catscratch

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.

I've had issues with the H2's midrange running the TR2 off the Dareds' 4 ohm taps. In this setup, the midrange was recessed while the bass was very upfront, as was the treble. Switching to the 8 ohm taps really brings the midrange out, and it is now more or less balanced with the bass and the treble, at least in general terms. I think the TR2 is a 16 ohm load but 8 ohm taps are all I've got so it will have to do. I have to second the notion that these headphones are very system-specific. Some amps just sound like rubbish with them, and even though the transformer box hurts the ultimate resolution (I think, going on hearsay here but it seems pretty universal), there is still an awful lot of resolution to be had, which shows up your system irregularities very nicely. Think of these as truly high-end phones, because they are. You wouldn't drop an O2 into a consumer-grade system, and you shouldn't do it here. I've really been amazed at the performance improvement I got just by replacing my rubbish Onkyo arc welder with the Dared monoblocks (which also cuts out the lousy Denon preamp); it's a completely different headphone now and there is much more resolution across the board. Let's just say that the days of it getting stomped by an HD600 out of a Hornet are over. I'm expecting some very good things in the next few weeks, with a tuberoll and some silver cables on their way into the system.

Wow, the Dareds really do make a difference with the H2. Much more resolution, the treble is back under control, the bass is no longer loose, and everything is much more realistic and defined. The transformer box still limits the ultimate resolution, as does my source and the rubbish cables I have in the system, but it's already very palatable and will only get better from here, I think. The soundstage is already pretty astonishing, and the bass will make you run home and cry to mama. Everything just sounds BIG and there is enough air and space around each instrument to make electrostatics weep. I can only imagine what a good tube direct-drive amp will do. This is also a very lousy headphone for meets, since not only do you need to listen in a quiet area, much like you do with a K1k, but it's also pretty system-specific from what I've been able to tell, and needs smooth and neutral gear if it's to sound balanced.

The fit definitely makes a massive difference. When I heard it I made sure to manhandle the poor thing into exactly the fit it needed to be in, and the echoey/cavernous effect was mostly gone, as well as the extra brightness. It was very tonally balanced and not bright at all, very smooth and even sounding, extremely detailed, and fast for a dynamic. But, there was something decidedly wrong with tone and tembre of instruments that are predominantly in the midrange. So, it was excellent with electronic music where its tonal and tembral irregularities don't matter, but for things that need a more realistic tone and tembre, I think there are better choices. Still, it's one of the best dynamics I've heard, period. It does have an electrostatic quality to its sound, but with much more impact and crisper imaging.

In my experience, that very much depends. Some do, some don't. Tryptamines (ex. psilocybin) tend to really alter the very fundamentals of your thought processes and can very much produce life-altering results. They may enhance your perceptions of the music, but perceiving music is usually the last thing on your mind (such as it is at the time). Phenethylamines (2C- on the other hand will leave your central processes more or less intact, while thoroughly scrambling your perceptions. They can definitely enhance the music, or perhaps a more accurate description would be "alter the music." Salvia Divinorum (which is in its own category entirely) definitely alters your perceptions of the music a great deal, but using that stuff as a music enhancer is like using a nuclear warhead to hammer in nails. Good ol' Lucy definitely does enhance the music to a great degree, and you tend to simply get lost in the spaces between the sounds. Some of the most astonishing musical experiences I've ever had have come from this. And your basic greens enhance your ability to perceive microdetail immensely, but at the same time they also reduce your ability to focus, as well as hurting your short-term memory, so it's a great listening session while it lasts, but you tend to not take away anything useful from it. Of course, in audio we say "everyone's ears are different," and when it comes to neurochemistry, that's even more true.

God, I fucking love Top Gear. Too bad the BBC doesn't bring it here to the states. Now, I'm not a media pirate, but if you deny me my favorite show for no reason that I can see, well, then it's not really a moral question anymore. I find gin to very much be an aquired taste, but I like it, either straight up or in the gin & tonic variety. My friends think I'm nuts and can't stand the stuff though. Still, it has to be said that alcohol does NOT in general enhance my audio perception. It tends to make me lose focus and shortens the attention span. I can't really appreciate the finer subtleties of the music I'm listening to, though often it does enhance my ability to go along with the flow of the music. So, psytrance and the like goes down a lot better, but ambient electronica tends to go over my head, and classical is just too complex to be fully appreciated except when you're sober. But, the gods blessed us with many other things besides alcohol, and some of them, together with the right music (and the right system) have produced a full-blown mystical experience. And by mystical, I mean the type where you're completely shattered and have to rebuild your mind piece by piece for hours afterwards. Hm... seems I can't go a post without mentioning at least two crimes in it. Oh well.

Just about any prog and power metal band that tries to write classical music. I used to be a classical composer, maybe that's why I have higher standards. But, I have a hard time appreciating the metal in a song when the classical elements are something that an 8th grader with a classical music education could handily improve upon. So, stuff like Rhapsody and Dragonforce is hilariously bad to my ears. Latter-day Dream Theater as well; DT was pretty good when Kevin Moore was at the songwriting helm, but when he left he took all of DT's melodic talent with him. Whatever, Watchtower already said everything that DT was trying to say in back '89 (I think... a bit hazy oh my music history). Just about the only classical/metal hybrid I could stand was Symphony-X, and then only for a few albums - V is their masterpiece and Twilight on Olympus (I think? Don't remember) was also pretty good. Winds was alright too, but way too bombastic and overblown.

Nile's "Black Seeds of Vengeance" and "In Their Darkened Shrines" are the two best metal albums I've ever heard. Somehow, though, they don't exactly go over well when played to an unsuspecting audience

Um. My first point was that with the gear I used I didn't like the HD650. My second point is that I admit the possibility that somewhere out there a rig could potentially exist in which I will like how the HD650 sounded. These 2 points aren't mutually exclusive. I'm simply being open-minded about a system I don't like. Besides, what doesn't sound veiled to one may sound veiled and bloated to another. I don't subscribe to audio relativism but since headphones ignore HRTFs to a point, they do sound physically different to different people.

Well in that case I would have driven the car around the parking lot for a year, and the lot would have been the size of my daily commute. I've lived with the HD650 for over a year and I've heard it with several portable and stationary amps. I haven't heard it balanced or with a truly reference-level source, which is why I put that disclaimer in my post. I don't like this headphone. I don't care how much you flame me for it, I'm not going to lie about it just to be popular. But, I acknowledge the possibility that there may be a rig in which I will like it.