qwuzzy

Zeos is not a reliable audio reviewer at all. He is associated only with newbies and he is vastly incorrect in most of his videos. Anyone with any experience will tell you how bad a of a reviewer he is.

As many of you know, I am a very outspoken critic of the Audio Technica ATH-M50X headphones. I have written an entire thread on why I think they are terrible headphones and explaining the hype behind them and why that is all based out of ignorance. Speaking of which, I got someone who asked me why all these different platinum album artists use them then? And his logic was that since all these famous people use them, they must be good. While I understand the logic that would make you come to that conclusion, that position is also based out of ignorance of how the music production industry works. Let me give my insight as someone who works with sound and has been in and around studios.
 
You often see the term "Studio Headphones" thrown around. This leads many people to believe typically one of two things. 1. They must be good since they are used in a studio. 2. That they are neutral because they make music with them so they must not color the sound. Both of those things are wrong. The thing you have to understand is that studios are businesses. In today's world of mainstream music, there are very few artists and producers that put in the time to make a really well recorded and master track, because it is time consuming and time is money. Also, 99% of people have no idea the difference between a well recorded and mastered track, and a bad one. So, by their logic it is not worth the time are effort if no one is going to care.
 
Continuing with this idea of studios being a business, studios don't use what is best, they use what is cheap, durable, and gets the job done. Less money spent on gear means more profit for them, so why spend thousands of dollars on headphones? Cheap and durable is what they look for.
 
Now going back the notion that studio headphones are neutral, that is not true. You see, music is not mixed and mastered on headphones; it is done on speakers. Headphones when it comes to mastering are only used as a check to see what something sounds like on another devices besides the studio monitors. People who care will typically also check mixes on say a phone speaker to see what other people will hear. Now people also see people using headphones will recording, DJing, or performing live. In these cases what headphones you use makes no difference whatsoever. When recording, your headphones are only for you to hear the mix, say a singer recording vocals will have the music playing through the headphones. DJs look for headphones that can be played loudly to drown out the crowd, are durable for them to be thrown in a bag and not break, and many look for ones that can be worn on one ear. Performing live is a similar situation, it is just to hear your mix, you don't need accuracy. Also, you can theoretically mix on any headphones as long as you know their sound signature and know how to compensate for it. So studio headphones don't have to be neutral.
 
This is one of the reasons why the M50X is so popular, it is cheap, durable, folds, and can be worn on one ear. It covers all the basis for studio use, DJing, and live performance. However, this doesn't make it good for you to use for music or gaming as I described in my M50X thread. 
 
Finally I want to give a list of some of the most common studio headphones I see and show you how they are not neutral. 
 
Audio Technica M50X: Bloated bass, sharp highs, terrible grainy mid range:

Audio Technica M40X: Same as M50X

AKG K240: No bass and sharp peaky highs. Also very narrow and intense

Sony MDR 7506: No bass, elevated mid range, very grainy.

Beyer Dynamic DT770: Insanely bloated bass with sharp highs

Beyer Dynamic DT990: Painfully sharp and peaky highs

Sennheiser HD280 Pro: Huge dip in the lower and upper treble with an insane 9K peak.

Sennheiser HD380 Pro: Bloated bass, inconsistent mid range, and peaky treble with rolloff.

 
I hope you learned something from this thread. And remember, the term "Studio Headphones" means basically nothing and doesn't mean they are good or neutral.

So I've recently bought the 30ohm DT770Pro's because I didn't have the budget or the will to invest in a full Amp/DAC system. Upon listening to some songs I notice a small white noise / hum during breaks in songs. I thought perhaps an amp would help and I have the USB Soundcard that comes with the Cloud II's so I thought I'd pair them. This didn't fix the hum so I think it might just be caused by the source of the audio (Spotify) but it does drive the headphones louder. I understand this isn't a high quality soundcard so I was wondering if I was degrading my audio quality at all using it or its fine to use them together?
 
Cheers,
S

Ok so when it comes to driving headphones there is two factors. Impedance and sensitivity. Think of it this way. So on a real headphone amp you will see power ratings given in mW at different ohm ratings. The impedance determines how much power a certain device can push to the headphones at their impedance. Then what happens after that is sensitivity comes into place. That is a measure of how power power in mW is needed to reach a certain volume. So it is actually possible to have a 16ohm headphone that is hard to drive than a 600ohm one. (There actually isn't an example of this in real life but it is possible) So you amp can put more power into 16ohms than 600ohms, but the 16ohm one could require a lot more power to reach a certain volume that the 600ohm one does.
 
What a receiver gives as a rating impedance means basially nothing. And whatever you said about it saying 470ohms and the 1990s only being 250 is not that how that is calculated. Also sound cards are not good for high quality audio FYI.

Yeah... None of this is accurate...

Oh also avoid sound cards like the plague. Get something like a Schiit stack or something. 

That is not how that works. The ohm rating means nothing at all.
Impedance doesn't mean a headphone is hard to drive, sensitivity does.
I don't even know where to start with this. Literally everything you said here is wrong.

Damn, that desk was a really lucky find. Setup looks great!

Here is the PC at home with the complete finished setup. 



I've added an Anker four port USB hub (left of monitor) and a three socket desktop mains power strip (left rear corner of desk). The USB hub is stuck down with velcro and the power strip is clamped solidly on to the desktop. These two things give me convenient connectivity and power that rise and fall with the desk. 



At the far left on the bookshelf you can see my audio interface/DAC that is hooked up to the speakers and PC.


 
I also sanded the edges of the desk to a better finish, rounded the edges and protected it all with Danish oil. 


 
Here the desk is in the standing position. There is a fair bit of weight on the desk now so It's nice knowing there are three good quality actuators under there. I'm 6"2' so I have the desk quite high, I imagine it'd be a bit wobbly if it just had the two legs.


 
From the back you can see the cable management. I used two Ikea Signum cable trays to hold everything under the desk. I put a power strip in each of the cable trays which meant I only had to have one power cable run to the floor. Despite this I still had to use a fair few extra long and a few custom cables to connect everything else up. Everything is tied up with velcro wraps and I tried to use all black cables to keep it looking tidy. I used a big zip up cable sleeve for the cables that run to the floor so nothing gets caught when the desk is moving.

Time to move on to the real build log!