David's Next Set of Headphones?

[Sunbeam]

First, the reviewers impressions:

http://gizmodo.com/we-listened-to-sennh ... 1741947676

https://www.headphone.com/blogs/news/11 ... us-returns

And now, the official website:

https://en-us.sennheiser.com/sennheiser-he-1

These aren't "working DJ's" headphones, but WOW.

[Big Ears Teddy]

Are you, by chance, an "audiophile" ?

You know, those people who can hear the difference between stranded copper speaker wire and solid copper speaker wire.

[Sunbeam]

Are you, by chance, an "audiophile" ?

You know, those people who can hear the difference between stranded copper speaker wire and solid copper speaker wire.

Oh heavens, no I love good sound, but I find most of the high-end audiophile pron too entertaining in its own little sphere to ignore completely. The six-nines silver rolled on the thighs of virgins, encased in sapphire, with special single-crystal glass carpet elevators and cryogenically-treated triodes stuff is all Mel Brooks material for me.

Just give me a turntable with good bearings, a Shure V15-IV cartridge, well engineered amps and speakers, and Home Depot zip cord to hook it all up. We're rockin.

[Marsbar]

Well it's unfortunate my birthday just passed. Cause I'm sure someone would have given me a pair of those headsets.

However, the headsets I use while doing the shows are quite different from what I might wear for pure listening purposes.

on the show I wear Sony - MDR-V700....holding tight as Sony has stopped making them. Oh, what to replace them with........

[Sunbeam]

Tricky subject. I'm as skeptical of "audiophilia nervosa" as Big Ears Teddy. But, I require a certain standard of engineering integrity in the audio systems I *choose to listen to*.

Those words are carefully chosen.

wtf, we happily listen to 128k stream with a bit of faerie-dust applied, in a happy-social environment with distractions. But, if I really wanted to listen critically to those songs on a hi-res playback system, I'd want at least 20bit/96k to give me all it has to offer. That would be a 1920k stream. There would be no Bluetooth in between.

These are simple principles, really: if it meets our expectations, it is successful. The manipulation of our expectations by marketing is a whole other subject. Our expectations are constantly, relentlessly dumbed-down by media-delivery economics and marketing.

Whom, who experienced Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, in a first run at the Cinesphere, or Yonge-Eglinton Theatre, would think that an acceptable venue to experience this film would be on the screen of an iPhone 6? With sound from an iPhone6 "speaker"? Our offspring are being conditioned to accept just exactly that.

As I said, tricky subject, and this has nothing to do with practical headphones for a working DJ.
Funny how a discussion can morph... David, you understand all this stuff better than most of us. Did that manage to strike a nerve? I sure hope so.

Cheers,
Sunbeam
edited for words=intent

[Sunbeam]

Am I fired?
I've been fired for rants less harsh than that
Yep, should be fired for offside.

Now, back to a practical replacement for the Sony MDR-V700 cans...
Cheers,
P

[Marsbar]

NO firing here. All opinions are heard and read. While not always agreed with - but no harm. Each one has the freedom to make up one's own mind.

Opinions are only bad when another is hurt. IE - your shirt sucks.

As for the 128k - it's what most people can readily access.

More importantly, the supplier to each person's home may be of much greater concern. Not all Internet service providers play fair. Sometimes during peak periods, one may find oneself experiencing a little choking - or so I am told.

Bell is a perfect example of that. They promote something called FIBE. I, and probably like many others, assumed that meant Fibre. Turns out it didn't. But they did charge more for that Fibe Fib.

In the condo building, I live in about a year ago Bell announced they would not be wiring the building for Fiber. But I had already been paying extra for FIBE for several years. Seems it was all a big lie. But then it's Bell. No surprise.

Result - I cut the cord. No Bell allowed. Now I watch only OTA TV and get more than 30 channels. Some of which are not available on cable (weird).

BTW - we also offer 64k as an option for folks unable to go higher.

As I understand it, an equally big part of the audio we deliver has very much to do with the processing. IE - YouTube is processed and squeezed to the limit or beyond. FM radio today is also way over processed. Also squeezed beyond its limit. In simple terms, I'm told this is done to make that station the loudest on the dial. Some station louder? Squeeze a little more.

[Big Ears Teddy]

and Home Depot zip cord to hook it all up. We're rockin.

Ha ha! Been rockin' that same zip cord since I assembled my first component system at age 17. It works rather well.

I used to go to the CES in Chicago/Vegas and look at the $2000 speaker cables in amazement.

Years ago I bought a Carver M1.5t amp (in the USA at a small fraction of the Toronto price) and this amp was marketed as "wired with Monster Cable" complete with a sticker on the rear panel.

At the time Monster Cable was new on the market and was the Big Thing; audiophiles claimed Monster Cable speaker wire was superior to all others.

Anyway, eventually I opened up the Carver for a look inside, and lo and behold, there was indeed an inch or two of Monster Cable inside! Just imagine the sonic improvement!

I've heard there are situations where a couple of inches can make all the difference, but I suspect the Carver/Monster Cable relationship was rooted in pure marketing bumph.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, that Monster Cable in there looked just like zip cord.

[Big Ears Teddy]

I'd want at least 20bit/96k to give me all it has to offer. That would be a 1920k stream.

Hmm... and what do you suppose is the frequency response of your aged ears? None of us can hear the highs any more anyway. Well, none of us who met David on CHUM-FM anyway. We are too old. There might be some whippersnappers around who can still hear 15K. It must be nice.

Not trying to start an argument, just making a point.

[Sunbeam]

As for the 128k - it's what most people can readily access.

This has turned into a gratifying discussion. I want to reply to several points here, Man I feel like the gummint hiding stuff in an "omnibus Bill", but that's not the intent.

First, to David's point re: 128k stream: Yes, 128k is the best stream quality moist people can readily access. There's a typo there that I'm not going to correct. If you offered a 320k stream, I'd try to use it, or upgrade my internet access til I could, if available. But, there enters the cost of content delivery bandwidth vs. perceived benefit and subscription support. 128k is the sweet spot for now. My comment about faerie-dust applied is intended as the highest compliment to the engineering decisions made at nythespirit.com regarding dynamic-range compression, and "sweetening" eq. It works. Most listeners of commercial music are dismayed when they hear true high dynamic range programme in a domestic environment, and it doesn't exist in most of our available source material anyway.
More Flash and the Pan just came on, so I'm smiling as I type.

I've heard there are situations where a couple of inches can make all the difference, but I suspect the Carver/Monster Cable relationship was rooted in pure marketing bumph.

If you've heard of situations where a couple of inches can make all the difference, it had nothing to do with wire/cable connections in competently engineered audio equipment. Your observation about marketing bumph is 100% astute.

Hmm... and what do you suppose is the frequency response of your aged ears? None of us can hear the highs any more anyway. Well, none of us who met David on CHUM-FM anyway. We are too old. There might be some whippersnappers around who can still hear 15K. It must be nice.

This old saw is well worn. I'm sure that a clinical hearing test would show serious loss of acuity in the upper registers of my hearing. I'm sure doctors/scientists would conclude that anything above 10k is a waste of time on me. Yet, when doing speaker design work, if I sub in different tweeters in a system, carefully level-matched in the main part of their range, I can still hear differences in the response in the 15k-30k region, especially peakiness anywhere in that range, and establish preferences with blind/ABX testing.

Further, the anti-aliasing and reconstruction filters, unless impeccably designed, will cause potentially audible phase errors a decade down from the cutoff frequency. Does a 96k sampling frequency mean I think I can "hear" differences at 48k? No. It just means that I think the phase errors caused by the filters in a 96k sampling system will be audibly negligible by the time you get down to 5K.

I don't believe that conventional hearing tests accurately indicate our ability to sense differences in frequency ranges beyond what we can supposedly perceive, by their standards.

A lot of beliefs here, eh? Mine are based on things that can be measured, even if measurements say I shouldn't be able to perceive them.

That aside, high-end cables are snake-oil, of the purest form. Resistance, Inductance, and capacitance can all be measured, and characterised in application.

Cheers