Audiophile wannabe

[DJMasHup007]

Hello guys!

I would like to buy into the audio game. I am considering the following headphones:

V-Moda Crossfade LP2

Sennheiser HD598

Beyerdynamic DT770 80Ohms

Beyerdynamic DT880

Beyerdynamic DT990 

I would like to use it as a studio monitor, listening to high-end music on the go.

Which one do you recommend?

Current amp/dac: Fiio Q1

[steffeeh]

If you're looking for studio standard headphones you're on the wrong forum. Head to Gearslutz or KVR and ask there.

 

EDIT: Studio standard means that it exposes the music as naked as possible making all flaws more audible to find and correct, it doesn't mean that the music is displayed as beautiful as possible as in hifi soundsystems.

[DJMasHup007]

3 minutes ago, steffeeh said:

If you're looking for studio standard headphones you're on the wrong forum. Head to Gearslutz or KVR and ask there.

 

EDIT: Studio standard means that it exposes the music as naked as possible making all flaws more audible to find and correct, it doesn't mean that the music is displayed as beautiful as possible as in hifi soundsystems.

I know

[steffeeh]

Goodie

[Organized]

Audio Technica ATH-M50X

[DJMasHup007]

1 minute ago, Organized said:

Audio Technica ATH-M50X

On other forums they say its shit

[Organized]

I have these and everytime I listen to a vinyl with my tube headphone amp it just blows me away.

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, steffeeh said:

If you're looking for studio standard headphones you're on the wrong forum.

 

29 minutes ago, steffeeh said:

Goodie

 

Says someone who's never posted in the audio sub before. If that's your opinion, might I suggest that you head off to the "right" forum.

 

25 minutes ago, DJMasHup007 said:

On other forums they say its shit

 

What's your budget? About $200? I can tell you first off that an open headphone is going to be a challenge to use "on the go" due to the lack of isolation from outside noise; you also risk annoying people around you with your music.

[Dackzy]

7 hours ago, DJMasHup007 said:

On other forums they say its shit

they are, sharp harsh highs, mids that are a bit laid back, no soundstage, very meh comfort, but good tight bass. They are also not suitable for studio use. Some of the more common closed headphones I have seen in studio's are sony mdr 7506 and shure 840, but they aren't that pretty...

[KaminKevCrew]

MDR CD900ST if you want to spend that much, otherwise the MDR7506/V6 are excellent headphones that will literally last decades with nothing more than a pad swap. 

 

M50X is not worth buying.

 

Also, what is "high end music"???

[steffeeh]

10 hours ago, SSL said:

 

 

Says someone who's never posted in the audio sub before. If that's your opinion, might I suggest that you head off to the "right" forum.

 

 

What's your budget? About $200? I can tell you first off that an open headphone is going to be a challenge to use "on the go" due to the lack of isolation from outside noise; you also risk annoying people around you with your music.

Given that he was looking for studio standard audio, he's probably better off on a studio forum for this specific question, hence why I said so. If I see someone asking a computer tech question on a studio forum, I then refer them to a tech forum. If he was looking for hifi audio, then of course this would be an as good forum as any audio forum.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, steffeeh said:

Given that he was looking for studio standard audio, he's probably better off on a studio forum for this specific question, hence why I said so. If he was looking for hifi audio, then of course this would an as good forum as anyone.

 

Audio's audio.

[steffeeh]

10 minutes ago, SSL said:

 

Audio's audio.

That is an oversimplification. There are multiple ways to playback audio to suite the needs of different tasks, and having the wrong playback system for your scenario can be very bad. For hifi you want it to playback the music as beautiful as possible, for home cinema audio you want it to playback movies so you can live into the movie as much as possible, for studio sound you want the playback to reveal as many flaws as possible to find and correct if you work with audio production/editing and expose the music as naked as possible (doesn't mean though that music sounds horrible on studio systems though).

While hifi sounds great, it can be a catastrophy for this last mentioned scenario as it would cover up the flaws that you need to find and correct = your final audio product will have bad audio quality. Given the OP's name and desire for studio standard, his usage may involve some audio editing/production (can only guess though).

 

OP: Sorry for kinda hijacking the thread

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, steffeeh said:

That is an oversimplification. There are multiple ways to playback audio to suite the needs of different tasks, and having the wrong playback system for your scenario can be very bad. For hifi you want it to playback the music as beautiful as possible, for home cinema audio you want it to playback movies so you can live into the movie as much as possible, for studio sound you want the playback to reveal as many flaws as possible to find and correct if you work with audio production/editing and expose the music as naked as possible (doesn't mean though that music sounds horrible on studio systems though).

While hifi sounds great, it can be a catastrophy for this last mentioned scenario as it would cover up the flaws that you need to find and correct = your final audio product will have bad audio quality. Given the OP's name and desire for studio standard, his usage may involve some audio editing/production (can only guess though).

 

Uh. Wow.

 

I'm not sure how any of this would prevent this subforum from providing advice on transducers for "studio" use. For all you know, there could be people here that work in such an environment.

 

For the record, "hifi" is short for "high fidelity". Fidelity here means "faithfulness to the original". So... yeah.

 

Again, I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion that the OP would not ALSO get sound advice in the appropriate LTT sub. Can we just agree that you will not advise people against asking their questions here? Thank you.

[KaminKevCrew]

1 hour ago, steffeeh said:

That is an oversimplification. There are multiple ways to playback audio to suite the needs of different tasks, and having the wrong playback system for your scenario can be very bad. For hifi you want it to playback the music as beautiful as possible, for home cinema audio you want it to playback movies so you can live into the movie as much as possible, for studio sound you want the playback to reveal as many flaws as possible to find and correct if you work with audio production/editing and expose the music as naked as possible (doesn't mean though that music sounds horrible on studio systems though).

While hifi sounds great, it can be a catastrophy for this last mentioned scenario as it would cover up the flaws that you need to find and correct = your final audio product will have bad audio quality. Given the OP's name and desire for studio standard, his usage may involve some audio editing/production (can only guess though).

 

OP: Sorry for kinda hijacking the thread

I know plenty of Audio Engineers that master music with "hi-fi" audio gear. High Quality gear (generally) makes shitty recordings sound shitty, and good recordings sound good. That's exactly what studio gear does. You're attempting to make a distinction that doesn't actually exist. There are "fun" headphones that wouldn't be too useful for mastering, but those can be had at just about any price point which, again, makes the point you're trying to make irrelevant.

[steffeeh]

3 hours ago, steffeeh said:

for studio sound you want the playback to reveal as many flaws as possible to find and correct if you work with audio production/editing and expose the music as naked as possible (doesn't mean though that music sounds horrible on studio systems though).

 

2 hours ago, KaminKevCrew said:

I know plenty of Audio Engineers that master music with "hi-fi" audio gear. High Quality gear (generally) makes shitty recordings sound shitty, and good recordings sound good. That's exactly what studio gear does. You're attempting to make a distinction that doesn't actually exist. There are "fun" headphones that wouldn't be too useful for mastering, but those can be had at just about any price point which, again, makes the point you're trying to make irrelevant.

To me we're pretty much saying the same things... If you can't hear any flaws on a studio system, then it's playbacking good audio as good, if you hear tons of flaws that needs to be fixed, then you hear shitty audio as shitty.

However if you edit audio on a system made to make shitty music sound good (or at least improve audio quality overall), then you will hear your shitty work in progress as good (or at least better), and eventually you'll start scratching your head on why your work sound like crap on regular systems when showing your friends and so on.

It's true that studios also use regular speakers and even coloring audiophile ones - but they are only used for referencing -> the main work is done on studio monitors.

The whole purpose with mastering for instance is to make the audio translate evenly to the destined medium, and therefore you will see a mastering engineer switch back and forth on maybe 3 sets of studio monitors, at least 1 set of studio headphones, and then also try out different regular systems that they like to use (mostly resembling the expected systems a song will be played on for example) - that is if you turn to a good engineer over a lazy one. Then the client tries playing the audio on a preferred set of playback systems and gets back to the engineer, hopefully without any suggestions on things that needs to be changed.

Another example is the mixing engineer Tony Maserati, who mainly uses studio speakers as you would expect, but then is known for trying out the audio on both audiophile speakers and even a pair of blown computer speakers - for reference.

The bottomline however is that the main work is not done on non-studio speakers, only for reference.

 

Not saying you would give bad advice here, but instead of just posting here and maybe get 1 or 2 replies from people who actually give insight on a studio scenario, you could post this on a studio forum and get 20-30 replies from people active in the industry with indepth insight to get a great pair of headphones perfect for YOU. 
The odds are simply better. 
I work in a studio environment (sounddesigner) and I'm active both on tech forums and studio forums, and here I am saying that the OP is better off with (possibly) a studio related question on a studio forum - they exist for a reason.
Post the same question here as well as a studio forum, and you will clearly see the difference. 
If this was a question about playback devices solely made to playback as beautiful as possible (i.e pure audiophile reasons) I wouldn't have suggested a studio forum as that wouldn't have been necessary and I'd have left that out.

I have myself once upon a time switched from decent regular speakers that actually sounded pretty good for the price point - to a pair of studio speakers, and certainly the audio quality got up a bit, but especially the difficulty of audio editing/production doubled or even trippled as they revealed so much more, and that literally took my audio quality to the next level.

Also, my brother has set of audiophile speakers that sound great, but you clearly hear a difference between them that they are aimed at completely different purposes.

It's kinda funny that whenever I advice people asking tech questions on a studio forum to head to a tech forum instead to get more accurate responses, nobody bats an eye, but as soon as I advice people asking possibly studio related questions here to go ahead and ask on a studio forum, everybody starts ripping their hair off.

Not sure how this would harm the subforum anyway, I just made a suggestion to the OP, now it's up to the OP to do what he wants with that suggestion.

The linguistic definition of hifi doesn't really matter as I'm speaking of a scenario where you want your music as beautiful as possible (call it hifi, audiophile-systems, or whatever you want, it's called hifi here as a slang where I live, sorry for the confusion) vs a scenario where you want to hear the truth of your work in progress. 

 

Phew, that's a lot of text...

[spwath]

33 minutes ago, steffeeh said:

 

To me we're pretty much saying the same things... If you can't hear any flaws on a studio system, then it's playbacking good audio as good, if you hear tons of flaws that needs to be fixed, then you hear shitty audio as shitty.

However if you edit audio on a system made to make shitty music sound good (or at least improve audio quality overall), then you will hear your shitty work in progress as good (or at least better), and eventually you'll start scratching your head on why your work sound like crap on regular systems when showing your friends and so on.

It's true that studios also use regular speakers and even coloring audiophile ones - but they are only used for referencing -> the main work is done on studio monitors.

The whole purpose with mastering for instance is to make the audio translate evenly to the destined medium, and therefore you will see a mastering engineer switch back and forth on maybe 3 sets of studio monitors, at least 1 set of studio headphones, and then also try out different regular systems that they like to use (mostly resembling the expected systems a song will be played on for example) - that is if you turn to a good engineer over a lazy one. Then the client tries playing the audio on a preferred set of playback systems and gets back to the engineer, hopefully without any suggestions on things that needs to be changed.

Another example is the mixing engineer Tony Maserati, who mainly uses studio speakers as you would expect, but then is known for trying out the audio on both audiophile speakers and even a pair of blown computer speakers - for reference.

The bottomline however is that the main work is not done on non-studio speakers, only for reference.

 

Not saying you would give bad advice here, but instead of just posting here and maybe get 1 or 2 replies from people who actually give insight on a studio scenario, you could post this on a studio forum and get 20-30 replies from people active in the industry with indepth insight to get a great pair of headphones perfect for YOU. 
The odds are simply better. 
I work in a studio environment (sounddesigner) and I'm active both on tech forums and studio forums, and here I am saying that the OP is better off with (possibly) a studio related question on a studio forum - they exist for a reason.
Post the same question here as well as a studio forum, and you will clearly see the difference. 
If this was a question about playback devices solely made to playback as beautiful as possible (i.e pure audiophile reasons) I wouldn't have suggested a studio forum as that wouldn't have been necessary and I'd have left that out.

I have myself once upon a time switched from decent regular speakers that actually sounded pretty good for the price point - to a pair of studio speakers, and certainly the audio quality got up a bit, but especially the difficulty of audio editing/production doubled or even trippled as they revealed so much more, and that literally took my audio quality to the next level.

Also, my brother has set of audiophile speakers that sound great, but you clearly hear a difference between them that they are aimed at completely different purposes.

It's kinda funny that whenever I advice people asking tech questions on a studio forum to head to a tech forum instead to get more accurate responses, nobody bats an eye, but as soon as I advice people asking possibly studio related questions here to go ahead and ask on a studio forum, everybody starts ripping their hair off.

Not sure how this would harm the subforum anyway, I just made a suggestion to the OP, now it's up to the OP to do what he wants with that suggestion.

The linguistic definition of hifi doesn't really matter as I'm speaking of a scenario where you want your music as beautiful as possible (call it hifi, audiophile-systems, or whatever you want, it's called hifi here as a slang where I live, sorry for the confusion) vs a scenario where you want to hear the truth of your work in progress. 

 

Phew, that's a lot of text...

no, your advice is still not good. Good hifi gear is like good studio hear. It reproduces things as accurate as possible.

good audio is good audio.

[Lays]

1 hour ago, steffeeh said:

 

I work in a studio environment (sounddesigner) 

 

Let's be realistic here you have a soundcloud with 15 followers and you produce EDM

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, steffeeh said:

le snip

 

What a self-important little rant.

 

At the end of the day, you're contradicting yourself. On the one hand, the OP will only get "2 or 3" responses here because this is a tech forum. But on the other hand, they're going to get "hifi"/audiophile recommendations instead of "studio" recommendations.

 

So which is it? Is this a tech forum or a "hifi" forum? Or a "studio" forum? Or ... gasp! ... could it be all at once because we're in the AUDIO sub? Fuck me. This thread even has audiophile in the title.

 

Besides. What does it matter if the OP only gets a few responses here? The density of relevant responses isn't likely to be much lower, so it's hardly time wasted.

 

I have no problem with someone seeking advice in multiple places, but for someone like you - who does not post in this sub at all - to come in and make sweeping claims about the level of knowledge available here - is slightly arrogant and moderately shitty. To make matters worse, you're operating from false assumptions that "hifi" is about making shitty music sound good (as if that were possible). You're also making the even more illogical assumption that people who may listen to purposefully colored gear can't also recognize the need for resolving, uncolored gear for critical listening.

 

So again, instead of posting another preachy novel about your preconceptions of "studio vs hifi" ... maybe don't post? I notice that despite the fact that you:

2 hours ago, spwath said:

work in a studio environment (sounddesigner)

 

You have offered nothing that specifically answers the OP. They're probably on Gearslutz as we speak, so I hope you're happy.

[spwath]

57 minutes ago, SSL said:

 

What a self-important little rant.

 

 

somehow you quoted me

 

 

also, @that annoying guy, you don't come into a group of friends and pretend like you know them and how they work.. So dony do that here. We are friends here, once you are trusted. It's in the forum title. Oh wait......

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, spwath said:

somehow you quoted me

 

4ham madness.

[Dackzy]

25 minutes ago, spwath said:

We are friends here, once you are trusted.

awww

[KaminKevCrew]

 

2 hours ago, SSL said:

 

4ham madness.

 

2 hours ago, Dackzy said:

awww

 

2 hours ago, spwath said:

somehow you quoted me

 

 

also, @that annoying guy, you don't come into a group of friends and pretend like you know them and how they work.. So dony do that here. We are friends here, once you are trusted. It's in the forum title. Oh wait......

Buddies!!!

[Dackzy]

Just now, KaminKevCrew said:

Buddies!!!

*high five*

[steffeeh]

On 2016-12-15 at 11:36 PM, DJMasHup007 said:

I would like to use it as a studio monitor, listening to high-end music on the go.

 

On 2016-12-15 at 11:51 PM, steffeeh said:

If you're looking for studio standard headphones you're on the wrong forum. Head to Gearslutz or KVR and ask there.

 

EDIT: Studio standard means that it exposes the music as naked as possible making all flaws more audible to find and correct, it doesn't mean that the music is displayed as beautiful as possible as in hifi soundsystems.

 

On 2016-12-15 at 11:55 PM, DJMasHup007 said:

I know

This is pretty much why I replied about the necessity to ask on a studio forum as he showed indications that he already knew about studio stuff and meant the involved tasks for the headphones would include studio usage, and not regular listening only. Hence why studio forum recommendations might be preferable to cover that part as well (if he didn't look for studio recommendations he probably wouldn't head over to the other forums anyway).

Browsing this thread I couldn't see much replies about headphone recommendations in terms of the studio hints he gave (nothing like "oh no those headphones doesn't have any good flat tone curve and doesn't reveal lowend muddyness as good as others" or whatever it may be - answers you would get on a studio forum), which made me make the suggestion to head elsewhere in case the OP might have needed those replies too. He was looking for best of both worlds but he only seemed to get answers from one side here. I have no idea why this is such a big deal...

7 hours ago, SSL said:

You have offered nothing that specifically answers the OP. They're probably on Gearslutz as we speak, so I hope you're happy.

I put him into a certain direction where he could hopefully find more answers. If he's on Gearslutz or KVR now continuing his search, I guess that he indeed found more info on the subject, which would be great for him. I may not technically directly have replied to the OP's list, but once again I mentioned a possible way he could get more info, which is just as valuable imo.

 

7 hours ago, SSL said:

but for someone like you - who does not post in this sub at all - to come in and make sweeping claims about the level of knowledge available here

 

10 hours ago, steffeeh said:

Not saying you would give bad advice here

Hmm?

 

Not interested in any dogmatic social club, I'm only browsing the latest threads whenever I'm bored to see if there is any topic where I can help.

Not sure why I even bother replying here anymore since I was only here to help the OP, which I hope I did... I just keep repeating myself and keep seeing other repeat themselves as well, so have a great weekend