this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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I know this is meant as a joke, but I have to say, it's incredibly hard to get proper audio equipment without paying idiot tax like crazy.
I want neither China crap, nor overengineered German CD shavers (those really exist, BTW), but just decent audio. If you look for reviews, everything under 2000€ is utter garbage, apparently, and you should be sterilized for even thinking about spending less than that. Or you go on Amazon and even a brick wall will have stellar reviews, because it sounds really awesome and even has Bluetooth!
Extremely frustrating. No middle ground.
Once I reported a listing, because it was initially selling something like hair clips, got great reviews, and then somehow changed everything to a BBQ Grill whilst keeping all the old reviews.
The listing was still up a couple of months later. Half five star reviews about some random product, half bad reviews about how the grill would randomly collapse or something.
I often see products with multiple different model options (for example, monitors) but most of the reviews are about the old models, essentially boosting their review count on day one with reviews from the past.
That's if you buy the marketing. You can find very good headphones in the 200-500 range. Hell, for portable audio you can get an akg k361 and a Qudelix 5k for $230 and that'd be a pretty good setup.
I personally use either that akg headphone or the Moondrop Aria hooked up to my phone and I think it's decent enough.
For a home setup I have a Topping DX3 Pro+ and the Hifiman Edition XS. In total that would cost around 550 I think and the quality (to my ears) is phenomenal.
And that's already a whole lot of money for next to no value for 99% of the people.
Let's be honest, most people listen to Spotify in a room that's not ideal for listening. And I'm also very very certain that most of the higher end stuff (and I'm counting everything over 200€) is esoteric. You can't hear a difference in quality. Maybe a difference, but not objectively better or worse.
Problem is, where exactly is the line? It's almost impossible to tell whether this one speaker is garbage with a markup or actually high quality.
And more fundamentally: I can buy a brand new smartphone, with absolute top notch technology for 200€, but speakers and amplifiers, technologies that existed for decades and should be out-scienced by now still cost that much without any guarantees for quality? Sound should be a solved problem.
I've yet to meet a person that isn't blown away by how much better my headphones or iems sound compared to their earbuds/laptop speakers. However, I do have to admit that several just don't really care that much. And some of the ones that do care, can't afford it or justify the cost.
Your comparison doesn't make much sense and I honestly don't even know where to begin explaining exactly how different they are. From design to production process, to shipping differences and market size. Lifespan is wildly different as well. Headphones can last you 20+ years whereas a smartphone will need to be replaced after 3 or 4.
This is why I buy used audio gear. The basic guts of the stuff hasn't changed much in the past several decades.
I bought a nice used head unit and speakers 10 years ago. They're 30+ years old now and still work perfectly well.
I’m not sure you read the comment fully, they suggested headphones, not speakers. Just a quiet room is enough for that. Speakers are more expensive because they have to move a lot of air in a room. I’m no expert, but I think it’s the mere physics of doing so accurately that keeps it above 200. A technology can be more or less solved without becoming sub 200.
Anyway, what’s the price range you’re looking for? I’m sure someone can recommend headphones for any range if you’re interested in those.
I strongly believe those people should not be thinking about audiophile gear. Thankfully, audiophile companies don’t really advertise. The claims most of those companies make are targeted towards people who are into audio, and often feature lots of solid snake oil that 99% of people would not understand. Companies that do advertise heavily tend to emphasize vague things like “deep, rich bass to accurate mids and crisp, clean highs” instead.
What makes you “very very certain”? There are some quantifiable quality differences, like accurate positioning of sounds or perceived distance from the listener. It may not be necessarily worth the price, but I’m not seeing how you’re “very very certain” everything above 200 is esoteric and that it’s impossible to discern quality.
Audiophile communities never suggest blind buying because even a high quality product may not have the sound signature you like. It’s similar to how a Rolls Royce, a high quality vehicle, may be too slow and comfortable for someone who would prefer a cheaper Corvette. Those in cities likely have multiple dealers who would be happy to have you come in and sample the stuff, or Best Buy. Pick something you like, regardless of price tag or recommendation. Those not in cities can get on lists of free samples that are then sent to the next listener, or buy and return from stores. Headphones.com has a 365 day return policy intended for this, though there is a restocking fee. Amazon is an unethical company and you can return large dollar quantities without fees before being blacklisted.
Speakers are harder to test if you do not have audio stores or Best Buy. I would still suggest listening when next in a city if possible. I can’t think of anything for those in areas without Best Buy and never enter one, but there might still be something.
if you use a good equalizer, you can equalize pretty much any headphone to your ideal frequency response, as long as it has a loud enough maximum volume and doesn't have distortion (so any half-decent headphone over $50 should do fine. Some would say you can go even lower)
That's quite a stretch. You can use an equalizer to improve the sound of a headphone but there are literal physical limitations to it. Not all drivers are equal in size or speed. Not to mention that there's a difference in the size of their enclosures as well as the technology they use (electrostatic, planar or dynamic for example). There are lots of sound characteristics that will never change regardless of how much eq you use.
So no, a $50 dynamic headphone will not sound as good as a planar magnetic $500 one. If you think otherwise, please provide a source or at least an example.
The thing is, distortion (maybe more accurately called nonlinearity) is the only known objective way to measure the difference in sound quality between two headphones EQ'd to the same target. (there are some other measures like signal-to-noise ratio but they are even more useless) And the difference in the value becomes very small for a technically good $50 headphone and the best headphone ever made. (technically good eg. the natural frequency response isn't crazy far from your target and the nonlinearities are competitively low)
Now, two headphones EQ'd to the same target, even if both are measured to result in the exact same sound, won't actually sound the same to your ears because the "head dummy" used for the test doesn't have the same ear shape and characteristics as you do. But unless there is some strong evidence that the headphone manufacturer has a better methodology than what is publicly available, then there's no reason to think they are somehow able to account for your specific ear's needs without custom designing the product just for you. - You're left with having to either EQ yourself, or using dozens of headphones and testing which you like the most. And the EQ route is going to be much faster and cheaper
for sources, these discussion seem the most useful
https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/144yaiq/why_dont_we_measure_headphone_resolution/jni4z70/?context=5 (whole thread is useful)
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/is-there-any-way-to-objectively-measure-headphone-resolution.17684/
you can say that most people who spend a lot of time and money trying to achieve "perfect audio" seem to think that EQ is only a supplement to already good headphones, but given that there has been no success at objective measurements of quality and that many people swear the thousands they spent on insulated golden cables improve their audio quality, I err on the side of saving my money.
My man, do you have ears? Have you personally confirmed your theory? Because I (sort of) did. I've used earpods, earbuds (cheap sennheiser models like mx365 and mx200 and akg k312p), various headphones (AKG k44, k361, k712 pro, ath-m40x, sennheiser hd518 and hifiman edition xs). I've also always used eq when I can. Usually the ones from Oratory1990.
There are tangible and considerable differences between all of those headphones/iems. For example, no amount of eq is going to make a 5mm driver sound like a 50mm one. On top of that, the tonality characteristics of the driver can't be perfectly equalized to make all headphones sound the same. Soundstage is also not something you can eq for. No amount of EQ would make an Audio Technica ATH-M20X sound like a Sony MDR Z1R.
Additionally, have you considered usability? Not all platforms have a way to eq your headphones easily. Even if you can do it, it's not something integrated to the OS, most people don't even know what a low-pass filter and they do not know how to set it up. In other cases, such as android, you can use eq in your music player (I use poweramp for this) but it's not a system-wide eq. If one headphone is significantly better than another one out of the box then yeah, that has value.
So again, I ask, do you have any real-world examples for this theory of yours?
"tonality characteristics" and "soundstage" are subjective words that have no concrete definition. Other similar words are "grain", "speed", "separation", "resolution". They can't be objectively measured, and are most likely just another function of frequency response.
The differences between headphones are most likely your ear having a different shape from the reference ear used to make the eq targets, leading to a different final perceived frequency response. (or limitations in the accuracy of the measurements, most targets I believe are "smoothed")
I'm going to trust the (claimed, who knows, maybe oratory1990 is a liar) consensus of audio engineers over your anecdotes. As I said there are plenty of audiophiles whose "lived experience" is that $2000 golden cables are necessary and that they can tell the difference between any $200 and $1000 DAC (even though a decent DAC in that price range already has a dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio of 100-120dB which should be totally indistinguishable from perfectly clear audio for all humans
personally the only decent-ish headphones I have are DT 880 600 ohm and a JBL 760NC. The latter kind of fills all the boxes of being a wireless headphone and has poor reviews and a poor default sound profile. But after EQing both, I can't really notice any difference except when very carefully doing side-to-side comparisons (besides the much better comfort of around-ears vs over-ear).
In contrast I believe I can tell, with some songs, the difference between 320kbps mp3 and flac (just 44.1khz), but even there I'm not sure it's not just placebo
Usability is kind of secondary, android should have jamesDSP and the venn diagram of people that know the best headphones to buy (instead of beats by dre) and who can setup an EQ (install an app and follow written instructions) should have a lot of overlap
I will say though that more expensive headphones are probably going to last longer and are probably much more comfortable
No my dude, tonality characteristics are about how each driver responds to each frequency signal. There's tons of research that goes into the materials and construction of headphone drivers, they're not all the same. Soundstage is also not subjective. Although I do not know how you can measure it, I've played audio through my open headphones to people and they genuinely cannot tell if the sound of an opening door for example is coming from the headphones or if it's real. That's the type of efect soundstage gives you.
So you've only tried a very siblant headphone (dt880) which isn't necessarily bad and a JBL wireless headset? Instead of reading so many forum posts, go to an audio shop and try the actual headphones before trying to lecture other people in things you have never experienced yourself. I'm sorry if it sounds harsh but you're trying to give advice on something you've never tried and have only read random forum posts about.
I am not one of those people. Even though there is snake oil in the industry, that does not mean that everything is snake oil. If a cable passes the continuity test then that's good enough. And regarding dacs, a lot of the advice I've read also says that going beyond $100 you won't find a big difference in sound.
Usability, my friend, is king. When you get older and have to do tons of stuff, adding more things to the list ends up getting very annoying. Not just that, if you were to migrate to iOS for whatever reason, you'd lose the ability to eq your headphones. So an app existing and being maintained today and for 1 mobile os does not guarantee that the problem has been solved forever. You're depending on a random third party.
EQ how? An accurate microphone/RTA setup will cost more than good headphones in the first place.
step 1. Try presets that have already been calibrated to some target for those specific headphones. There are hundreds to thousands of headphones included in the bigger preset collections.
step 2. tweak the EQ values by yourself by ear if you want to. There is no objectively best sound, so it comes down to your personal preference anyways, and you can't measure that in any practical way (and I'd say neither can the companies making expensive headphones, which is why there are hundreds of different headphones both cheap and expensive with different frequency responses and more getting made all the time)
https://www.rtings.com/headphones
I have used this site to buy monitors and displays. They are generally pretty objective and provide thorough data and they often document their methodology.
It is such a blessing to have unrefined taste. My brother is an audiophile and has fallen into this hole. I can't tell the difference. I got cheap bookshelf speaks for the TV and that's good enough for me as an upgrade from the TV built in speaker. My 15 year old PC Logitech speakers are doing great. Anker earphones had good enough reviews from soundguys.com. I listen to my brother's speakers with his lossless music and it really makes no difference to me. It has been great for my wallet. I mostly listen to podcasts anyway.
I hear ya. I’ve got enough expensive hobbies as is, so I’m glad I dodged that one. I listen to YouTube music on Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, I’ve got cheap Creative Pebble Pro PC speakers and it’s PERFECTLY FINE to my ears. Sure, I could spend 500 bucks on headphones and another 500 on speakers, but they just don’t give me that ‘wow’ factor to where it seems like a good investment. I’ve tried them; it wasn’t for me.
I’m also not the guy you should take to a fancy restaurant. A Domino’s pizza tastes just fine to me, so a five star Michelin restaurant would just be completely wasted on me. I’ve got exquisite taste and refinement in other areas, but I’m wholly a basic bitch in these two.
Nothing wrong with Creative. My first vinyl releases early 2000, Audigy soundcard with the breakout box and Creative Cambridge 5.1 PC speakers.
I could say a lot on this, as I've been in the whole premium audio/audiophile thing for a little while (I don't buy the hype, I just want something that sounds good but doesn't break the bank).
What I want to mention is that cd shavers have a purpose, but it's not necessarily good for audio/audio quality. To put it simply, if a disc is unbalanced and wobbles in the reader/player, it's prone to errors. With audio, most of these errors are correctable, and at most generate artifacts in the sound (like ticks or pops), but with faster readers, usually with data storage (like 48x or 52x cd/dvd readers) those errors can cause some significant issues where the disc needs to be re-read. The wobble of the disc due to balance issues can be a significant factor at high speeds.
Shaving a disc, which is really just trimming excess material until the disc is circularly uniform, can reduce errors and increase access speeds.
While all of this is possible, in practice, it doesn't really matter all that much.
I will finish by saying: you won't notice if a CD/DVD/BluRay is in balance, but you will definitely notice if it's significantly out of balance.
Lots of middle ground out there.
Marantz, NAD, Cambridge Audio, and others all can put together great semi-audiophole systems. If a shop tries to upsell you on cables etc., judt tell them 'you're already covered.'
Meanwhile, small speakers for under $500 have never sounded better.
Or you can step up a notch and by used. I've got Rotel and Rega gear, which is way over-value.
You can get good quality headphones for not that much money. Linsoul KZ ZS10s are surprisingly good for only $40. Grados SR-80s and Hifiman HE400s are both audiophile quality for a bit over $100.
I have hifiman Sundara and KZ ZS10. Both excellent and great value.
Kz is durable as hell, I'm using them for 4 years already and they are good as new
You might find some DankPods videos on YouTube helpful. He does a lot of silly videos about e-junk, but he is also a musician who, in some videos, points out good and affordable headphones. Sorry I can’t recall off the top of head what those are, though.
It's hard because a big part of audio is subjective. Not everyone wants flat sounding earphones or headphones. I used to browse head-fi.org. Not sure if it's still a good source but I found a lot of good reviews for even budget stuff so I was able to get great sounding earphone recommendations for almost any price range.
It took a while but I've settled for Etymotic research in the long run. They fit what I like and they are decently affordable. Also I've had a pair for 5 years now and they still work which cannot be said for the majority of earphones I own.
See if you can find used audio equipment.
About 10 years ago, I was looking for a decent 2.1 system. I had a budget of about $1000usd. On a friend's advice, I went to a used audio shop.
I was able to get an older NAD receiver and nice Boston Acustics speakers for about $750. I found a new Polk sub for $250.
I've been using my system almost daily for 10 years now. It's fantastic and I feel no need to upgrade.
See if you can find a store that sells used audio equipment near you
Moondrop Chu is a $20 earphone that has audiophile-tier sound according to many audiophile reviewers. Don’t bother with the built-in microphone though.
What’s a CD shaver?
https://youtu.be/f-QxLAxwxkM?si=N9ltCiSSxgGkkdTR
Glad you asked.
One of these things, apparently.
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/07/improve-cd-sound-by-shaving/
This is so stupid, CDs have error correction codes. Special redundancy that fixes reading errors up to some level. If your reader is so junky that it gets uncorrectable errors, no amount of "trapping the light in the CD" is gonna change that. And even if you get some incorrect bit the player will probably try to guess it and unless your ear is some kind of specialty ultrafast tuning equipment you won't hear the difference.
Just go ask THX what they recommend for a proper surround sound setup.
/s
Yep, it's a big problem in audio and other subjective areas, because you have no way of knowing what the anonymous reviewer's point of reference is, and most professional reviewers' reference points are not suitable. It's worse too, because purchaser-reviewers self-select into their category, so you expect most people to be satisfied with the subjective aspects of a product they've purchased, even though most people would not be satisfied with a random cheap product. This is all not helped by the fact that, in audio when differences are so minute, virtually no-one is conducting blind reviews so confirmation bias probably accounts for huge amounts of the final score. Sure, any professional reviewer is going to be able to identify a bum product that costs thousands, but I bet most of them will rate an identical product more highly if they're told it costs 10x as much and comes from a fancier brand.
I've ended up crowdsourcing my recommendations from places like reddit where people tend to make tiered recommendation lists so you at least know they have the goal of producing the best products at each price level.
This exact thing happened in the wine world in 1976 during the "Judgment of Paris" wine-tasting event. The top wine critics in the world did a blind taste test of the best French wines and a bunch of unknown California wines. Naturally, everyone, including the critics, thought France would win hands-down. California won, shocking everyone. Before revealing the results, the judges were asked whether they thought the California or French wines had won. They all assumed that the wines they rated the highest were French, claiming they could tell which was which even while blinded. The interesting thing isn't so much that California wines were good, but rather that the professional judges couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test.
Yeah, I've seen the same pattern with knives. If you just want a decent kitchen knife, you'll find tons of people who are absolutely certain, that it's physically impossible to cut anything unless the blade has been sharpened by a Japanese virgin under moonlight.
I assume, the value for money curve is a sigmoidal, where at a certain, relatively low price you get almost all the value and afterwards it only gets more expensive, but not better. But you never know, when you've reached the plateau.
KZ earphones are excellent, and I think they're Chinese. I actually have mine hooked up to a bluetooth headphone amplifier that has an app ans and can do balance output to the KZ with an upgraded cable. All in I probably paid $100.
Yeah bro, i have these too, using then every day, they durable as fuck and sound way way better than even those thrice it's price, also changing cables is a lifesaver, and their cables is durable as hell too, I'm using the same cable for 4 years already and it's still good as new