Some things to think about: 1. A good song is good, that won't change if your listening on some earphones you bought in a gas station or on the newest, nicest Seinheisser or Shire or Skullcandy headphonds. It might sound better, but it won't be better. 2. I know high end Seinheisser will sound better than my Skullcandy, but I like Skullcandy's way of operating with their awesome customer service and lifetime warranty. They also are WAY more comfortable on my head. Stay away from bad customer service. Bose sounds good but their customer service is terrible. 3. Durability: My Skullcandys broke. I admit it. But, they broke by a family member stuffing them into a tiny drawer which resulted in the little can stem thing. I have it superglued and they still work fine. If they broke my me dropping them, they would be broken before I opened the box. I dropped it on the way home. Yes, you can break some cans by dropping them on the ground. Stay away from those.
You're definitely right that bad songs will not suddenly become amazing with good phones. But being able to hear the subtleties and things that other headphones just didn't pick up is awesome. The depth of field, the bass response, the balanced armature, the absolutely massive soundstage, the lack of distortion from the bass when the volume's up... I disagree. The song is better for it. A song may very well be good without good technology to back it up, but to have all bottlenecks removed and to hear the song come through exactly as the band intended is satisfying.
Just came back from the shop with the ATH-M50, coiled cable. Pretty happy so far, let's see how it fares after some burn-in.
I have the ATH-M40fs series, and after looking at some specs, I guess they're pretty similar. I actually picked them up for professional monitoring; if the M50's are anything like the M40fs, you may find the response a little flat; you won't get blown eardrums from heavy bass or anything. But I'm starting to prefer the more balanced type. More akin to what the producer or artist wanted you to hear, and once your ears grow used to not only hearing the sub-500 Hz range, everything just sorta falls into place.
From what I heard (pun intended ) the M50s are meant to have a softer bass and just are more balanced in general. The finer details don't matter to me - I have an amazing Sennheiser headset at home as well as very nice speakers. The M50s are for wearing around uni an on the go - not exactly where I expect flawless sound quality.
Ive got an audio technica one that works pretty good. Holds onto your head tight enough, but theres not much noise cancelllation like bose does, but its way cheaper
DO NOT buy skull candy or Beats by dr.dre if you know anything about headphones. Bose are not the best, contrary to most beliefs. I'm an audiophile and only use and advice the use of GOOD quality audio equipment. If you want more information go to Head-Fi Forums and your mind will be blown. Ultrasone are my headphones of choice Grado Denon Sennheiser Sony Are all good too, it all depends on your budget. Also all of you talking about song quality, I hope you're not referring to your downloaded mp3s LOL...Not much quality from an mp3 doesn't matter what song. If you want quality download FLAC and convert them to ALAC and put it in your iTunes. PM me for details if you're interested in GOOD QUALITY MUSIC AND SOUND!! Or go buy an SACD Player and SACDs if you want top quality, each song over 1gb
I had the S4's (the model without the in-line controls) and I loved them. I personally upgraded to the Sennheiser IE6's, which were $30 more than the S4 list price on Amazon at the time of purchase. I love them, but it took a little while to get used to the different buds. The rubber buds on the S4's are reeeaaaallly comfortable, and while the IE6's are still pleasant to wear, the S4's almost never caused ear strain; the IE6's can if not inserted correctly. So if you're looking around, I'd recommend the IE6's. I'm very satisfied by the upgrade. 320 kbps MP3 files are usually adequate for listening, but I prefer AAC or Lossless. 1 GB per song? That sounds like overkill. How could a 4-6 minute song have that much data behind it?
Well if u think about it an SACD holds about 8gbs of data.. Dark Side of the Moon for example has 10 tracks, so that's just under 1gb per song. DSOTM was rated the best SACD album. Doesn't matter if its 320 kbps, to me it's still a pos file, lossless is just too good, my whole collection is lossless. higher freq. and dynamic range = better quality. Won't make a difference if you're using skull candy headphones or stock apple earbuds lol. Ultrasone FTW!! I wish I could afford a pair of denon cans.
That's... 0.8Gb per song. Not even close to over 1Gb. On a different note, I love my new headphones. To be honest, they didn't impress me THAT much at first, but after several hours of listening and a day later, the difference is apparent and it is amazing. Love them! Edit: Oh, the whole quality debate is largely meaningless - and is exactly why I asked the question here and not on the head-fi forums. Quality only matters when you're at home with great headphones. On the move, with lots of external noise, distractions, etc, it's largely meaningless what quality of music you have. (Unless it's really bad.)
Have you seen the Marshall Major FX's yet? http://www.marshallheadphones.com/product/major-fx Great sound, design, and have some nice gold accents on the iphone/ipod controls. I have the Minor Black FX's http://www.marshallheadphones.com/product/minor-fx and I love them, although they aren't over the ear, but considering the amount of detail Marshall put into their in-ear phones I'm sure the over the ears are just as great.
LOL DUDE I was giving u an example of 1 album with 10 songs on it hahaha. Sorry I said about 1gb and not 800mbs, it doesn't make much of a difference to my argument that SACDs are the way to go, or lossless files if u don't wanna invest in a high powered audio system. Also you're wrong, I use my Ultrasone's on the go with my lossless tracks on my phone, quality is there so how could u say it's meaningless? Quality doesn't ONLY matter when you're at home with headphones.. last time I checked headphones are easy to carry... lol. Maybe if your cans are open backed and not closed then the distractions would be imminent but since mine are closed, I can't hear a person screaming in front of me, let alone other external noises. edit: I understand now why you didn't take your case to head-fi users cuz they'd have beat your thread down so quick if you said that the quality debate is meaningless.. so u take it to noobs on a gaming forum LOL. It's ok I get it.. but don't go trying to be the expert when you're not... Just saying.
Actually it's not, iTunes is capable of outputting a lossless audio file through the built in codec ALAC, but none of the iPhones out are currently made to playback the full frequency, so all of your lossless tracks are being sampled down due to the limitations of the device. Im pretty sure FLAC and ALAC are 96khz 24bit, and I think the iPhone 4/4s are only capable of outputting 48khz 16bit audio. Technically you are listening to down sampled audio so it doesn't really matter which cans you buy as long as it can support a frequency of up to 48khz. You can of course carry an amp and a whole lot of other audio equipment with you on the train and connect it to your iPhone then connect your headphones into that and possibly get a lossless frequency, but through the headphone port you've been living on the placebo effect. Which brings up priorities when it comes to buying ipod/iphone headphones, if the frequency of lossless isn't there anyway, your best bet is to choose a pair of cans based on style and comfort over whatever marketing crap vendors try to put on their ads or boxes. Don't buy into any hype. I remember someone mentioning that the iPhone played back at 48khz, but the spec sheet on the site states even lower - at only 20khz, which is sad. This argument also includes any Android phone on the market, sorry to tell you buddy but you're full of shit, actually worse, you bought into other peoples nonsense. Good job listening to your lossless on your overpriced headphones on a phone that can't play back your 1gb song files at a quality you think you're listening to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs http://support.apple.com/kb/SP587?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
I never said I was an expert. But there is a limit to quality an iPhone can push through to headphones - that limit is way below the limit that the headphones can put out. And for me, while on the go, I don't expect the same music quality as I do with my Sennheiser set at home. If that's what you expect, I'm happy for you. Edit: Thanks, Cilo.
Np, gotta love people who act like they know what they are talking about and don't even bother to read a simple spec sheet. Also I've seen those Aviators before, if I was in my early 20s still I'd probably buy them as well. I really like the styling on the brown and gold. Which color did you get?
I already knew that iPhones don't have the same freq as a stereo setup or computer but any good quality headphone with lossless files on an iPhone will sound better than any crappy headphones with mp3s on that same iPhone. Also you misunderstood what I was talking about with SACDs, I don't have them on my phone or my computer, they are hard copy cds that play thru SACD players (plenty of bluray players have SACD support). My losslessfiles average between 30-60 mbs per song. edit: I also have a Fiio e10 amp that I use on my phone with my ultrasones so even though my lossless are being sampled down they sound a hell of a lot better than skull candy and mp3s.. which was my base argument editx2: I listen to music on my mac mostly, even when I'm on the go because it's always with me, and when I'm home it gets plugged into my harmon pardon system so my phone is only used when I drive my gfs car (via aux cable) or if I'm grocery shopping etc.
