Would you spend £24,444 on a headphone setup?

mrk

mrk

mrk

Man of Honour
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
102,867
Location
South Coast
Well neither would I, but Linus recently got sent a stack of boxes from Abyss who claim to make the highest resolution headphones you can buy, and the whole setup is even cheaper than the Sennheiser Orpheus...


I watched this with fascination, because knowing what Linus is like I fully expected him to dish out the brass tax, but you can tell he wants to throughout but the headphones do sound amazing it would seem, just.... the cost even for just the cans alone.

Still, if I had that kind of money to splash, there probably wouldn't be anywhere else I'd go.
 
I watched this earlier and it was interesting.

If I was far more wealthy then I am (and by this I mean affluent enough for work to be a choice), I would certainly consider something like this, but at the same time if I had that sort of money to put down on headphones I probably wouldn't be concerned about controlling sound levels in-case I upset the neighbours. I'd have the space and freedom to set up a very nice speaker system which wouldn't require me to sit with something on my head, as well as properly sound treating whatever room I built my setup in. Of course this would have the added benefit of being easy to share with friends who came over, taking turns listening to headphones isn't really my idea of fun, and this is coming from someone who owns multiple sets of high end headphones.
 
That's all assuming you'd choose to live on your own! The whole premise of headphones is to give you that listening pleasure without disturbing those around you :cool:

So the sensible thing to do would have both speakers and headphones. Which most of us here have anyway!
 
mrk said:
That's all assuming you'd choose to live on your own! The whole premise of headphones is to give you that listening pleasure without disturbing those around you :cool:

So the sensible thing to do would have both speakers and headphones. Which most of us here have anyway!
Click to expand...

True enough!

That said, in most cases if you're in a position to put that sort of cash down you're probably able to soundproof a room for speakers.

...But if you're that well off you're also able to buy both anyway...

It never ends does it? lol

I love audio and while I admit much of it is snake oil, it's a rabbit hole that's so easy to dive down when you've the finances.
 
Last edited:
mrk said:
:o and here I am with just a D 7050 and HD650s!!!
Click to expand...

I stick with my HD600s as they do both well - properly mastered audio sounds amazing and they don't completely destroy my enjoyment of mainstream stuff - anything much more expensive you quickly start to notice just how muddle your favourite tunes are :(
 
I have gone to a few hifi shows with mates and listened to some of the exotic headphone setups(with all the amps,dacs,etc) costing over £10000(some which needed pre-booking beforehand to listen to) - TBH,even with good test recordings they were decent,but also universally disappointing IMHO. There were cheaper and less elaborate setups which sounded as good(or even subjective better) for much less dosh. It seems exclusivity and hyping the brand is the main selling point of these kind of systems.

Also,TBH,needing such a huge volume of amplifcation,etc to just run some smallish drivers in a headphone seems a bit ridiculous IMHO.

Even the whole resolution thing can be quite misleading - I have a system which could run SACDs,and they did sound better than the CD equivalents. However,then I did some research and found the mastering was different for SACDs as they assume a better quality of system - even though the red book standard has its own technical limitations,its mastering which can make a huge difference to how good a recording sounds.
 
Last edited:
At that end of the spectrum it’s the law of diminishing returns. Technically they maybe better than a £1000 pair of headphones, but how much? 1%, 2% ? Can you even hear it? At that sort of money it’s purely down to bragging rights and e-peening. Studio engineers and musicians don’t use headphones that cost anywhere near this and they MAKE the music that gets played on these. Think about it logically...
 
Maybe not that much, even if I were a millionaire.Because of basically what has already been said regarding diminishing returns and playing the numbers game.

Didn't watch the video because Linus though. Linus can suck it.
 
Rossi~ said:
Maybe not that much, even if I were a millionaire.Because of basically what has already been said regarding diminishing returns and playing the numbers game.

Didn't watch the video because Linus though. Linus can suck it.
Click to expand...

Easier to listen to than Buildzoid...Like, like, basically, like, basically, like like like......makes my teeth itch.
 
Something I'd pay good money for is to get that taut crispness of these expensive drivers combined with a good open sound and the bass attack of the first generation Sennheiser Momentums - love the Momentums as a novelty but the slight distortion and occasional but not totally uncommon muddiness induced in the mid-range to give them that trick bass makes them not very appealing for general use.

Probably not physically possible though due to one aspect benefiting from an open design and the other closed design.
 
The points about what the human ear can hear vs diminishing returns are valid. As you get older the freq range the human ear is capable of hearing gets worse as most will know. So these super high resolution speakers/cables/amps etc must have a point where it becomes placebo and actually turns into an engineering effort to show what is technically possible, whether it’s audible or not to the human ear is an individual affair.

What is audibly different however is how sound is presented. The soundstage, noise floor (where analogue amps are concerned) are obvious points here.

But in my experience what makes the biggest difference is the mastering quality of the music being played. People rave about SACDs but as mentioned earlier, SACDs often have the best quality master to go off anyway so of course it would be great. RIP an SACD to FLAC and blind play to someone with a down to earth priced headphone vs one of these beasts and I bet most people wouldn’t be able t tell which cost 5 figures. What will be noted is the sound presentation, something which does of course vary wildly even on regular priced semi/high end headphones.
 
mrk said:
The points about what the human ear can hear vs diminishing returns are valid. As you get older the freq range the human ear is capable of hearing gets worse as most will know. So these super high resolution speakers/cables/amps etc must have a point where it becomes placebo and actually turns into an engineering effort to show what is technically possible, whether it’s audible or not to the human ear is an individual affair.

What is audibly different however is how sound is presented. The soundstage, noise floor (where analogue amps are concerned) are obvious points here.
Click to expand...

Indeed, and it becomes purely subjective at that point (providing the sound is clean of course).
 
Reminds me when I posted that thread can you Weally Tell the difference between mp3 and flac, think nearly everyone failed on the test and apparently I have pretty good ears and ability to note differences :)

So I agree I think its almost or eventually come with just how the sounds presented and our almost emotional feel with it.
 
R3X said:
Reminds me when I posted that thread can you Weally Tell the difference between mp3 and flac, think nearly everyone failed on the test and apparently I have pretty good ears and ability to note differences :)

So I agree I think its almost or eventually come with just how the sounds presented and our almost emotional feel with it.
Click to expand...

This thread you mean:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...ell-difference-between-mp3-and-flac.18843941/

The problem is that I found its more evident on a hifi system than headphones after doing similar tests over the years with mates,firstly on 320kbps minidiscs and then MP3s compared to their CD originals. It was mostly on music which emphasised detail and scale,as opposed to pop music which tends to be mastered for radio,etc where the dynamic range is compressed in post production. So for headphones and most normal listening even on the hifi,I find streaming good enough for my purposes.

Also MP3 is really a legacy compression algorithm like jpegs. There are better compression algorithms,like Ogg Vorbis,AAC,etc which do better at lower bitrates. You can see this in games,etc where MP3 is really used nowadays. Even in that article you linked to they did a follow up:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therec...ou-did-slightly-better-than-guessing-randomly

It wouldn't surprise me that instead of MP3,if they used one of the new compression algorithms,it would be much harder to tell things apart IMHO.

Another thing regarding FLACs - most are transcoded from CD which is a compression of higher resolution source tracks which can be analogue or digital(it is lossy).If you listen to talks from people who were involved with developing CD,it actually wasn't the ideal way of encoding audio information(red book standard),as it is inefficient in some ways(how it handles quiet areas of a track). What is ideally required is mastering down from the original masters,directly to one of the newer compression algorithms.
 
Last edited:
Nope. Even if I was rich I wouldnt bother.

Not because its a waste of money, some people would love it. But for me personally, I dont sit down and listen to music like that, I listen to a lot of music but its mostly while doing something I have it on in the background or while commuting.

Me having such a pair wouldnt do them justice, not to mention I listen on Spotify (albeit on highest quality settings) but thats nothing compared to the proper ways to listen to music.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom