[tamleo]

... don't fixate on the nominal impedance per se. There exists a variety of low impedance (< 40 ohms) headphones that have a 'defined' (musically coherent and enjoyable) sound: Audeze LCD-X, Dan Clark Aeon, Grado RS-1x .... for starters.

Ok maybe I have not heard many headphones out there but as an owner of some old Denon (d5000 d7000 a100) and tried the LCD-X and grado (rs1 ps500? Dont remember the name exactly) and I do not think they are what I can call very accurate/resolve sounding headphones. They only sounded cool in a short listening. I prefered the LCD2 rev2 and the 3 to the X. Tried the Clear but actually it wasn’t any better than the much cheaper Elex imo. It was just my experience on impedance and I admit that it is too early to worry about the Oae1. I am just too excited about the headphone lol.
Ps: 55ohm on the Clear is almost 1.5x the 38ohm and I don’t think they are comparable.

 

[zilax002]

... don't fixate on the nominal impedance per se. There exists a variety of low impedance (< 40 ohms) headphones that have a 'defined' (musically coherent and enjoyable) sound: Audeze LCD-X, Dan Clark Aeon, Grado RS-1x .... for starters.

Worth noting that all of those headphones except the Grado's are planars, which tend to be low impedance.

BUT I'm also not one who thinks the sound quality of a headphone is going to be determined by the impedance. There are so many different factors that go into the design, thinking impedance alone could be deterministic is quite silly. If that was the case, any high impedance can would be good and we know that's not the case!

 

[Halleluhwah]

Why would impedance change the sound quality? Underpowered amplifier aside.

 

[kman1211]

Why would impedance change the sound quality? Underpowered amplifier aside.

I think it’s something that mainly comes from the old DT Beyers and their varying impedances. The higher impedance models had a lighter voice coil which means a faster more responsive driver.

 

[jonathan c]

Worth noting that all of those headphones except the Grado's are planars, which tend to be low impedance.

.... there are other headphones, dynamic & planar-magnetic, that are low impedance (< 40 ohms, in this discussion) ..... e.g. Kennerton (Gjallarhorn, Rognir ....)

 

[karloil]

Unfortuantely, I cancelled my order. Heard the Hadenys and fell in love with it.

Can't justify the blind by for now. Will keep an eye on more reviews 1st.

 

[zilax002]

Unfortuantely, I cancelled my order. Heard the Hadenys and fell in love with it.

Can't justify the blind by for now. Will keep an eye on more reviews 1st.

How'd you manage to hear that? Haha

Have you heard the Elex? Was interested in the new Focal headphones but from what I've heard so far it seems like it's not a straightforward upgrade over the Elex.

 

[karloil]

How'd you manage to hear that? Haha

Have you heard the Elex? Was interested in the new Focal headphones but from what I've heard so far it seems like it's not a straightforward upgrade over the Elex.

Demo units are all over the place from where I stay. No, have not heard the Elex.

 

[kman1211]

Unfortuantely, I cancelled my order. Heard the Hadenys and fell in love with it.

Can't justify the blind by for now. Will keep an eye on more reviews 1st.

I was going to pre-oder the OAE1, but ended up pre-ordering the Azurys. May also get the OAE1 sometime soon though. Was more in the market for a neutral closed-back though.

 

[maegnificant]

I was going to pre-oder the OAE1, but ended up pre-ordering the Azurys. May also get the OAE1 sometime soon though. Was more in the market for a neutral closed-back though.

Sennheiser HD 620S?

 

[kman1211]

Sennheiser HD 620S?

The pleather pads are a big reason why I didn't preorder them and I have a lot of Senns, I've also never owned a Focal

 

[SHAMuuu]

I think it’s something that mainly comes from the old DT Beyers and their varying impedances. The higher impedance models had a lighter voice coil which means a faster more responsive driver.

There was 2000 ohm DT100 which has the spookiest most silent blackness background and the voices are so realistic.

Also noticed differences between the 32 ohm, 80, 250, 600 , and 2000

Though oddly their 5 ohm and 25 ohm are deadly silent.

So both points are valid

 

[buidoimiennui]

Sony made some real innovative stuff.



this kind of has the same vibe as mdr-f1.

IIRC someone on here put the mdr-cd1000 drivers into them, which I believe is biocellulose as well.

nice to see the design come to fruition.

One thing I am curious about is whether it has the ability to be pad rolled, as that would allow people to tweak if the original is not their cuppa tea.

And no reason to think just b/c it will be mid tier, it cannot slay a Giant.

That mdr-f1 would've been the bee's knees if it had a hinge system like akg1000 so the driver angle could be adjusted

I'm sure it would be no easy feat to engineer a hinge, but if spaceships can be built i don't see why not. I thought the new composer headphone was going to be like that (with adjustable angle driver) but ... nope

and as a big fan of stax sigma, which has speaker right in front of ear, the concept of this this in dynamic driver form is fantastic

A bit off topic. But I'm diy a headphone, based on the suspension design of mysphere and the housing is based on the mdr-f1 and. Well, I also use fostex's biocellulose driver. Surely I won't be sued by companies and sir akg1000, right?

and I think when all the traditional ideas are saturated. Now is the time for headphone-speaker hybrids to begin to develop.

 

[Evshrug]

Apparently two years ago when they made the TWS wireless earbuds, grell audio was owned by a different investor and alex grell didn't have as much control.

https://www.strax.com/
He had to buy back the rights to use his own name for his company. It was a very difficult ending.

Yeah I never got this concept either. Makes no sense to me for music that is supposed to be like a band playing in front of you. But I can imagine interesting scenarios where it could be cool. Though I highly doubt this will work with just a stereo headphone and a stereo mix of music.

Most music is recorded and performed with the intended playback on a pair of stereo speakers. Some DVD and BluRay 5.1 mixed recordings do exist, and what you get there is either the band playing in front of you and the ambiance (reverb and resonance) of the room around the theater or performance hall, OR it’s an experimental immersive album that’s supposed to have sounds swirling all around you. Talking about extreme niché, I’ve even heard about a Flaming Lips album that comes on four cassette tapes, you were supposed to put them into four boom boxes arranged around you and synchronize playback

Our two ears can discern front/back/up/down though. Yeah, in music this is mainly room ambiance (or maybe a sensation of standing in the pit below), but I see this being more utility in movies and especially games. Movies generally do focus your attention forward to match the camera’s framing, but occasionally they do have a racetrack of cars driving up from behind you, helicopters whirling overhead. It’s all for the sake of immersion, because we hear in a sphere all the time in real life. In the virtual worlds of games and VR, however, the player or participant (not all VR experiences are games) is often able to manually interact with the camera’s perspective, while things that make noise persist at their virtual location irrespective of where the camera looks. Imagine a soldier stomping around upstairs or mud squelching below your feet. It can both give tactical information and immersion into creepy horror or exploration.

A pair of stereo headphones certainly can recreate sounds that seem to emanate from any direction: I’ve been enjoying surround DSPs since I started lurking on Head-Fi in 2008, with various Dolby Headphone, Creative THX/SBX, and Sennheiser Binaural Engine products. The best I’ve ever heard was with the Smith Realiser A16… it used computer analysis of frequency sweeps recorded by a pair of in-ear microphones, comparing 16 speaker directions (apparently more in their last model) to a pair of stereo headphones, and then building a personalized transformation that could be applied to any stereo or surround recording (like an EQ, but more) for each channel to sound just like the headphones were a speaker playing that channel’s signal. Someone else in this thread said JVC demo’d a similar project. But it’s all encoded into the stereo signal that is fed to regular stereo headphones.

For me I don't care about a 360° sound after all as it's already been said, that's not the way we listen to music normally. For me I enjoy my Susvara, Ca1a and Ed5 because you can hear deep into your recordings yet they remain musical and engaging with precision imaging.

For music, it’s less about 360° spherical sound, and more like replicating the sensation of music performed outside your head, whereas typical stereo music played through headphones seems to emanate along a line that crosses straight from one ear through your skull to the other ear. It’s especially nice if you don’t have a perfectly sound treated room and/or living situation where you can play speakers.

Tried the Clear but actually it wasn’t any better than the much cheaper Elex imo.

Elex = Elear + Clear pads, I think. The Clear itself may have tighter tolerance for L/R driver matching, which is very important for soundstage, but I don’t know for sure the exact difference between Elex and Clear… certainly the Elex was a bargain.

 

[Evshrug]

Oh, and @maegnificant , some people just totally prefer the intimate sound of headphone playback of plain regular stereo regardless, and I respect that. I just think it’s cool to have both options.