sundara but I don't even think it's worth it. I could tell seconds into Wish You Were Here that this thing is leagues ahead.

 

The Focal Clear (or Elex) are indeed a good option for owners of HD600/650/6XX wishing for something better but not completely different. At least that's what I think which is why I own a pair.

 

I use nice, inexpensive, but very revealing Beyerdynamic 770/pro80. The reason is that 90% of my listening is for technical purposes, and I chose
them for the very explict reason of a bit of a peak in the 9k-10k region and almost infinte, but flat bass. I need to hear ANY defect, and audio
tends to be especially vulnerable in the 9kHz region (likely because of processing issues.) For pure listening, I would probably getn more flat
headphones, but very few have the 10Hz true bass (and that is conservative on the low end.) During my experments that are a little unbalanced
(e.g. too much 25Hz/50Hz LF 1st order shelving), there is a sense of air-pressure instead of just bass.

I'd probably go for high end Sennheiser AND Beyerdynamic both, depending on what I am doing and the kind of music. I am so darned accomodated
to the Beyers, I don't really know about 'flat' headphones, but it seems like a good thing. The biases of the Beyers are sometimes not deemed'
pretty -- but they really ARE revealing.

 

I have Stax SR-009S headphones and a Stax SRM-T8000 tube headphone amp--sheer audio heaven!

 

Stax SRM-007tII is on order. I have been using an SRM 3 for many years. If you are interested in that unit-act fast-they seem to be rapidly drying up.

 

Sony WH-1000XM3 . Bought them mainly for the noise cancelling. Had never tried noise cancelling headphones before as I was sceptical they’d actually cancel much noise but I was blown away by how much noise they do indeed cancel. I have thin walls in my home and constantly hear the neighbours. In fact last night they had music blasting full volume . Chucked on my headphones, switched on the noise cancelling and wow, they completely cancelled the noise pollution.

They’re really comfortable to wear for hours and hours at a time , no problems on that issue.


Lovely sound , detailed and rich. Bass could be a little better but I’m happy with them and the noise cancelling is incredible.

£250 which is the most I’ve ever paid for headphones. Fascinated to know what a pair of headphones costing ££££thousands would sound like!

 

One of the most fun things I’ve enjoyed lately is doing EQ for my HE 4XX and venerable Sennheiser HD 590 headphones, using the Oratory1990 parametric settings based on measurements and the Harman curve. It’s like a magic trick that makes the sound seem several hundred dollars better and more pleasurable.

 

A comparison??! They cost $1100+ more than the other 2!

 

@YtseJammer
Can't see the image. It's served from your google account drive.
Much better to use a service like imgur to host images. Much better.
Just make an account at imgur so you can manage your gallery of images and delete or edit them later.

 

just got a Benchmark HPA-4 to replace the drop/thx 789 that needs to go back to the office again now that we're getting vaccinated and my office is reopening soon!
headphones are Dan Clark Audio Aeon 2 (Closed) and the trusty ol' HD6xx's
love the sound with the cans, also love that I can now bypass the volume on my DAC and use the HPA as a preamp in front of my AHB2's and run everything at pro line levels. Everything sounds better, not just my headphones

 

Meze Empyrean and DNA Stratus, Yggdrasil A2 and Auralic Aries G1 = heaven