Need advice on quality headphones

Yeah, AC mode turns off all processing and just streams the input to the output with relatively little change. If you're a purist, that's the 'proper' way to listen. Depending on the type of music you like to listen to, and the quality of your sources, you may hear not hear that much difference between that and Entertainment Mode, which forces a 48Khz resample and, optionally, the things like the Crystalizer.

Because AC mode puts the card into 'stupid' mode, your games can't take advantage of any of the DS3D or EAX support. If you want to listen to music WHILE gaming, you'll probably want to leave it in Gaming mode. It's not like the audio experience is going to be all that pristine anyway, what with the explosions and stuff.

As far as speaker mode goes, I've never really done critical listening with headphones on the X-Fi, so I'm not sure what's better. I tend to think 2/2.1 is probably going to be more accurate. I suspect headphone mode may apply some additional processing. But that's a guess. Try it both ways and see what you like.

Ultimately, remember it's about what you LIKE, not necessarily what's "correct". But I do suggest taking a few weeks and listening the 'correct' way, to train your ears to what your system sounds like with as little processing as possible. You are, in essence, learning what it's supposed to sound like. Once you're acclimated, then start playing with the other controls and see if you prefer those changes. You might, you might not -- but the initial acclimation period will help you calibrate your ears to decide that more intelligently.

I should warn you: if you're used to Logitech speakers, by the time you've finished training yourself to what music SHOULD sound like, you'll likely find them unlistenable.

Malor wrote:

I should warn you: if you're used to Logitech speakers, by the time you've finished training yourself to what music SHOULD sound like, you'll likely find them unlistenable.

This is absolute truth. Any significant amount of listening time spent with the 595's will very likely sour you on your speakers.

Thin_J wrote:
Malor wrote:

I should warn you: if you're used to Logitech speakers, by the time you've finished training yourself to what music SHOULD sound like, you'll likely find them unlistenable.

This is absolute truth. Any significant amount of listening time spent with the 595's will very likely sour you on your speakers.

It's not often that I let the x5300's open up, and I really don't have any problem using the 595's most if not all of the time. Especially if the comfort level is as good as I've heard.

Thanks again for the responses.

I got them today. Very impressive! John Lee Hooker got the honors, and I've tried classical, old metal (Black Sabbath) and others. All fantastic.

Game audio was outstanding as well - tried Company of Heroes, watching a game replay's intense firefights. Crisp, rich gunfire and solid booming explosions.

And yes, they are very, very comfortable. Velour earpads, and a cushy, soft leather headband. The cord is *long* and thick. There is plenty of play in the head slider expansion things. The unit came with a holder that clips to your desk, very handy.

All in all, a very worthwhile purchase. I'm excited to use them!

Glad you like them!

I've had great luck recommending that set to people so far. The streak of happy owners continues

I'm blown away by these things. Big thanks to Malor for teaching me about ASIO out. After trying different audio setups, that has been my favorite so far for music (Audio Creation mode, 44.1khz, and ASIO out)

My cousins were in town to visit and both were amazed by them. One of them even ordered a pair before he left!

Neat, glad to hear it.

Good music on Windows is really ridiculously difficult. It's easier, in theory, on Macs, but most Macs have absolutely dismal sound quality. You pretty much have to run a fibre to a receiver for good sound -- but then it's just a matter of turning off EQ, turning both system and iTunes volumes to max, and hitting Play.

Macs are frustrating -- such nice software, such crappy hardware decisions.

Am I correct in thinking that a headphone amp like the Headroom linked earlier bypasses the need for a hardware sound card on any OS?

Short answer: Yes. The Total Bithead from Headroom will do what you want.

Longer answer: Amplifiers are just amps -- they take an analog in and, supposedly, emit a louder analog out. The ideal standard is 'a straight wire with gain', although they're never perfect like that. The Total Airhead is an example of just an amp with nothing else.

Second, you need a DAC to turn a digital signal into an analog one. The DAC is what actually makes the sound that the amplifier, well, amplifies. Most commonly, DACs run off S/PDIF inputs, which means you still need a computer source, leading to:

Third, the soundcard. This is where you have to muck around in Windows to get good clean output.

The Total Bithead includes all three of these things at once; it's a USB soundcard, so you can play computer sound through it. That soundcard connects to an internal DAC, and then amplifies the result. All the Headroom DACs have the soundcard function, but only the Bithead also includes an amp. With those others, you have to buy a separate amp.

When shopping for amps, remember you need all three functions if your source is going to be computer-based. If you already have a soundcard, it might be adequate to cover that requirement, if it has a digital out (and if your chosen DAC has the right kind of digital in.) Jeff-66 is doing that with his X-Fi, and he's happy with it.

Motherboard sound almost always sucks rocks.

edit to add: Any OS that supports a stereo USB soundcard should work with the Bithead. You might potentially have trouble with oddball Unices, but Linux, Mac OS, and Windows should all work fine with it.

If anyone is following this thread, lurkers or otherwise, who might be in the market for new headphones ... listen to one guy's non-professional opinion.

TRY THE SENN HD595's!

And put on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake suite in a lossless format.

For the love of all that's holy ....

wow

Seriously ... it's bliss.

Note: you need at least a decent soundcard for the 'bliss' part.

Malor wrote:

Note: you need at least a decent soundcard for the 'bliss' part.

Using your suggestion of the X-Fi in AC mode @ 44.1khz, winamp with ASIO out, and flac, I was unable to detect even the slightest tick of static, hiss, or non-music noise. My ears aren't trained like yours, I'm sure, so the X-Fi has been more than sufficient for me to reach music nirvana. (One thing about it though - throw on a poorly encoded, 128-bit mp3 and it's hideous compared to the above setting. The Senns seem to highlight the good, and the bad)

Last night was the first real chance I've had to really try out the new Senns, and I sat in my chair and just listened to music for 2+ hours. I honestly don't think I've ever done that in my life. My blood pressure probably dropped 10 points.

Any further upgrades will be much more incremental from here. You'll get some improvement going to something like HD650s with an amp and a good dedicated DAC, but the jump will be much smaller than what you just experienced. I doubt I'd be annoyed by your setup. I might not even notice, anymore, that it's not as good -- my hearing continues to degrade with age, sadly. This is probably about 90% as good as it will ever get.

You won't experience this kind of leap again, so really enjoy it. And, after a week or two, you can start being snobby about your Logitech speakers.

Oh, also: if you had motherboard sound, you would be much less impressed.

Malor wrote:

When shopping for amps, remember you need all three functions if your source is going to be computer-based. If you already have a soundcard, it might be adequate to cover that requirement, if it has a digital out (and if your chosen DAC has the right kind of digital in.) Jeff-66 is doing that with his X-Fi, and he's happy with it.

Just a quick note regarding digital-in formats. If the things you have or want aren't compatible, converter boxes are an option, and since they're simply doing digital to digital there should be no issue with quality loss. I have a CO2 around here somewhere, for example. Regarding the rest... I'm not an audiophile so I really can't say, other than that most integrated DACs suck. It's pretty common for audio folks to get standalone DACs just to provide good conversion quality. I'd imagine that audiophile-quality gear doesn't have this problem however

Well it's been a couple of weeks with the HD-595's, and I'm still blown away by them. I'm listening to Metallica's "The God that Failed" right now (.flac, ASIO out etc), and man, the clarity is amazing. It's like I'm standing in the recording studio with the band.

My stock ipod earbuds now sound like an AM radio. Still, when I have them on (say, while at work) I just smile ... knowing I can go home and bask in the awesomeness of the 595's.

My new show-off music is a classical/new-age hybrid piece by a group called Barrage, and it's their rendition of Carol of the Bells. It's heavy violins, and it's just amazing on these headphones.

This has been a fantastic purchase!

I just read through this thread and I was wondering could someone break down shortly what I need to purchase and what software I need to achieve this said Nirvana that Jeff-66 talks about.

So far I saw... Winamp, ASIO, Senn HD-595's, I heard about amps... enlighten me, X-Fi sound card....

Right now I own AKG headphones... K240 monitor.... 600 ohms.... They were 99 dollars at guitar center. The extent of knowledge on how to get the best sound quailty to me is bar none. If you can forum link me to something that already breaks it down.... or just give me a list of wiki entries and products.

I have Senn in-ear buds that are fantastic on my Zune. It has that bass wind tech on it which gives it heavy bass. Its the 25 dollar brand... MX 240 I think

rickyyo wrote:

Right now I own AKG headphones... K240 monitor.... 600 ohms.... They were 99 dollars at guitar center. The extent of knowledge on how to get the best sound quailty to me is bar none. If you can forum link me to something that already breaks it down.... or just give me a list of wiki entries and products.

You should get some pretty good results out of those headphones -- I have their big brother, the K271, and they're excellent for my needs. Because they're monitors, the bass isn't as pronounced as it is in most hi-fi headphones, but they're nice and clear, and a bit of EQ in the low-end will give you a bit more thump if you really need it. At 600 ohms, some kind of headphone amp will probably help a lot, too.

Hopefully someone else can help you with the specifics I use mine almost exclusively on my Linux PC, so I doubt I can say anything of relevance on the software side, and my soundcard (an M-Audio Revolution 7.1) outputs a strong enough signal that I haven't needed a headphone amp.

rickyyo wrote:

I just read through this thread and I was wondering could someone break down shortly what I need to purchase and what software I need to achieve this said Nirvana that Jeff-66 talks about.

So far I saw... Winamp, ASIO, Senn HD-595's, I heard about amps... enlighten me, X-Fi sound card....

My setup is:

* X-Fi audio card

* Sennheiser HD-595

* Winamp 5.5x with the ASIO extension

* X-Fi control panel (which of course comes with the card). Set the panel to Audio Creation mode. Speaker config to "2/2.1 speakers". Click the 'Settings' button, then the 'Clock' tab - set the Master Sampling Rate to 44.1khz

* most important: listen to high-bitrate music! I prefer the lossless format '.flac' files - but pretty much any mp3 at 192bit or better should be ok. You can really tell a big difference on the encoding quality with the 595's. Winamp will play .flac files natively, btw.

If you can't find the ASIO extension, let me know, and I'll email it to you. If you get all this set up, let me know, as I'd love to send you the Carol of the Bells piece I mentioned earlier. it's just fantastic on these headphones.

The 595's are pretty super for the price. I have to use closed phones so my wife doesn't kill me, but I really enjoy the Ultrasone Proline 650s. I also use the total bithead. I think headphone amps are pretty key to the audiophile equation.

Thread resurrection just to say thanks to those who contributed their considerable audio knowledge here. I've been toying with the idea of getting some proper circumaural phones for a while and the comments in this thread helped me a great deal in making a decision. I ended up going with the HD280's as they were (just about) in my range and I really wanted closed ones so I could play games / listen to music without disturbing the girlfriend (Apparently shotgun reports and the decending zombie hord aren't compatible with sex and the city) and vice versa. I let them burn in whilst I was at work today and I've been listening to various bits of music since I got home and I'm very pleased. I only have an aging Audigy card but found a way to get ASIO to work with it (for those interested it's ASIO4all I think) and bypassing all that windows processing guff really brings the music alive! I like the pretty flat response of the phones as in combination with ASIO, you're getting the music output pretty much as it was mastered. Lovely.

That went one a bit long for 'thanks', but I guess I'm pleased.

My HD500s started acting up lately. Basically they stopped working. Before that vocals would be stripped out of songs and voices would go weird. Turns out a new $20 official replacement cable (from Ebay) fixed the problem. I have heard the cables in Sennheisers are prone to going bad and sure enough (although I've had them for 7 years.)

trip1eX wrote:

My HD500s started acting up lately. Basically they stopped working. Before that vocals would be stripped out of songs and voices would go weird. Turns out a new $20 official replacement cable (from Ebay) fixed the problem. I have heard the cables in Sennheisers are prone to going bad and sure enough (although I've had them for 7 years.)

7 years aint bad for a sub-$100 set of headphones. I'll have to make a mental note of that though, I've never been able to hang out to a pair of Sennheisers that long.

Of course, you could always opt for the new Sennheiser HD800s. Tad pricey for me.

Got an email from Headroom on this one -- I think it's the first marketing email they've ever sent me, and they've had my address for at least five years. They must be really impressed.

pignoli: you can get one more substantial improvement to your sound, by going to a soundcard or DAC that doesn't do a forced 48Khz resample, as the Audigy does. An X-Fi in Music Creation Mode can do true lossless.

The cheap way to do this always used to be the $25 Chaintech AV-710, or alternately the Audiotrak Prodigy, which had better drivers. But I don't see either of them for sale anymore. To a super-quick search, the X-Fi looks like the cheapest option..... I see one at $55 that should work.

It's really surprising how difficult it is to get Windows and PC hardware to just send a damn bitstream without messing it up. I mean, it's just copying bits -- why is it so damn hard to get it to work properly? Grr.

I did glance at the HD800s, then very quickly glanced away!

Yeah, I'm aware the Audigy isn't exactly optimal but I will be upgrading it at some point next year when I change to Wimdows 7 as I'm pretty sure the Audigy isn't supported in Vista let alone 7. So I'll be doing a proper search nearer the time for something that can do a non-resampled output and nice gamey stuff (EAX and whatever else), hopefully without switching to any special 'mode' so I can switch between games and music without fiddling. If you know of anything that fits that bill now, do let me know:) My knowledge of sound hardware is pretty shameful.

I'm using an ASUS Xonar D2X under "Vista". (actually Server2K8, but they're nearly the same.) The less expensive DX is about $100, and should sound fine. The control panel on that card is really weird and hard to figure out, and typically you'd want to run it in 48Khz mode. But the resampling engine is very good, so even resampled, it sounds pretty darn good. You can switch it to native 44.1Khz if you wish, which then resamples the regular 48Khz Windows audio down to the lower level.

It offers software Direct 3D emulation, but I've only had trouble with that, so I leave it off. And I also had rather nasty pops and crackles in World of Warcraft until I turned the master volume to a little lower than 100%. With those two fixes, it sounds marvelous.

Basically, Vista pretty much butchers the sound stack, so you overall want the simplest card you can find.

Another option is a USB DAC of some kind. You don't need a headphone amp, but the Headroom Total Bithead offers both an amp and a pretty good DAC in one package.

The very best sound source I've found is my relatively cheap Squeezebox 2. At $300, it stands toe to toe with $1200+ CD playes and the like. The headphone out on that thing is amazing. I haven't heard the new Duet, but the audiophile snobs still seem to like it.

Arise, thread, arise..

I'm shopping for a not-too-expensive but quality pair of neckband headphones and have narrowed my choice down to three. The set I choose will be for listening to music on my phone and laptop use when I'm writing in restaurants, so I don't want them to be too bulky, otherwise I'd get some audiophile type stuff..

Able Planet Clear Harmony

Sennheiser PMX100 - I see these were mentioned before

Sennheiser PMX200

Thoughts on those? I'm open to other suggestions in the sub-$100 range if anyone has any.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Arise, thread, arise..

I'm shopping for a not-too-expensive but quality pair of neckband headphones and have narrowed my choice down to three. The set I choose will be for listening to music on my phone and laptop use when I'm writing in restaurants, so I don't want them to be too bulky, otherwise I'd get some audiophile type stuff..

Able Planet Clear Harmony

Sennheiser PMX100 - I see these were mentioned before

Sennheiser PMX200

Thoughts on those? I'm open to other suggestions in the sub-$100 range if anyone has any.

I wound up buying the PMX-200s, and man, they really sound like garbage to my ears. They're going back to Amazon. I find myself wondering if the PMX-100s have a different setup.

I feel like maybe I'm doing something wrong. I have a pair of $10-at-walmart Sony headphones I got for a cheap fix, and they sound better than these. The PMX-200s just sound so tinny, hardly any bass at all, even with the device's equalizer set to "bass booster."

Behind the neck headphones don't have great sound from my experience - but I too just love the form factor for when I'm out and about. I hate earbuds.
I'm currently using Sennheiser PMX-60's, which I've found to be the best so far. (Which isn't saying much). Though if you really didn't like the 200's, I'm not sure those would work well for you.

Is there a chance that this may be a "my ears have adjusted to crappy phones with muddy bass drowning out the rest of the mix" scenario?

I know that after listening to crap headphones myself for a while, listening to quality can be a little off-putting at first. (Same sort of thing I've been going through with my LCD panels and calibrating them to look "correct". Getting rid of that hot "blue" hue looks "bad" at first).

Also, if you made any significant EQ adjustments on your playback device to compensate for the old crappy 'phones, make sure you roll those back.

Dysplastic wrote:

Behind the neck headphones don't have great sound from my experience - but I too just love the form factor for when I'm out and about. I hate earbuds.
I'm currently using Sennheiser PMX-60's, which I've found to be the best so far. (Which isn't saying much). Though if you really didn't like the 200's, I'm not sure those would work well for you.

I checked those out, and saw in the reader reviews that they have a lot of sound leak, as in the rest of the people in a room can hear your music as well.

I've had some very good experiences with neckband headphones, though. I had a pair that came with a Phillips CD player I got years and years ago that sounded amazing, and lasted three years. I never could get another pair, because they were proprietary.

My friend who is a pretty serious musician (and pothead) suggested the Shure E2c or E3c's, or something by AKG.