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Showing 1 of 1924 conversations about:
Gugliermo
1317
Apr 30, 2017
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I got these headphone a few days ago and feel compelled to add a comment or two to offset the nonsense that is being bandied about by people that apparently know little about music reproduction and Hi-Fidelity.
The headphones are the last item in a long chain. For a truly neutral set of phones (ie very little coloration of their own) they will produce faithfully what they have been fed. With the enormous variety in recording, engineering, mastering, coupled with the enormous variety in sound reproduction equipment it makes zero sense in talking about one item in that chain being responsible for the overall sound, particularly, the last item in that chain, the phones.
Garbage in garbage out is THE maxim in hi-fi reproduction. I found the 350's to be superb headphones, and, a fabulous bargain at their price. The talk of "modding" is just silly, as if "one size fits all" cures for "too bright" and other complaints could be addressed this way. If you like to tinker, have at it, I rebuild my own tube amps for many years, but stuffing tissues or felt discs into these phones is not a "mod". They were not thrown together by amateurs, these are seriously excellent phones, for any price.
I tested them in my 2 Xiang-Sheng DA-03A dac/amps. One with the TE7022L input usb board one with the better XMOS-U8 board, the standard dacs from my Pioneer Elite bluray player, my Oppo 83SE (super dacs), my SMSL M8, and analog through several tube preamps, even my old Sansui 9090 (warm and luscious). They are excellent in all applications . Optical source to the Xiang-Shengs (they have a 5670 tube in the circuit) yielded the best resolution and separation, with great balance.
The pure analog tube preamps were the warmest, also with excellent detail and separation. Due to the wonderful Mullard and RCA tubes that tubey "magic" comes through loud and clear with these phone. Yes, they are very clear and pure in the high frequency range so you want to have all your gear up to snuff as these phones will quickly point out any weaknesses in your upstream equipment.
Feeding them crap will sound shrill and irritating, they are faithfully reproducing what they are being fed. Your headphone choice will not "fix" your bad sound. These are truly excellent headphones, and a bargain to boot. Do not insert truly Hi-Fi headphones into a lo-mid-fi rig and expect great sound.
shawnrollick
36
May 1, 2017
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GugliermoI love mine, running them off my small fiio ek10, no mods. just softer pads.
hypster0628
4
May 1, 2017
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GugliermoHow can sound be warm, why do tube amps matter at all, what the hell is a tube amp, and who cares about soundstage when most of these children are listening to taylor swift with these anyways
Gugliermo
1317
May 1, 2017
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hypster0628Sound can be many things, words are a poor way to "describe" it but it's all we have. Through longtime focused listening these words will make sense.
Tubes can produce "magical", open, airy, three dimensional sound presentation like nothing else. The manufacture of high quality tubes is an artform in itself. It's not that modern tubes are "cheap" it's that the generation of craftsman that created the great tubes of the 40's-70's are all gone.
Hopefully children grow up and develop discernment and taste.
demize
157
May 2, 2017
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hypster0628You don't buy headphones like these if you're just listening to Taylor Swift.
Well, that's the argument I was going to make. But I just found a copy of 1984 in 24-bit FLAC (checked the spectrogram to make sure, even) and started listening to it, and whoever mixed and mastered it must have appreciated a good soundstage, because they definitely made good use of it here. Which is quite a feat, considering most of what you're supposed to pay attention to is centered—and yet this doesn't sound flat at all, and it would absolutely not sound as good using headphones with a shallower soundstage than the headphones I'm using (the E-MU Purplehearts I got today, which don't even have that great of a soundstage anyway).
So maybe the people buying this to listen to Taylor Swift want to appreciate her in as high quality as they can. Sure, this music doesn't benefit as much from my source chain (Modi 2 Uber->$15 ground loop isolator->Little Dot I+ with Voskhod tubes->whichever headphones I feel like using) but it absolutely still benefits from it. You'd be hard pressed to find something that doesn't.
Well, that's the argument I was going to make. But I just found a copy of 1984 in 24-bit FLAC (checked the spectrogram to make sure, even) and started listening to it, and whoever mixed and mastered it must have appreciated a good soundstage, because they definitely made good use of it here. Which is quite a feat, considering most of what you're supposed to pay attention to is centered—and yet this doesn't sound flat at all, and it would absolutely not sound as good using headphones with a shallower soundstage than the headphones I'm using (the E-MU Purplehearts I got today, which don't even have that great of a soundstage anyway).
So maybe the people buying this to listen to Taylor Swift want to appreciate her in as high quality as they can. Sure, this music doesn't benefit as much from my source chain (Modi 2 Uber->$15 ground loop isolator->Little Dot I+ with Voskhod tubes->whichever headphones I feel like using) but it absolutely still benefits from it. You'd be hard pressed to find something that doesn't.
kghaddon
9
May 2, 2017
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hypster0628My kids listen to their crap on...their crap. As for me, I am old enough to remember when music was analog front to back and played on speakers that you could park a small pizza and a beer on. Guns were made of steel and wood, Bruce Jenner was a guy on the front of a Wheaties box, Godzilla was a guy in a rubber suit and Kelly McGillis didn't look like my elementary school cafeteria lady. Fire up a FLAC file of Steely Dan's "Reeling in the Years" on a decent rig and crack open an eight pack of Miller Ponies and enjoy life a little...
btbtbtmaki
52
May 2, 2017
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hypster0628tube sound is just distortion, he made it sounds like black magic... waste hundreds on "high" end system just to have a $99 shrill phone as the the output, brilliant, perhaps he did not know a sound system only sounds as good as the worst part in the system... i guess it makes great sense every budge phone should have $1000 equipment driving it...
kghaddon
9
May 29, 2017
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GugliermoPrepare to weep. In the late 70's and early 80's I worked in a Radio Shack while I was in high school and college. There was a low counter about twenty feet long behind the front counter that was packed full of tubes. We also had boxes and boxes of them in the back where we stashed the discontinued tubes. Several times a year someone would come in looking for an oddity and leave a customer for life. One day, we put it all in the trash along with our tube tester. The pile was shin deep in the dumpster. It was easily a couple of thousand tubes.
Gugliermo
1317
May 29, 2017
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kghaddonI am weeping.... Thank god there are still thousands of the old tubes available. People had no idea back then with the advent of the transistor, the tube seemed no longer needed. The tubes manufactured nowadays are getting better all the time but still are not close to the best of the 40's-80's in subtlety and musicality.
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