catscratch

I've heard the SR-404 with many different amps (313, 007t, McAlister) and it always had its upper midrange coloration. It also always had a somewhat strident lower treble and a somewhat diffuse character to its sound, which hurts its layering abilities quite a bit. Off the McAlister it had very good bass impact that wasn't there with the 313 and 007, and it had a more forward, rather Grado-like quality to its sound, but it was also far too bright. I really liked it with about 25% of my music and thought it was ok with another 50% of my music, but when my K340 spanked it for $200, off a $200 amp, it was time for it to go. In terms of electrostatic vs. dynamic sound - 'stats are much much faster, so any kind of grain or minute distortion present with dynamic cans just isn't there, unless it's caused by the rest of your system. 'Stat detail extends throughout the frequency spectrum, and everything, be it treble, midrange, or bass is resolved into its component parts, as opposed to dynamics, which tend to be detailed up top but get progressively less resolving as you go down the frequency range. Electrostatic bass is especially much more detailed than dynamic bass. At the same time, 'stats don't have the tactile impact of good dynamics, though they can have some impact, and this is evident not just in the bass but everywhere else as well. They just don't displace as much air as dynamics period. In most applications, dynamics do sound more lively. I've left stats but I'm going to be coming back to them, despite having a dynamic rig that has many of the virtues of the electrostatic sound. I doubt I'll be giving up this rig any time soon, but we'll see how it gets on in the face of quality electrostatic rivals (O2, EH1.2B, 4070). Dynamics just sound like a system playing back the music, while with 'stats, the system is often left behind and you have nothing but the music. In a dynamic, you can feel the drivers moving, you can visualize the thrum of the voice coils and almost feel the signal moving through the wires (ok cat, put down the pipe...) but in a 'stat music just seems to appear ethereally out of thin air with no sound signature or evidence of a system to hold it back, and it takes you a while to lock on to what the system is doing, sonically speaking. But at the same time, listening to a 'stat seems to be more of a cerebral exercise, while dynamics do tend to get you more emotionally involved - though I'd wager that a properly set up electrostatic system that can put out some actual impact will reverse that trend somewhat.

Welcome to two years ago. Head-fi has become commercial. The price for that is attracting the mainstream public. So we have discussions like this, while anything technical, philosophical, abstract, or remotely interesting gets pushed to page 3 in the span of 12 hours and dies unnoticed. It's still one heck of a marketplace though, and is pretty invaluable for putting people in touch with vendors, and finding out about new gear. That's mainly why I hang around (and the few interesting threads every once in a while). That and helping out newbies every once in a while. The search function is still broken

Going from memory... About as different as headphones get. Now, K340s are also different from each other, esp. in tonal balance, but some things about them are universal. The A250 is tilted up in the upper mids and is recessed in the lower mids, giving the midrange a thin and distant quality. The K340 is bumped up in the lower midrange, with some pairs also being recessed in the upper midrange (though not my pair). That gives its midrange a very full and lush sound. Instrument tone is warmer than it should be but it is still a bit more realistic than the A250 and a lot more pleasing. The A250's highs have a peak in the lower treble that makes them sound metallic and steely with certain instruments. The K340's treble is either very recessed with bass-heavy pairs, or very upfront and very good with bass-light pairs - and it can be anything in between. In any case, it's a lot more linear, and thanks to the electret tweeter, it's much faster as well. Cymbal texture tends to be better portrayed on the K340. I should note that electrets, and to a lesser degree electrostats, have a certain glassy quality to their highs, and the K340 definitely suffers from this. Throw in its echoey resonance, and you get highs that aren't quite realistic, but still manage to dig up a lot of detail from the recording. The 250's bass is very linear and reaches very deep. It's easily the best feature of the headphone. It is a bit recessed and needs a bassy amp to bring it out, but when you do so, it shines. The K340 on the other hand is very lacking in deep bass. Bass-heavy pairs can have a bit of a midbass bloom, while my bass-light pair has a very good, tight and snappy bass, very linear through the mid and upper bass, but rolled-off in the deep bass. A250 tends to have a very wide soundstage, but so does the K340. It's up to the system really as to which one wins. Imaging is a bit crisper on the K340, but the A250 is no slouch. Both headphones are very dynamic. Bass-light K340s tend to appear even more dynamic due to the more present highs. The K340 needs a lot of volume in order to shine, though, while the A250 is more comfortable at lower volumes (and can get pretty nasty at high volumes with some recordings due to the lower treble peak). I prefer the K340 by miles. The A250's steely treble and midrange coloration are two of my biggest sonic turn-offs. I do like its bass though. I've got an A250 a K340 lying around though, so I can do some real listening and give more detailed comparisons. The above, as I said, is purely from memory so it may not be valid.

Ditto. That, together with the expense of driving the O2 properly, is what has so far prevented me from taking the plunge. I prefer an upfront sound and I don't like a dark sound signature (though I mind it less than an overly bright sound signature). I also like larger-than-life soundstages, inaccurate though they may be, for a very simple reason: 50% of my music listening is electronica, and there, it's the size of the headstage rather than the size of the soundstage that matters. O2 sounds like it will be too compressed for that. On the upside, the midrange of the O2 sounds like exactly what I want. I've heard "bumped-up upper mids" tossed around in conjunction with the EH1.2, and that's one of my biggest sonic turn-offs. So, I may end up with the O2 eventually, but I'll probably end up trying everything else first. Everything else meaning just the EH1.2B (and maybe 4070).

The K340 isn't really all that closed, it's more of a semi-open design. It isolates a little bit but it leaks sound everywhere. I also have never been able to get a pair to fit properly without having to hold the damn thing in place, making it useless for anything other than sitting and listening. Sonically, K340s tend to vary a lot from pair to pair. I prefer bass-light pairs, matched up with warm(er) tube amps. What about the Stax 4070? Never heard one but heard good things about it. Seems to be a candidate for future FOTM on That Other Forum.

That review should be mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in reviewing or discussing audio components. It's a terrific example of clear and organized articulation of a very abstract and difficult topic. But, it's going to go way over the heads of the average public, especially because of the length. It's a case of the review being much better than the audience. People don't want an organized discussion filled with novel concepts - they want a short largely monosyllabic blurb with simple numerical ratings and lots of "lawlz" and "roflcopter" thrown in.

Well, I'll still buy it, whatever they do. Considering that it's the dollar vote that counts, I'm still voting for the series. Though to be honest, if SC4 ends up going in the same direction that SC3 was going, I doubt I'll be holding my breath for SC5. There's only so much I can take before I admit that the series is flawed, and move onto greener pastures. Yeah, Setsuka's combos can be a bitch, as well as her just frames. I can't count how much time I spent trying to get her 1A:A:A down and I still can't get it right every time. Still, the playstyle reminds me a lot of my favorite character from Samurai Showdown (Ukyo Tachibana) - speed, range, damage, and punishment. It puts a lot of psychological pressure on your opponent and forces them to turtle, which lets you really control the match. Though I'm still a Mitsurugi player first and foremost and will probably always be. He's just so versatile and has so much potential for mind games, whereas Setsuka is more mechanical and is more about control and punishment.

I've had something similar with the H2. Granted I was really smashed at the time and could have hallucinated things (I certainly was hallucinating other things) but it was sharp and painful enough to make me rip off the cans faster than I thought was possible at the time. It definitely wasn't pleasant, and my hairdo might have come out of Dragonball Z when I looked in the mirror. But, that's just the thing, I do have long hair and it tends to get into headphones, and exposed wires and charged diaphragms really don't like bodily protuberances intruding into their personal space. **** Man, ever since I've left team planar so to speak, I've been getting planar craves, and the H2 definitely doesn't satisfy enough. The HD650/Dared rig is wonderful, except in that it can't stop being a dynamic headphone, even driven by a massively overpowered push-pull speaker amp. There is still this slight grain to the sound, and it still isn't fast enough to keep up with the more insane selections among my music. I may be the only one that prefers electrostats for death metal, but when you've grown up in the audio world listening to Nile's Black Seeds of Vengeance on 'stats, dynamics just won't do. They just can't take layers of distorted guitars on top of 20 blast beats per second and resolve it all into finely detailed and perfectly separated instruments. To make matters worse, my friend has an SRD-7 Pro that he's willing to let me borrow. I'm so tempted by the Omega II right now I could burst. I get the O2 urge every 3 months like clockwork. I've been able to resist so far, but who knows what will happen this time. Though to be honest, I am a bit hesitant to just get the SR-007 Mk II due to the several supposedly broken pairs that head-fiers have bought in the last few months. I'm slowly starting to come around to the idea that what I want is not so much a dynamic that has the virtues of planars, but a planar that has the virtues of a dynamic. Something that sounds very close to a seriously good balanced 650 rig especially in the weight and heft of the sound, but with the speed and microdetail of a 'stat.

Vader? Yoda? What the fuck are they thinking? How about actually balancing the fucking game for once and making sure that shit like variable cancel doesn't make it into the fourth installment. I loved SC3 but it was one of the most broken high-profile fighting games I've ever seen. And most of the new content was a joke (Setsuka's fun though). First, fix what's there, don't just introduce new bullshit that nobody wants. Or maybe people really do want Yoda and Vader? How about Kirk and Picard in SC5? I bet that would answer another age-old question.

I think that the biggest part of the magic that I'm hearing is that it's a push-pull amp, so I'm getting most of the benefits of balanced drive without basically paying $$$ for a nice balanced headphone amp. I don't think that being a speaker amp per se has anything to do with it. Still, if we do have a way to run headphones reliably from speaker amps, just think of the system matching possibilities! Also, sonically speaking, the VP-20 is one hell of a little amp for the money. It really does sound good.

Volodos performing Rach 3 in Carnegie Hall (don't remember what orchestra was backing in up but it was rubbish). I have the recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, and it's the best Rach 3 recording I've heard in years, but it is a positively restrained and cautious exercise compared to the frenzy and fireworks Volodos put on that night. I've never heard a better performance from anyone, anywhere, ever.

I don't have the cable at the moment, but I will have one on Wednesday and I will try them again. It will be interesting to hear how it all stacks up now that I know what to expect and don't have new toy syndrome playing with my brain. Going from memory... I did use the HD600 initially and it didn't even occur to me to use the HD650 given how much I preferred the HD600 single-ended. Off the speaker amp, the grain was gone, the bass tightened up a lot, and the sound was even more forward and aggressive. It really was a very punchy, impactful headphone with a lot of heft to its sound, and on some of my jazz/fusion recordings it kept impressing me with how very present and right there the instruments were. It still didn't wow me with its detail, the soundstage was smallish, and imaging wasn't very good. All in all, it was a fairly different animal from the HD650, more natural and more impactful but nowhere near as detailed and technically refined. I will listen more when I have the cable and report what I find.

Thought I'd append a very special album that I left out: Amethystium is Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, and Enigma all rolled into one. It may be 100% ear candy 100% of the time, but it's very good ear candy that has real depth, feeling, and thought behind every track. It's also one of the few albums that manages to incorporate the sound of old-school electronica while managing to sound thoroughly contemporary. It's also extremely well produced. One of the quietest albums I have, pretty no compression used at all. The clarity and dynamic range are terrific.

Not much metal added to my collection this year so I can't really say. But the surprise of the year in any genre so far happened to be a metal album: Outworld - s/t Well, no, I lie. I wasn't surprised at all at how good this was. I've been following this band and album for a while and heard a good bunch of it before release. I also am a fan of Rusty Cooley's work in general. This sounds a bit like a thoroughly pissed-off Symphony-X, though just to leave it at that would be an injustice. There's Pantera in here, and Nevermore, and a bit of Meshuggah for good measure. Still, this isn't just a sum of its influences but a new sound. Oh, and it's also better than anything SyX ever did, except possibly V. That's a very high recommendation if there ever was one. And Rusty Cooley absolutely shreds. If you don't know of this guitarist, then brace yourself. P.S. I've yet to check out the new Alchemist, but if the whole disk is as good as the two tracks I've heard, it will be my pick for 2007 out of what I've heard thus far. Alchemist is my favorite current metal band (used to be Nile but after Darkened Shrines they really didn't do anything original... or good).

I didn't get much visceral bass out of the SR-404, but out of the SR-003 there was plenty of thump. 'Stats can do tactile bass, but I don't think the current Lambda lineup is all that great at it. I never heard any of the vintage ones so I can't comment. I don't think the SR-303/404 are all that neutral; there is an upper midrange peak that gives certain instruments and voices a thin, brittle, and slightly electric quality. However, in terms of speed, detail, soundstage, and PRaT (when well driven), they're very good. If it wasn't for the midrange issues I probably would have still kept mine and liked it a lot. Tubes helped, but didn't eliminate the problem entirely. I've read about contact enhancers and various other tweaks that supposedly help, but I didn't experiment with them. No experience with DT880 or K701 whatsoever over here.

Not surprised. IEMs and wireless is what the market wants the most right now, so Sennheiser wisely responds. They have the name recognition to get stocked in retail stores, so they give them something to sell like hot cakes. As for the HD650 - they seem to be sticking to the Stax party line, "if it sells, don't fix it." Adjustable bass IEMs seems like a good idea to me. A lot of DAPs have lousy EQ, so being able to do it in the headphones themselves gives users a lot of options. I would have liked to see a new flagship headphone with a different driver technology, but until HD650/HD600 sales slump and the market starts calling for something like that, I doubt it will happen.

Nah, don't worry about laughing at my ignorance. That's why I'm going through this - to be less ignorant in the long run, and to try and understand the physics behind what I'm hearing, even though I have no physics education whatsoever. So, in a SE system, the signal varies from + to - voltage but the force is applied in only one direction, whereas in a balanced or push-pull system the force is applied in both directions simultaneously, and the net force difference is what moves the membrane?

I don't know anything about the theory behind it all, I'm a marine zoologist-in-training, but I see it like this. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In a single-ended system, the motive force is applied in one direction only, with the voice coil moving back in the other direction under the tension of the membrane. But in a push-pull system, the membrane is pushed in both directions by the motive force and the tension of the membrane is far less relevant. If you have an underdamped membrane, which the HD650 does (though to a lesser extent than the HD600), you don't have much in the way of membrane tension, so the difference between the membrane snapping back under its own tension and it being forced back by the signal is major. Also, I believe that in a SE system, if let's say you have a signal from 0 to +4V, the average position of the membrane will be at +2V, whereas in a push-pull system the average position will be at 0. At 0, membrane tension doesn't apply, and the membrane should be faster to respond to a push-pull signal. Am I making sense? As far as the sonic difference goes, it's not subtle. It may as well be a different headphone entirely. Transparency, impulse response, resolution, and control are not things that I associate with the HD650 normally; in every other rig I've heard it has failed miserably at all of them. Here, though, it might as well be an electrostat. Not as fast, perhaps, and not as airy, but just as detailed, transparent, and a lot more impactful. I wish I had an O2 on hand to compare it to. But, once I've got silver cables in this rig, and a more neutral source, I'll drag it to the NYC meet and see where it stands. With the old cable and my current source it's far too warm and isn't quite ready to be shown to the general public yet (that, and I don't have my balanced cable anymore WTB faster build time for Headphile). Though now that I'm more used to a warmer tone, the O2 is very high on the "to get" list, I just need to sell off the K1k and H2 first. I'm betting the Dareds will drive it quite well through an SRD-7 Pro. They're really one hell of an amp for the price.

Well, I've had my first exposure to HD650s using push-pull amplification. I have to say, I'm stunned. I *hate* these headphones single ended, for reasons which I will list here. Their bass is loose and overwhelming; there is a very slight grain to their sound, which is more of a characteristic of most dynamic headphones in general to my ears (but not all); the highs are muffled and obscure the detail; the impulse response is slower than a Geo Metro; the tone is far too warm and there seems to be bass even where there shouldn't be. And I have no idea why Sennheiser decided to voice the HD650 this way - rather I can guess (more bass when underdriven), but I have no idea how they could have been this thick. But... Push-pull seems to be a miracle cure for nearly all of the HD650's woes. The bass is no longer loose, the highs are no longer muffled, there is no grain to the sound that I can detect, and there is much, much more detail and instrument separation. But most importantly, the speed has gone up by orders of magnitude. It sounds seriously stunning this way - not much like a dynamic at all, not much like anything except for the music. It's still very very colored, but it's a very appealing HE90-like coloration that I can live with, and the texture, detail, imaging, transparency and overall realism are out of this world compared to what they are single-ended. Is this a dynamic??!? Even stranger still is that I got all of this running the HD650 off... my push-pull Dared VP-20 speaker amp. The Senns were using a 4-pin XLR cable, into AKG's 4-pin female XLR to speaker leads adapter. What the hell? Am I going to blow up my amp forcing it to drive a 300 ohm load? Am I going to melt the voice coils forcing them to swallow more current than they can handle? The amp outputs 18wpc into 4 ohms, so I'm guessing it really can't output much into 300 ohms, but can it handle the load without going 4th of july on me? Even more disappointing is having this system, and then having it gone since I had to give up the cable. Oh well, you can guess what I'm now trying very very hard to get. Consider me converted. I still hate these headphones single-ended and probably always will, unless I can hear something single-ended that can cure their ills, but in this system they're stunning. This is the best system I've had; better than the K340, SR-404, and H2 combined, though I'd wager this is probably new toy syndrome still, um, toying [...] with me. I'd love to hear them with a more neutral source and silver cables, which is where I'm headed next.

Ditto. I'm a shrimp but it still takes a lot to get me drunk. In fact, it usually takes more than my stomach can take, which is why alcohol really isn't the way to go to get a buzz over here. Too bad, I would much rather be a lightweight any day and enjoy it without suffering the consequences to the same degree. The most hungover I've ever been had to have been right after one of my expeditions to Indonesia. I just came off a 4 week diving trip, doing transect monitoring and being generally in heaven, when me and a few friends decided to get smashed. We were in Makassar, the capital of Sulawesi - not exactly the ideal place for Westerners to run around unchaperoned. Lesson #1: if you're 140lb, don't get into drinking contests with British rugby players. I had about half a liter of vodka in me (in about 30 min) when we decided that we weren't partying hard enough and went to a club. It had western prices but did have a lot of local clientele, which should have tipped me off about what kind of a club it was and what kind of drinks they serve. Lesson #2: if you order "the special" in a shady club in the middle of Asia, you're probably getting your drink spiked with something. It came in a nice big glass, was blue, and tasted terrific. What I found out soon thereafter is that it was unmistakably spiked with GHB. Now, G is a date rape drug that combines very poorly with alcohol, in that it intensifies the effects of alcohol considerably. Together, the two have put people into comas and sometimes even six feet under. And, I had half a liter of vodka in me at the time... I had no idea what I was looking at. I had no idea what I was hearing. I had no clue what the hell was going on. My vision receded to a field of view about a foot and a half in diameter. My balance and sense of up generally depended on what I was leaning on. I couldn't understand any spoken conversation in any language, and I was so gone anyway I doubt I would have understood getting shot in the face. But, thankfully I've been through this sort of thing, and not just once, so I kept my head. I found a secluded bathroom stall to retreat to and decided to let it all blow over. Two hours of praying to the porcelain god and a cab trip back to the hotel, during which it took all of the acting skill I had to appear alert and sober, and I was in a familiar environment and could finally start to recover. No one tried to take advantage of me, though I did my best not looking completely fucking smashed, but to be honest they didn't have to, since I think I paid the cab about 10 times what the fare was worth... I didn't know how much it was and I still couldn't understand spoken conversation. I felt like I died two thousand times that night. It sure was one hell of a party. The moral is: don't ever, ever go anywhere near G if you can help it. Don't ever put yourself into a position where you can lose your head in an environment where you're better off being alert and sober. And just because it's your last chance to party, doesn't make it a good idea. This turned out OK in the end, but it could have gone very, very wrong.

Hot damn! I've yet to be pronounced clinically dead even once, though not for lack of trying.

With the TR2, I ran the H2 off a 160w/ch, 500w peak power amp and I had no problems whatsoever. As long as you don't turn the volume up too high, you shouldn't overload anything. The question is, will they sound good... these headphones are insanely revealing, but there are also colorations in them, which may be due to them or due to the rest of the system. Frankly, I have no idea which is which; they've changed their sound quite a bit from system to system, and a lot of what I've heard were known issues with my signal path blown out of proportion, but at the same time, I've seen massive sonic differences just switching from the 4 ohm to the 8 ohm taps on the same amplifier. You definitely should hear them, as the sonic potential here is quite staggering. And, I think they will follow a similar success story as the K1k - the issues should hopefully be addressed, and over time we'll discover what amps work best with them.

I've got the gist of what you're saying. Yes, my post may very well end up hurting TakeT in the long run, but what else am I supposed to say? I am always 100% honest 100% of the time, and I tell it like I hear it. The best possible outcome would be for TakeT to take note of the criticism and to try and address it. And, at this point in time, I should say that I see them doing just that, with the new pads, driver tweaks, and a new direct-drive amp that should eventually come out. Still, small company or not, there are issues here that should not happen in a $1500 product. I understand that I'm buying something radical and new from a small company, but the same exact money can be spent on an Omega 2 that doesn't have any of these issues, so as a consumer, what exactly am I to say and advise other consumers to do? I'm not interested in hearing any "small company" excuses, all I am interested in is results, and results as they compare to other products in the price range. I am willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt if I see the issues being worked on, and so far, they are. So, I will probably keep my pair for a while and see where new developments take it. I agree that we do need a direct-drive amp, and we need it fast, before existing owners that are having the same problems as me lose patience with their pairs. And, just to reiterate, the only reason why I am putting up with all this is that I do believe that the sonic potential here is enormous. Unbelievable. Huge. The H2 does things no other headphone can, and if the issues are fixed, then the title of your review on That Other Forum will really be right on the money, in my opinion.

That sucks. There is a crackle in the left side of my pair, but that is, I think, due to the somewhat sloppy fit between the driver and the headband. During bass-heavy passages the driver vibrates a lot and rattles in the loose fitting. If I slide the driver up a bit into the headband housing, it's a tighter fit, and crackles less. But then again, maybe this whole theory is rubbish, and it's a cabling issue like it is in your pair. Man, this is a headphone still in beta. It has so many virtues but it should have been through this phase before it ever became available to the public. Paying $1500 to beta-test a new headphone is not exactly my cup of tea, no matter how good it is. I don't regret having spent time with these headphones and I may keep them for a while, but if I knew how unfinished they were I would have held off buying them. I don't think the repair will take months; given that it took me all of four days to get my pair from Japan from the time I sent payment, I would guess that he'll be right on top of getting your pair fixed.

Well the Dareds have less treble energy than my old Onkyo solid-state arc welder but there's still too much treble energy to be had. I think this is more to do with differences in sensitivity between the mains driver and the tweeter, with the latter getting louder more quickly than the former. In my opinion, the tweeter needs to be turned down, and very likely I will talk to Mr. Takei about it. Also, a big part of taming the treble happened when I ran the H2 off the 8 ohm taps. It sounds quite a bit more balanced this way, though the midrange is quite peaky still. I agree, though, that once you get used to the H2 it is very difficult to listen to other gear, especially gear that's not on the same level (which is nearly everything). Normally, something with a peaky and uneven midrange would get the boot instantly but the H2 is just so fucking good at times that it's scary. It almost overcomes its weaknesses - but not quite. But, I'm not done with it yet. We'll see what further system matching can do. BTW - has anyone talked to Mr. Takei about the availability of the direct-drive amp that is supposedly soon out in Japan? I'm willing to wager that the transformer box has a lot to do with our midrange woes.