humanflyz

Some of the things you mention that the SR60s do better is inevitably because of the open/closed distinction, but my experiences pretty much match yours. They are decent headphones, and for the price, do nothing wrong. Hmm, which reminds me, I should pick up a pair of SR60s. I personally found removing the foam to be worth the while: it made the bass have a little bit more clarity. As for comfort, I can wear them fine without glasses, but with glasses, they pinch the part of my ear right where the glasses are, so my ears become really sore after an hour. Just a heads up, the K81DJs have a tendency to lose sound in one channel after a while; mine gave out in the right channel after three months. I personally blame it on the cable--especially the lack of a right-angle connector.

I'll see how it does with the HD650, but I just want a good headphone amp so that if anything new comes out, I can have something decent to drive them with.

I haven't received it yet, only paid for it. I imagine I would like it quite a bit.

To further derail the thread, I just got a Dynahi...

Here's a question for those who have heard the AT-AD2000: do they also have that weird midrange "hollowness" as the W5000?

Modern day HP1000? Damn, now I'm excited.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to locate where the HD650s fall short, but paradoxically, they don't really do anything GLARINGLY wrong. I guess it's mediocre in this sense, but in a non-offensive way. Of course I've heard them sound exceptional, and that's probably their biggest strength to me: that they can really scale with the rest of your equipment. But you know, for their price, they are not bad headphones.

I tried the GS1000 out of a Dynamight and a MPX3 SE, forgot what the source was each time. @KenW: Yeah, actually I owned the K701 for a long time, but after I got the K1000s, I felt that it was kind of redundant to keep two AKG headphones at the same time. Since then I've been just trying out different stuff.

I did try the GS1000 when David J still had them. I thought they are very good, but not worth the price, and there's a treble spike that can get too shrill, even for me, and I'm used to bright cans.

I could live with the HD650s as a secondary phone, but I'm in the mood to try out stuff that I haven't heard before. So who knows, maybe I'll eventually end up with the HD650s again.

Yeah seriously, get a cheap external HD enclosure for like $15, and get a 250gig HD. It works wonders.

I think I'll go try the 404 and see how I like it. If I don't, I'm going to the RS-1s.

Thank god, someone else who gets what I mean when I say that the HD650s fall behind the beat of the music. I posted my original post at the other site and no one gets what I mean by that.

As much as I like my K1000 setup, I can't lie down with them, so I started looking for "normal" headphones. I really had no specific trait of what to look for, since sonically I was pretty satisfied with the K1000. I basically just bought whatever I felt like, and it's more exciting this way. I bought the W5000s first because I've been curious about the Audio-Technica high-end. Later I bought the HD650s, since I've never had them, and I feel like I should give them a chance because they are one of, if not the, most popular audiophile cans still in production. Since I'm stuck at my parents' house over the winter break, I had the chance to go back and forth and do some careful listening. Here's what my setup looks in my parents' house: Trends UD-10 Digital USB Transport-->Lavry DA10-->HD650/W5000, all music is lossless It's pretty easy to hear the differences between the two, but both are flawed. The W5000s are definitely brighter than the HD650s, but this doesn't always translate into a good thing. For example, on "Entres Dos Aguas (Rumba)" by Paco de Lucia, the brighter W5000s rendered the guitar-playing more involving and more in-your-face, thus making it a much livelier listen than the HD650. This track also showed me that the W5000s definitely have more PRaT than the HD650s, so that the W5000s demand more of your attention upon listening while the HD650s are more polite by comparison. The HD650s sound more distant by comparison, but this gives it a perception of greater soundstage size-wise. But the W5000s have more precise imaging, possibly because its more forward character makes it easier to perceive where each instrument/personnel is in the song. But I think the W5000 fails in some key areas that ultimately makes it unacceptable to me. First, it has some weird thing going on the midrange, especially the upper-midrange, because female vocals sound out of wack on them. The female vocalist is brought more forward into the soundstage, but in the process, there is this "echo" effect in their singing, like someone added a reverb effect. This is made especially apparent on "John Saw That Number" by Neko Case. The song itself already has some reverb effect, but the W5000 made it that much more, to the point where it becomes hollow and plastic-ky almost. I'm pretty sure this is not an isolated instance, as I heard the same "echo" effect on other songs featuring female vocalists like "Lived in Bars" by Cat Power, although to a lesser extent. Male voices are not as affected by this, although they still do not have the body of the HD650 male vocals. Second, there's something wrong with how the W5000s render the timbre of acoustic instruments. To me, the W5000s get the leading notes right, but the decay goes away too fast. I tried listening to some folk music with acoustic instruments, and the songs just don't sound right to my ears. They also don't do piano right, because there's no weight behind the pounding of the keys, so pianos, especially pounding piano notes, sound shrill. However, the W5000s do pretty well with electrical instruments. Electric guitar solos are a lot more fun to listen to on the W5000 than on the HD650s. I'm quite conflicted about the W5000s, because I can see areas where they have a clear advantage over the HD650s: they have more PRaT, they are funner to listen to for pop music, their imaging is more precise. However, the trade-offs are unacceptable to me: they color the upper-midrange in a strange way that make female vocals sound hollow and echo-y, not enough body, and they can't do timbre on acoustic instruments correctly. I would probably recommend the W5000s to people who listen to contemporary pop/electric music, where timbre don't matter as much and the fun-factor is high. The HD650s aren't that great either IMO. I've heard them before on some pretty high-end systems before (Dynamights, SDS-XLR, Zana Deux, with digital front-ends like the EMM Labs stuff). My biggest gripe with the HD650s is not its dark tonality, but rather, its lack of speed. I get fatigued after listening to the HD650s extensively. I know, strange, but that's because I'm always waiting for the music, which seems just to arrive one step too late. After a while, this strains my mind and make me tired. The soundstage, although big, is not as precise. There's a hole in the middle of the soundstage. The bass can become over-powering at times. Overall, my biggest gripe is that the HD650s sound labored, as if it's struggling somewhat to produce the notes. Now, all of my complaints can be addressed by a lot with good amplification, like the ones that I listed above. But in the end, it's still the HD650, greatly improved, but not to the point where I feel like shelling out the big bucks needed to do it. The bottom line is, if I had to choose between the two, assuming that I have no other headphones, I would not choose either, because both are flawed in ways that ultimately make musical enjoyment less than optimal for me. But since I'm not in that position, it's a lot easier for me to say that when push comes to shove, I'd have to go with the HD650, because of the midrange weirdness that the W5000 exhibits. However, I think my next step would be to sell both the HD650s and the W5000s and try an electro-stat setup instead, because I want something that sounds effortless.

Oh sweet, they re-introduced the active series. I've been looking for them for a while.

Haha, you know what I mean by noise floor? Some turntables have less noise than others. But yes, this is tempting...

Damn this is tempting, especially since I live like half an hour from Amoeba, which has some pretty good vinyl selection. How is the noise floor on this thing? And what are you using to clean your LPs?

What kind of adjustments are available on this deck? Does it have adjustment for VTA, azimuth, tracking force? And can the tone-arm be upgraded to something higher up in the Rega line? And finally, how easy is it to adjust everything and set up?

Jesus these things are killing me with their vice-like grip on my head, and my head is not even that big! After an hour of listening my jaw starts to hurt. Is there any way to make them grip less?

Well, I'm not much of a tech guy, so I have no idea what to make of the features quoted on their page: - high-end Burr Brown PCM2704 IC for USB audio conversion - proprietary dual power regulation circuits design (normal implementations are just directly apply the 5V USB bus power). No matter the power is supplied from the USB bus or from external socket, it is regulated before supply to the related ICs. Dual regulated powers are supplied to digital circuits and analog circuits individually. - separated digital/analog ground. The digital GND (network) and the analog GND (solid) is totally separated except connected via a ferrite bread in a single point. It effectively reduce interference between digital signals and analog signals. - Option to use USB bus power [convenient] or external power [better sound] (e.g. AA size rechargeable battery 1.2V x4=5V, don't use normal batteries with 1.2V x4=6V, it would be too high for safety and good sound performance) - 4pins high accuracy crystal clock (?10ppm) - applied RS422 driving IC to concurrently drive 4 groups of balance & non-balance digital outputs. Audiophiles can compare the differences between these digital outputs instantly or play for the Bi-DACs or even Quad DACs. - proprietary impedance matching circuits for AES/EBU(110ohm), Coaxial(75ohm) digital outputs - applied the specially designed pulse transformers for each AES/EBU and Coaxial outputs to further isolated interference from UD-10 to the external DAC. The most pure, accurate, standard digital signal is then regenerated with minimum interference and jitter. Somebody more technically-inclined might want to break this down for us?

I was looking at a USB digital transport so I could bring my Lavry back home for winter break, and this thing caught my eye. I ordered on the 13th, got here to CA on the 15th from Hong Kong, so I'm very impressed with the shipping. I really like this thing, the build quality is solid. It's small but not feather-light. It has all the digital connection I'll ever need. I'm running the AES/EBU directly to my Lavry, out of my Dell laptop using foobar/ASIO. The thing just works as advertised, and the price is pretty decent too. I think I paid $105 including shipping.

My own listening experiences say that the Headphile mods do make the tonality more even than the stock DT770, but it didn't change the basic sound signature. In other words, still the same headphone, but with less glaring unevenness.

Although technically you don't need the DPS right? I would appreciate any comparisons between running with and without DPS.

The state of current-production full-sized headphones is indeed pretty pathetic compared to back in the day, and this is even more so for closed headphones. I would have to say that the W5000 is the best closed headphone still in production, even though I can hear certain problems with them.

What about modding potentials? Which one scales up better?