Some thoughts on buying headphones

Sennheiser has a number of headphones for under $300. As you stated, those prices were from twenty years ago.
 
I got my HD 4.40 BT during a Black Friday sale from Amazon for $100, they usually are $150, which is also a good price these days. I’m listening to them right now and I am a happy camper! :thumbsup:
 
Through the years I have been involved with organizations that had boards (school, NGO, business, and the like).I sat on those boards. One piece of advice I can give you is, any agreement achieved by consensus involves compromise. As an individual, the compromise, consensus opinion of what is "best" rarely fits fully as "the desired solution". Past unique experiences form opinions shaped by individual bias... For better or worse, it is a truth adjusted through time by experience and desire. If someone asks me what I like in a headphone, I will reply with my current favorite and justifications for that opinion. The answer is flawed if applied as advice for someone else. And, truth be told, I like different equipment for certain scenarios. So, listen to as many headphones as you can, using music you enjoy, and try your best to remember which made you happiest. Your choice may change over time, but that's the nature of the hobby. Enjoy!
 
What is really odd is the number of headphones some of these collectors own. Listening to music on headphones is one of the most antisocial activities. I get chilling back and listening to some nice headphones every once in a while, but having 10+ different sets of headphones completely makes no sense to me... :dunno:
 
I have always had problems with posts about people wanting others to choose what headphones they should buy. To me, the number one thing to deal with is how those headphones feel on your head. No poster can tell you that. Plus, what one person hears is not the same as the next guy. I have eight difference pairs of Sennheisers. I rarely agree with the ‘consensus’ of the group opinion. You need to listen on your own. Virtually everyone says I have XYZ headphones. They are the best. Buy them. It’s a crapshoot if you take online advice like that.

But it can be good to hear what others think. Make your decision based on as much information as you can gather. Don't buy on a single recommendation...but 10 recommendations?? Well that's a lot better. It's the next best thing to an Amazon / USPS loop.
 
What is really odd is the number of headphones some of these collectors own. Listening to music on headphones is one of the most antisocial activities. I get chilling back and listening to some nice headphones every once in a while, but having 10+ different sets of headphones completely makes no sense to me... :dunno:

Hmm... Never thought I was being anti-social when listening to my phones while my wife was reading or watching TV in the other room. I'll have to ask her about that.
As far as the quantity of phones is concerned, it often represents a journey of someone's search for the optimum sound - not unlike changing speakers throughout the years or upgrading TTs or cartridges or amps. Headphones are just easier to keep than multiple pairs of floorstanding speakers. But then again, I never understood why someone wanted or needed a dozen different fishing rods or why someone into woodworking had 70 different clamps and still didn't have enough. Ask a few of the other guys on here why they have 8 or 9 different vintage receivers or 6 or 8 CD players or 5 or 6 TTs.

Each to his own as far as what they enjoy or what their particular audio pursuit is. If you're not into headphone listening, that's OK - not everybody is.

Cheers
 
Antisocial!?! No, I have two young children and there is no way I'm playing my tunes after 9pm without headphones, unless you want the wrath of the Mrs from two cranky kids. I was never a headphone fan until this current predicament and now am glad I got in the ring.

The OP is totally right about there is little experience in the headphone world since it is a fairly new thing. We have Grado in the store and I'd like to bring in a few more brands since it is great to be able to try several different cans when choosing your next personal audio utopia. I personally like the Grado sound and I know there's always those who agree and disagree with it. My little Xmas gift to myself this year was a pair of GS1000e which is the highest end phones I've ever experienced. Well worth every penny. I'd like to hear some Sennheisers and Audeze in the near future and compare the sound. I can see how this can become addicting like AKers who own a dozen pairs of speakers. So much fun to be had!
 
I work a block away from Audio 46 near Times Square (on 46th street, duh). All they do is sell headphones and related stuff. I recommend it to anyone in the area who doesn't already know it, and to anyone visiting.

AKG, Senn, Beyer, Fostex, Audeze, Grado, etc... They've got Beats, too.

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There are some pretty simple things you can do to be sure you're going to optimize the sound of your headphones, regardless of the type of sound you favor.

One is dig up the frequency versus impedance curves for headphones you're interested in. I just took a peek at those curves for Beyer 880s, and they're reasonably flat - compared to my Senn 598s, which spike from nominal 50 ohm to 300 ohm at around 100 hz.

Another is to be sure you know the output impedance of the headphone jack on an amp you're thinking about buying. If there's no measurement, given, my advice to most people is not to use the amp with headphones.

There's a great explanation of why picking 1/8 of your cans' nominal impedance (or less) is important for sound quality at http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html If you wind up with an output impedance that's far above that 1/8 recommendation, the odds that tone controls and equalization will work as expected are low, regardless of what you are trying to achieve. And if you have a few different places (and amps) you listen to, if that number is real different between them your cans will also sound real different between them.

I am disappointed neither manufacturers nor reviewers often measure this value - it makes a big difference with 50-100 ohm cans, and particularly with cans that vary in impedance with input frequency. NWavguy has a lot of very good information on matching amplifiers to headphones. that info can be difficult or impossible to find pre-purchase, and I think even professional reviewers are unaware of some of these considerations when they review headphones and headphone amps.

On Headfi I get the feeling that a lot of folks are only comparing headphones to other headphones. I think that's a mistake. I spend more time listening to speakers than to headphones, and I compare my speakers to one another. I'm pretty happy with the way the current sets of speakers are voiced and I want my headphones to be voiced similarly.

What I haven't heard yet and don't expect to is a set of headphones that image as well as the speakers do. I think there are things happening with primary and reflected arrival paths of audio in a room that simply can't be replicated with headphones. There might be a DSP approach to mimic some of that, but I'm afraid it would mostly sound like the "which bathroom size?" choice the various 'concert hall' effects built into an AVR offer.

The one piece of 'how my taste compares to most reviews on headfi" that's been pretty reliable is that in general, my bias is to click "next" when I'm shopping for an audio component and I hear it being lauded for 'bringing the bass' or similar language. I certainly don't do the reverse - pick components favorably because reviewers say "ooh, nice and no bass at all!" - but I've found that what I'm looking for and what folks who want a lot of bass are looking for are very different. fwiw, my mains are currently Thiel 2.2s and my office system is Gallo CL-1s and a Velodyne FSR-10. My taste tends toward classical, Warren Zevon, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder, Mark Knopfler, M.I.A., Neal Young, Richard Thompson.
 
Head-Fi is OK as long as one is able to cut through the BS. Folks over there go on and on about soundstage from various HPs. C'mon, from HPs, really? They also go on long diatribes about this or that audiophile term. Just take a look at how long some of the threads are, they go on for hundreds of pages at times.

I do go there when I learn of a new(er) set of cans that has come out that I might be interested in. They sometimes lead to other reviewers, some professional, some from long-time posters. You get to know how to apply certain filters to them. But, in the end, as we all know, you just have to get out there and listen to 'em. And I know this ain't easy. I live in a HP wasteland. I have to drive down to Chicago in order to listen to anything worthwhile.
 
There's a great explanation of why picking 1/8 of your cans' nominal impedance (or less) is important for sound quality at http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html


:bowdown: Thank you for that link. I learn't ALOT. So I have the Pioneer XDP-100R DAP. The impedance is listed as 16-300ohm...I'm wondering if it is adjustable based on the gain setting?

Thant being said, I have the Grado SR80e (32ohm) and B&W P5 (22ohm). So WTF?!?! I'm not even closing to meeting the 1/8 rule. I'm shocked by this. Looking at the frequency vs impedance curves from the article you linked, I could be having huge volume fluctuations throughout the frequency range.

I've read a great deal on Head-Fi and have not come across this. So why does the Pioneer XDP-100R get such great reviews? Only ideal for high impedance cans??

Thanks for the knowledge!!
 
I'm not seeing an actual measurement of the output impedance for that DAP.

"Headphone jack 3-conductor, ø3.5 mm, impedance: 16 to 300 Ω* * Do not connect headphones that have an impedance outside the rated range as this may result in damage."

Pioneer is saying that cans from 16 to 300 ohm nominal will work, but they may be basing that solely on how much power the DAP can deliver.

One way to look at the issue qualitatively - listen to a piece of music you know well over good speakers and pay attention to how those sound in the parts of the audio band where your cans have their highest impedance.

Have the same track queued up on your DAP and your cans.

Go back and forth. are the headphones sounding odd in the part of the audio band where their impedance is farthest from nominal?

on my 598s, there is nothing subtle about it. A HP jack with too high an impedance, and the bass blooms into a one-note mess.

When the amp is a decent match, the timbre of the headphones and the speakers is reasonably to very well matched. This is also a test that gives me a feel for how hyperbolic claims of imaging and breadth of soundstage within headphones can be.

My speakers throw very nice soundstages with clearly defined positions of vocalists and instruments on well recorded material. I've never heard headphones that do so.
 
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I'm not understanding this. Isn't impedance constant?

Thanks for clarifying my other questions...

There are two impedances to think about: output jack impedance and headphone impedance.

Output jack impedance is constant over the audio band (as a rule; I'm sure it's possible to come up with a design where it is not.)

Headphone impedance is not constant (nor is loudspeaker impedance.) Transducers are a "reactive load" - as they mechanically respond to voltage over different parts of the audio band, their electrical characteristics change.

Here's a trace that the nwavguy measured illustrating this in Senn HD650s:

Sennheiser-HD650-Impedance--Phase-Ne%25255B4%25255D.png


The orange trace is impedance as a function of signal frequency.

The 598s I use have an even more pronounced jump in impedance at that 100 hz level - it's a sixfold jump on the 598s, where on these 650s, it's a doubling.

Not every manufacturer's frequency versus impedance graphs swing this dramatically, which is why I also recommend looking for that data.
 
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Here's a trace that the nwavguy measured illustrating this in Senn HD650s:

So is the orange trace saying that for the specific DAP and headphones in question, that the headphones impart more resistance to sound in the 100hz range.... which results in lower volume of this frequency (when compared with the higher and lower frequencies)?? Aren't we looking for headphones with a flat curve? How can you correct this "problem" with the 598s?

I'm getting there....there is 1 or 2 pieces that I obviously have confused at the moment...and not sure what it could be.
 
The orange trace has (or ought to) the same shape regardless of what voltage and current source is used to supply them. It reflects that the drivers Senn is using present a high impedance at 100 hz, and nominal impedance across most of the rest of the audio band.

Speakers are almost universally driven by voltage swings, rather than current swings. Lower impedance speakers are in fact harder to drive than high impedance speakers - to achieve the same voltage, the amplifier has to deliver more current into the lower impedance load.

So what this means is that the Senns can be overdriven around that 100 ohm level - if it is relatively much easier for the amp to swing very large voltage at 100 hz than at 2 khz, for example.

This is where that 1/8 rule of thumb comes in. Once the output impedance of the jack is 1/8 of the headphone (or speaker) impedance across the driver's entire audio band, the differences - even quite large ones - in achieved voltage across the audio band are very small, with errors in the range of 0.5 db.

In the real world - I know the headphone jack impedance is too high if the Senns start sounding really boomy. On a standard audio receiver, for instance, they just sound awful. On a headphone jack with an impedance in the 1-3 ohm range, they approach an optimal sound - the variability in the load they present is dwarfed by the scale of the absolute load they present across their range.
 
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There's a great explanation of why picking 1/8 of your cans' nominal impedance (or less) is important for sound quality at http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html If you wind up with an output impedance that's far above that 1/8 recommendation, the odds that tone controls and equalization will work as expected are low, regardless of what you are trying to achieve. And if you have a few different places (and amps) you listen to, if that number is real different between them your cans will also sound real different between them.

I miss that guy. He was an absolute breath of fresh air which ultimately got him banned at most sites that revered fluff and parrotry. His "8" rule is a minimum as it reflects up to 1dB of change. I usually go with the "10" rule. More on this subject can be found over at Benchmark Media (Benchmark dacs, etc) under the application notes in the support section. The output impedance rule gets carried to an extreme mostly as a means to promote their headphone amp. But there are some elements of good measured data there. Unfortunately, those were taken at the input to a given pair of phones. The audibility of the FR variations and increases in distortion remain somewhat subjective. Making phone measurements is tricky enough (see Tyl's explanation at InnerFidelity) so I understand why they tested the way they did.

The unfortunate reality is that most folks who don't know what the source impedance of whatever they are driving their headphones with will never know what their headphones sound like under optimum condition. The FR colorations and added distortion, especially with low Z phones may actually be to their to liking - so no harm, no foul.
But you are right about one quick way to get an idea if the output Z is too high. I use a pair of low Z phones with high sensitivity to sniff this out. You can always hear the low frequency "bloom" as a first indicator assuming you know what it should sound like. A man with one amp never knows :)
 
Interesting thread and read, though I’ll have to admit it’s above my head on the technical side..... that said, just got some V-Moda Crossfade LP2’s that sound terrific to me (currently on and listening to Norah Jones). This thread did prompt me to investigate the ohm rating (of the headphone plug) of my receivers and the new headphones themselves. I found they’re rated at 32 ohms with a sensitivity of 105 dB and a frequency response of 5-30 kHz.

They sound great to my old ears, I’ve had a few sets of headphones over the last 40 years? These sound better than I remember headphones should.
 
[QUOTE="olderroust, post: 11183534, member: 169486" This is where that 1/8 rule of thumb comes in. Once the output impedance of the jack is 1/8 of the headphone (or speaker) impedance across the driver's entire audio band, the differences - even quite large ones - in achieved voltage across the audio band are very small, with errors in the range of 0.5 db.[/QUOTE]


Based, on your curve...I would say the impedance across the entire audio band is still relatively high. I just did a quick search for an example spec and found a DAP that claims to puts 0.937 volts, output power of 58.5mW into 15 ohms load. For the Senns, the lowest impedance across the audio band is 300ohm...and because 300 / 15 is 20...this DAP should "theoretically" work well with the Senns..right?

So it sounds like most manufacturers should post their frequency vs impedance curve but after a quick look on the Grado SR80e, I couldn't find one. But since it's listed as 32ohms...the DAP I mentioned above would not be suitable. But if I did have the curve I could see if the impedance actually gets lower at other frequencies....since the 32ohms is nominal (e.g., average).

Now, I did find a "frequency response" curve for the SR80e with Amplitude (Decibals) on the Y-axis and Frequency on the X-axis. Looking at this curve shows that at higher frequency's the amplitude dips below the nominal amplitude (90db). Wouldn't the frequency vs impedance curve follow a similar plot as the frequency response...since different impedances are hard to drive (resulting in less amplitude)? This should hopefully clear up my remaining questions. Thanks so much Olderroust for taking the time.
 
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