Tyll Hertsens

Have you heard the HE6? Its much faster sounding with a kick ass bass that n estat would have a hard time pulling off, I think.

Yup. http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/Audeze%20LCD-2.pdf Bass is ruler flat; rolls off a little too much at the very top though. Impedance and phase is ruler flat ... A normal planar-magnetic characteristic. 30 hz square wave is stunning due to the good bass response. THD is the best ive seen. 300hz square shows a little stored enpergy after the first overshoot. But i like the fact that its not overshooting a lot...most headphones do, and thats the brightness Kevin mentions. Impulse response shows that blip of energy coming in after the first impulse again as a fat little wiggle. Ive been listening to both a lot lately, and Im thinking the LDC-2 is a tad too slow, and the HE6 is a bit more of a tad too fast. I think the Audeze is my desert island can at the moment.

Aha! Thanks! I mentioned the 414 pad, but what's a "shape pad" Hahaha! That's funny. Do you know who it is?

I might do the goat in a pinch. Used to be my gag reflex would go off if I though about giving someone a blow job. Then I found a woman who knew what she was doing. It became easier for me to visualize how she was loving me well while doing it well. I began to understand the act better, I guess. Somehow that made the thought of doing it to another man more palatable. Still have the zero desire part, but the revulsion seems to have been tamped down. I find it an interesting internal observation. Talk like this here makes thinking about yourself and your feelings a little safer. Thanks HC gays!

I'm working on something I've been promising for a long time: measureing the effects pf various pads on Grado cans. But I need some help identifying them properly. Here's a pic of the stock pads I could round up (thanks to HeadRoom and Todd), Left to right I think they are: small flats from old SR80; comfy pads from SR60; standard flats from Todd; bowl pads; and big bowl (what do people call these) from GS1000 PS1000. First, is there common names people use for these pads? Second, what are the other after market pads? I know of the Senn 414 yellow pads and the Headphile C-Pads. Anything else? Last, what are the mods? I know of the "hole mod" to the comfy pads, and flipping it around to make a mini-bowl; and I know of the "tape mod" to the bowls, and the reverse bowl. Any more?

I read it as him promoting his point of view, and using his site to back up his mouth. Head-fiers need a fucking education. We all do. What the fuck is so wrong with him linking his site!? What's Jude's fucking agenda? To build walls around the fucking hobby? Or would it be better to use teh intrawebble to open lines of communication! Are you a mod or a lacky to agendas you don't have the balls to see? There's good people there to try to bring balance, but Jude's hurting more than he's helping in this case, IMHO. Please Jude, please, lighten the fuck up, man. Head-fi will be better off collaberating with informed input from experts. We need people like NwAvGuy in this hobby to have strong voices. PLEASE LET HEAD-FIERS REAP THE BENEFITS OF THE LARGER COMMUNITY OF AUDIO ENTHUSIASTS! Head-fi will be far more valuable if it learns how to play well with others. Look how nice it is to link back and forth between Guttenbergs postings. Or are those linkings advantagious because Cnet is a traffic monster and nets bigger numbers for Head-Fi? Its not all about the numbers, man, it's also about hobbyists learning. Having folks temporarily click over to another site doesn't mean they are abandoning Head-Fi. Fuck me, I'm sick of this shit.

i know I'm getting fucking hot.

Thanks.

God speed, Gary. Luv ya, Ken. Damn if I'm sure what those two statements really mean ... But I really mean them. Bless us, each and every one.

Law of the jungle, baby, It's in us. I think we (humans) should learn how to use it justly and effectively. The PC shit has gone a bit too far. Balance is needed. :tipshattoshoveleers:

This issue is WAY worse than you'd think. Even the fucking IEC is screwed up on it. Back in the day, before headphone amps existed, most headphone jacks sucked. On cosumer gear, headphone outs would be driven eithe by a shitty op-amp (whoch would have a fairly highish output impedance), a shitty 1 or 2 Watt clock radio power amp chip (which would have a lower output impedance, but would be noisy), or (on recievers usually) a resistor devider off the power amp out to pad down the signal voltage from the power amps (which would up the output impedance). In the first and last case (most common) output impedances would be fairly high. Headphone designers knew that they didn't have any choise to design headphones assuming the amp would have a low output impedance. That kinda sucks because it means they can't rely on the amps feeding the cans to provide much damping, so they would design cans with the need to damp through acoustic means (ports and fancy materials covering the drivers to control air). It also made less difference back then because most cans were high impedance(300-600 ohm). Then the Walkman came along and slowly but surely impedances went down and efficiencies went up in order to deliver cans that would play on the lower output voltage portable players. Problem is that that made interaction problems worse. Anyway, the IEC (the group writing these specs are all engineers from the various big headphone makers) decided that they needed some sort of level playing field somewhere, and settled rather arbitrarily on 120 ohms as the roughly average headphone jack output Z as the "standard" at which to measure cans. Actooly, in the spec it says that headphone should be measured using the manufacturers specified amp output impedance, but good luck finding that number. From this Stereophile article: Although it doesn't always appear in the specifications of headphone amps, output resistance has a nontrivial effect on frequency response, and hence on tonal balance. Many headphone amps have output resistances in the range of 20–50 ohms, the principal justification being that this helps even out the substantial differences in sensitivity between different headphones. Output from low-impedance/high-sensitivity models is attenuated more than that of high-impedance/low-sensitivity types, making it less likely that users will inadvertently expose themselves to potentially damaging sound-pressure levels. Insertion of a resistor in series with the amplifier output also helps the designer ensure short-circuit protection and unconditional feedback stability. The IEC 61938 standard goes even further in recommending an output resistance of 120 ohms, noting that "For most types of headphones, the source impedance has very little effect on the performance." Whoever wrote that must live in a fantasy world. Many of the headphones currently available in the hi-fi market have a medium nominal impedance of 30–60 ohms and typically display a quite wide variation of impedance with frequency. Fig.7 shows overlaid graphs of modulus of impedance vs frequency for the four aforementioned headphones, and fig.8 a simulation of the effect of using them with a source impedance of 120 ohms. The model with the largest impedance variation, the AKG K530 (orange trace), would suffer a total response error of almost 5dB. Bottom line: the IEC spec is a clusterfuck. In it they describe four different, acceptable ways to measure headphone frequency response (two objective and two subjective), and clearly state that the measurements will not yield similar results. And that there is no clearly understood reason why the results differ. So, the IEC settled on 120 ohms because they didn't have the balls to try to influence CE gear makers to build better headphone amps into their gear (I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they tried, but the really big boys (Sony, et al) told the headphone geeks to STFU and go play with their cans). The IEC 120 ohm spec is a totla bullshit compromise from headphone engineers stuck in a corner. When I visited Sennheiser about 6 years ago, Axel Grell (their chief designer) said he would design high end cans differently if he could know for sure the amp driving them would have <2 ohm output Z, but he couldn't rely on that. Then, Meyer comes out with a 120 ohm switch on the front claiming it's because that's the spec the designers have in mind, and the HF rumor mill goes into full swing, and a missconception is born. Basically, lower output impedance is always better because it causes less interaction between the cans and amp due to better damping factors. And headphones for home use oughta have higher Z 'cuz you've got potentially higher voltages and that makes for better dampin as well. Problem is there's always some douchebag wanting to plug in their 800s to an iPod and whining that they don't get loud enough (if the impedance on the cans are too high) or sound as good (if the headphone iedance is too low and interacts with the amp too much) so they really are stuck between a rock and a hard place. As a result, our cans are designed with some serious compromises as manufacturers keep feeling the presure to do all the damping acoustically. Fucking iPods ... Ya gotta love/hate them.

Rex: hammered. Jude: frozen in time and space.

God you're good.

I was going to say, "To long didn't read" but I did. I think your spot on about keeping manufacturers honest by taking the measurements. its amazing the stuff Ive found on headphones. I appreciate your efforts. Thanks for posting.

Thanks. And I do it for money, so theres the self-intrest bit ... but I love it because I love the hobby and great listening.

? I'll think about that ... and being a reviewer kinda force a degree of (fucking) "celebrity", but I don't really give a shit about that. Back OT, I think measurements and listening are both VERY important. The trick is you have to weight both apropriately somehow. Its kinda apples and oranges ... both fruit, but different beasts.

Actooly, Im married and happy in a lovely and unusual way. We live in the same house but have separate living areas. Best of both worlds for me and her. Quite interesting and ... Mmm ... stimulating!? Cheers, mate, glad to see you pop in.

Just noting that being "masculine" doesn't necessarily effect sexual orientation. Im fairly in-touch with my feminine side, but like boinking girls. And I reckon you get this, Jason, just pointing it out.

Now that the douchebag is gone, I wanted to mention something: I appreciate all the nice comments, and I'm fairly knowledgeable on headphone subjects, but I need/deeply-desire to say that as I investigate products I always find the relevant threads here to read. My experience is that they are spot-on not only in the general opinion, but also in the nature of the disagreements. I ALWAYS walk away much better informed. The collective here is far, far, FAR wiser than I, and I thank you all for educating me. And the mods for decapitating the noise.

I'm surprised he lasted that long.

Fxt.

Um ... No, now that you mention it. Maybe I shouln't come to such an uninformed snap decision. What a quandry ... I wonder what the n00b would do?

Geez Dinny, I gotta get me some of them. Thought I'd post some pictures of my rig, n00b. Let's see yours! Oh, BTW ... Here's the T5p measurements: Note the uneven frequency response through the mid-range; wiggly piggly (sorry, technical term here) impedance and phase response; distortion through the mid-range; ringing 300Hz square wave response; and large second peak in the impulse response. Here's the Skullcandy Aviators: Note lack of above. Um ... the T5p's were broken in, too. They sound pretty much like they measure.

Dude, back away from the keyboard.