Soldato
In 8 years of ownership I have never felt the need to change my 650's. That's not to say there arent better headphones that have more detail, or a stronger bottom end or wider sound stage, but the 650's just do everything so well.
Another "recommend me Headphone post" but better
- Thread starter Klunt Bumskrint
- Start date
I've just been sat here for 2 hours listening to all the lossless hi res music i can find. Just listening to music. Don't think I've done that since the early 90's.
Was quite taken by this.
Was quite taken by this.
Did that quite a bit - you really gain an appreciation for well made music even stuff you wouldn't normally listen to with the right setup around a pair of 600 series.
3:20-3:43 sounds insane on my setup.
3:20-3:43 sounds insane on my setup.
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Nobody really answered one of my other questions about whether me investing in a dac/amp would be beneficial over just using my Soundblaster Z.
Anyone?
Anyone?
Soldato
Well as your main use is gaming it really boils down to whether you want to use virtual surround because if you do then you are pretty much stuck with using a sound card anyway as external DACs don't have this feature.
Your options would be:
1) keep the Soundblaster and plug the HD650s into it
2) Keep the sound blaster and connect it to an external DAC optically, which would retain the surround feature.
3) ditch the sound blaster and buy an external DAC & Amp, which would give you straight stereo only
4) ditch the sound blaster and get an Asus Xonar Essence STX which has a much stronger amp and higher spec DAC.
A stronger amp not only allows you to increase the volume but an amp capable of providing a higher output voltage will bring the HD650s to life as they can sound a little dull on a lower spec amp.
I personally took steps 3 and 4, using the STX for gaming and the external DAC & Amp for music to get the best of both worlds. It does mean spending more but to me the results justified the expenditure.
Something you will come up against rather quickly is the law of diminishing returns, in that as you move up the scale of DACs and amps, the improvement in sound quality becomes ever smaller until you get into the region of hyper-fi where all sorts of audiophile nonsense is spouted and none of it is verifiable via measurements.
I have a relatively low end system, a Schiit Vali DAC (£95), Schiit Magni 2 (£95) amp and Schiit Vali (£150 for v2) tube hybrid amp. For just a little more you could get a Chord Mojo, which is a world class DAC and amp in a tiny package - Ryan swears by his.
Does this sound better than my sound blaster Z? Yes it does, specially with the HD650 and my AKG K702 as the amp is able to provide a lot more power than the sound card and both of these headphones need more power in order to sound their best, volts in the case of the Sennheisers and amps in the case of the AKGs. Is the improvement in sound quality a "night and day" difference (I hate that term)? Nope, any differences are quite subtle and don't believe anyone who tells you different.
Same goes for the STX, it drives the HD650s a lot better than the sound blaster but the main thing you notice is how much easier it is to get LOUD, whereas sound quality differences will be quite small and subtle, such as sharper imaging, more realistic sound stage, etc but due to the extra voltage the STX gives you, you also get a cleaner, fuller sound.
So should you upgrade from your sound blaster? It's entirely up to you to be honest, you may be lucky and not have overly sensitive hearing, in which case there is little point in getting expensive equipment but on the other hand you could have very sensitive hearing which can mean an expensive future as you strive for better and better sound. The safest way is to try before you buy, either take your headphones to a store and try better DACs and amps or order from somewhere like Amazon that has a good, no quibble return policy. The point being that they are your ears and your hearing will be different to anybody else, so only you can make this decision - which is why so many posts on Head-fi finish with YMMV (your mileage may vary).
ps. probably 80~90% of the sound quality will come from the headphones themselves and as you have a very good pair, then you are off to a flying start. Also and this is very important, the HD650 scales like no other headphone, meaning that the better amp you use, the better they will sound, while a headphone like the Philips Fidelio X2 will plateau, meaning that after a point it just won't sound any better and you will be wasting your money trying to improve it.
Your options would be:
1) keep the Soundblaster and plug the HD650s into it
2) Keep the sound blaster and connect it to an external DAC optically, which would retain the surround feature.
3) ditch the sound blaster and buy an external DAC & Amp, which would give you straight stereo only
4) ditch the sound blaster and get an Asus Xonar Essence STX which has a much stronger amp and higher spec DAC.
A stronger amp not only allows you to increase the volume but an amp capable of providing a higher output voltage will bring the HD650s to life as they can sound a little dull on a lower spec amp.
I personally took steps 3 and 4, using the STX for gaming and the external DAC & Amp for music to get the best of both worlds. It does mean spending more but to me the results justified the expenditure.
Something you will come up against rather quickly is the law of diminishing returns, in that as you move up the scale of DACs and amps, the improvement in sound quality becomes ever smaller until you get into the region of hyper-fi where all sorts of audiophile nonsense is spouted and none of it is verifiable via measurements.
I have a relatively low end system, a Schiit Vali DAC (£95), Schiit Magni 2 (£95) amp and Schiit Vali (£150 for v2) tube hybrid amp. For just a little more you could get a Chord Mojo, which is a world class DAC and amp in a tiny package - Ryan swears by his.
Does this sound better than my sound blaster Z? Yes it does, specially with the HD650 and my AKG K702 as the amp is able to provide a lot more power than the sound card and both of these headphones need more power in order to sound their best, volts in the case of the Sennheisers and amps in the case of the AKGs. Is the improvement in sound quality a "night and day" difference (I hate that term)? Nope, any differences are quite subtle and don't believe anyone who tells you different.
Same goes for the STX, it drives the HD650s a lot better than the sound blaster but the main thing you notice is how much easier it is to get LOUD, whereas sound quality differences will be quite small and subtle, such as sharper imaging, more realistic sound stage, etc but due to the extra voltage the STX gives you, you also get a cleaner, fuller sound.
So should you upgrade from your sound blaster? It's entirely up to you to be honest, you may be lucky and not have overly sensitive hearing, in which case there is little point in getting expensive equipment but on the other hand you could have very sensitive hearing which can mean an expensive future as you strive for better and better sound. The safest way is to try before you buy, either take your headphones to a store and try better DACs and amps or order from somewhere like Amazon that has a good, no quibble return policy. The point being that they are your ears and your hearing will be different to anybody else, so only you can make this decision - which is why so many posts on Head-fi finish with YMMV (your mileage may vary).
ps. probably 80~90% of the sound quality will come from the headphones themselves and as you have a very good pair, then you are off to a flying start. Also and this is very important, the HD650 scales like no other headphone, meaning that the better amp you use, the better they will sound, while a headphone like the Philips Fidelio X2 will plateau, meaning that after a point it just won't sound any better and you will be wasting your money trying to improve it.
Brilliant. Exactly the response I needed!
I do use virtual surround in games.
I'm no "audiophile" but I do appreciate clean sound as I do a clean image and as I've started to mature I want more from my audio.
My initial thoughts are to get the soundcard you mentioned, but I'll leave it for a bit and give these a whirl for a few weeks as is and see how I'm feeling.
Some food for though chap. Thanks.
Wrong thread dammit!
Associate
My exact reaction when I went from UE6000, which I thought were good anyway, to the SoundMAGIC HP200's
Some say the HP200's have a very similar signature to the HD650 with a slightly brighter top end. I've never heard the HD650's so I can't comment
My exact reaction when I went from UE6000, which I thought were good anyway, to the SoundMAGIC HP200's
Some say the HP200's have a very similar signature to the HD650 with a slightly brighter top end. I've never heard the HD650's so I can't comment
I thought my AD700's were good but I'm hearing stuff I haven't heard before. I redownloaded all my Radiohead collection in level 8 flac and it's so good. 3000kbps
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I thought my AD700's were good but in hearing stuff I haven't heard before. I redownloaded all my Radiohead collection in level 8 flac and it's so good. 3000kbps
They are good if you want soundstage width but awful if you want resolution. In games like The Last of Us they do really well because there's rarely busy moments that test the headphone. In games like Witcher 3 they sounded bad where there's a lot more going on.
The 650 are able to resolve really well but struggle with the open aspect, stage feels more constricting. The 650 are among the most detailed headphones I've heard but there main Strength is being able to sound completely smooth from top to bottom with no peaks. They just sound like real music, beautiful.
Soldato
I have tried many headphones, the list is very long and currently own the 650's, Fidelio X2's and the AKG K550 MK2.
The 650 are hands down the most comfortable out of any headphone I have ever tried. The X2's have a wonderful floating headband thing but somehow Sennheiser have just got the design perfect without complications.
Plus the sound they produce is the dogs danglies.
The 650 are hands down the most comfortable out of any headphone I have ever tried. The X2's have a wonderful floating headband thing but somehow Sennheiser have just got the design perfect without complications.
Plus the sound they produce is the dogs danglies.
Soldato
I don't find the AKG K702 uncomfortable in the slightest but the HD650 is definitely more comfortable. One thing about the HD650s, they are certainly ear huggers, in that they do exert a LOT more pressure than the AKGs. The pressure does reduce as time goes by but you may find the need to slightly bend the metal extenders outwards which can reduce the pressure considerably.
Please note, if you do want to bend them outwards, under no circumstances bend the plastic as it will most certainly break: Fully extend each earcup as far as it will go, then take hold of the metal extender at either end of the exposed metal and bend that outwards without stressing the plastic. Do the same on the other cup and you have yourself a pair of ear pillows made of clouds
Please note, if you do want to bend them outwards, under no circumstances bend the plastic as it will most certainly break: Fully extend each earcup as far as it will go, then take hold of the metal extender at either end of the exposed metal and bend that outwards without stressing the plastic. Do the same on the other cup and you have yourself a pair of ear pillows made of clouds
650's need an OTL tube amp to shine you have to factor the cost of an amp in.
I certainly prefer my fidelio x1 over my 650's but I don't have a good otl amp or solid state amp the 650's are meant to scale upwards with amps but sound their best on an OTL like the expensive tube amps like the bottlehead crack.
I certainly prefer my fidelio x1 over my 650's but I don't have a good otl amp or solid state amp the 650's are meant to scale upwards with amps but sound their best on an OTL like the expensive tube amps like the bottlehead crack.
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The important thing is having a decent amount of voltage and responsive voltage swing - especially to overcome the impedance lump in the low end and less so at the upper end of their frequency response. This tends to come from the higher end OTL tube amps but by no means an exclusive to them. Without that the bass and treble tend to collapse and they sound muddy.
(In my experience anything that isn't running around atleast 20+v rail to rail and atleast a gain of around 5-6 or higher doesn't get the best out of them).
EDIT: Doing a bit of googling an interesting comment on that aspect:
Still my experience has been that they like a decent amount of voltage to get going at the top and bottom ends.
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Soldato
A good article on amplifier gain by NwAvGuy - who recommends using the lowest gain that will get the job done....
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/all-about-gain.html
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/all-about-gain.html
I'm currently driving my 600s with a slightly modified version of the O2 with fixed 2.5x gain (2V RMS source) and I don't consider it sufficient though he notes 2x gain for home sources with the 600s there its the minimum for them to not sound rubbish but 5-6X gain sounds better even in a home setting. (This is slightly skewed by using a lower voltage than the O2 is intended for but even in my earlier testing at 24v rail to rail I considered 5-6x gain opened them up more).
But yeah you want the minimum to get the job done as otherwise as I believe the article states you just amplify additional noise.
Working on a bit higher gain/higher voltage variant now as what I'm using at the moment was testing adapting the O2 to use LMH6643 output buffers and a USB power source - which are limiting to half the voltage the O2 nominally runs at which limits gain a bit.
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Soldato
it depends on how strong the signal is from the source, if you're getting a good strong 2v signal in then 2x is more than enough considering the HD600 only needs 2.3v.
I get a maximum of 1.5v from the modi 2 and the gain from the magni 2 is either x1.5 (3db) or x6 (15.6db) and I've been switching between the two and frankly I can't tell the difference except for the obvious volume difference, the bass is clean and strong with both.
I get a maximum of 1.5v from the modi 2 and the gain from the magni 2 is either x1.5 (3db) or x6 (15.6db) and I've been switching between the two and frankly I can't tell the difference except for the obvious volume difference, the bass is clean and strong with both.
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Usually the X-Fi XtremeMusic which can drive the 600s directly so so but not really enough volume and they sound dull and lifeless. The variant of the O2 I'm using runs from + and - 5 volt (real not vground) rails (10V rail to rail) so not sure what the actual output V-RMS is but technically below the calculation for 2.5x gain I believe hence I have to control the source volume to stop the input stage being over-driven. Anyhow while it makes the 600s plenty loud and doesn't sound bad it doesn't have quite the life that I get with some of my other attempts at 5-6x gain and 12-15v rails.
Shame nwavguy didn't do a variant pushing the boat out a bit - I know it was supposed to be objective and all but uprating the film caps to audio grade polypropylenes and a smattering of boutique caps and op amps while not dramatically altering the performance or accuracy really does open the sound up nicely I find the wider soundstage more enjoyable.