The Home Audio thread

Hi-Fi headphones were created for recording studios and DJs, predating portable radios by a few decades. But you can thank the Walkman for MiniDisk, MP3s, iPods, iTunes and ear-buds. Walkmans always came with small, lightweight headphones for portability, comfort and low-cost. The player has great sound if you upgrade to a better headphone - these were expensive, so they couldn't throw a pair in with every Walkman/Discman.

Speaker tech hasn't changed much in 100 years, but if you count materials and construction methods, most of the bigger change has been in the past 10-15 years. Surrounds, ferrofuid, high-strength magnets, and low depth profiles have helped durability and power ratings to improve since the late '90s, but this had little impact on headphones, really.

I defend brands like Beats a Skullcandy, because they're actually doing things that didnt exist 20 years ago, at least not to the mass markets, like 2-way systems, power amps, and bluetooth cordless operation. Beats are also built very well, very few plastic parts on the better models. The $400 ones sound good, imo.

AA wrote:

Hi-Fi headphones were created for recording studios and DJs, predating portable radios by a few decades. But you can thank the Walkman for MiniDisk, MP3s, iPods, iTunes and ear-buds. Walkmans always came with small, lightweight headphones for portability, comfort and low-cost. The player has great sound if you upgrade to a better headphone - these were expensive, so they couldn't throw a pair in with every Walkman/Discman.

Speaker tech hasn't changed much in 100 years, but if you count materials and construction methods, most of the bigger change has been in the past 10-15 years. Surrounds, ferrofuid, high-strength magnets, and low depth profiles have helped durability and power ratings to improve since the late '90s, but this had little impact on headphones, really.

I defend brands like Beats a Skullcandy, because they're actually doing things that didnt exist 20 years ago, at least not to the mass markets, like 2-way systems, power amps, and bluetooth cordless operation. Beats are also built very well, very few plastic parts on the better models. The $400 ones sound good, imo.

o_O you do realize that a couple cheap speaker drivers, silk dome tweeters, DIY amp board and a simple li-ion battery charging system in place with a simple DIY blootooth module, then a custom fiberglass mold would give you a much better quality blutooth speaker system than BOSE or Beats has ever made, for a fraction of the price?

As for the $400 beats, yeah, they sound good and are solid, but you could spend $150 on headphones like used Crossfade LP, AKG, Sennheiser, Grado, Klipsch, Etymotic, and many other brands and get better sound. If you want solid headphones I recommend the crossfade LP, I have some and when they say military grade strength, they are not lying... Mine have stood up to 5 years of abuse, even fell off a car at 30 mph, been dropped dozens of times, been stepped on all that, and sound much better than beats and are a little over a hundred on amazon now, but there are better headphones yet

Quote :

o_O you do realize that a couple cheap speaker drivers, silk dome tweeters, DIY amp board and a simple li-ion battery charging system in place with a simple DIY blootooth module, then a custom fiberglass mold would give you a much better quality blutooth speaker system than BOSE or Beats has ever made, for a fraction of the price?

I realize that doing all of those things requires a lot of time, and vastly increases the chance for a mistakes. There's a chance you could get things 100% right the first try, but there's a greater chance that something would be learned in the process, and 2nd, 3rd, or 4th efforts would be much better executed.

There's a great sense of pride in building your own, but by the time you're done, $400 spent on a set of Beats Pros isn't that bad considering all the R&D is complete, the fit & finish will be better than any home-brew project, and they come with a 1-year warranty. Just saying, not everything new is "garbage" just because we see kids we don't like wearing them. Sure, there's a lot of marketing for Beats, but they've put a lot into the product to back it up. My impression was they were pretty bass-heavy, but it sounded good. Maybe not audiophile in the true sense, but definately sounded good, and built to last in the case of DJ use. From what I know about your Crossfade LPs, they have a similar heavy bass emphasis.

I've never seen a set of phones that felt so well made and looked as good as Beats. I have no desire to own a pair (my 10 year old Sony MDR-V500s are great) , just have respect Beats' good design, build and sound quality.

The corssfade LP is very bass heavy out of the box, but they have a dual diaphragm 50mm driver, and for some reason it takes really long to burn in just right. Mine have over 600 hours of burn in time so far. Also, if you hook them up to an iPhone, there's not a huge difference from beats, and they sound very slightly muddy unless you EQ bass down because the internal amp in the iPhone can't handle that much power, and the headphones start clipping.

Now, if you hook it up to a good DAC and amp like a Fiio E10 or E17, Nuforce or any other good DAC, you will notice they sound much less bassy, even with bass boost on. with my E10, I'm not even satisfied with the bass actually, but they are more transient than the Sennheiser HD 595's. I used to have a pair, and I recently tested them against my friend's pair on the same DAC.

Also, if you read headphone reviews, half of them are null and void crackpot reviews. They use equipment like an ipod to test them, test them right out of the box with no burn in time, don't even use FLAC files and so on. There's a huge difference between FLAC and MP3 on my crossfade now. Sounds like you're actually in the studio as they record it, and I interned at a recording studio, so I know what that sounds like

Not saying the crossfades are the best ever, or trying to convince everyone to buy them, but for a pair of headphones that used to be $300 and is now a little over a hundred, they are a steal.

Beats seem like they are much better than they are, and the studio's do sound great. but the problem is most people don't know about the other options out there, for less than half the price, you can get a much better set of headphones. The studios probably will be better build quality than most, but there are some that are the exception :p

AA wrote:

Quote :

o_O you do realize that a couple cheap speaker drivers, silk dome tweeters, DIY amp board and a simple li-ion battery charging system in place with a simple DIY blootooth module, then a custom fiberglass mold would give you a much better quality blutooth speaker system than BOSE or Beats has ever made, for a fraction of the price?

I realize that doing all of those things requires a lot of time, and vastly increases the chance for a mistakes. There's a chance you could get things 100% right the first try, but there's a greater chance that something would be learned in the process, and 2nd, 3rd, or 4th efforts would be much better executed.

There's a great sense of pride in building your own, but by the time you're done, $400 spent on a set of Beats Pros isn't that bad considering all the R&D is complete, the fit & finish will be better than any home-brew project, and they come with a 1-year warranty. Just saying, not everything new is "garbage" just because we see kids we don't like wearing them. Sure, there's a lot of marketing for Beats, but they've put a lot into the product to back it up. My impression was they were pretty bass-heavy, but it sounded good. Maybe not audiophile in the true sense, but definately sounded good, and built to last in the case of DJ use. From what I know about your Crossfade LPs, they have a similar heavy bass emphasis.

I've never seen a set of phones that felt so well made and looked as good as Beats. I have no desire to own a pair (my 10 year old Sony MDR-V500s are great) , just have respect Beats' good design, build and sound quality.

I agree completely and this has been my experience with many "projects" over the years.

As long as one is willing to put in the time and effort, DIY can be rewarding and a lot of fun. But in some cases, commercial off the shelf solutions really are 80% or better than what one could build themselves, but with less time and R&D. It just depends on one's priorities, and how much time is available for various projects. Sometimes one has to pick their battles so to speak

Al

al_roethlisberger wrote:

AA wrote:

Quote :

o_O you do realize that a couple cheap speaker drivers, silk dome tweeters, DIY amp board and a simple li-ion battery charging system in place with a simple DIY blootooth module, then a custom fiberglass mold would give you a much better quality blutooth speaker system than BOSE or Beats has ever made, for a fraction of the price?

I realize that doing all of those things requires a lot of time, and vastly increases the chance for a mistakes. There's a chance you could get things 100% right the first try, but there's a greater chance that something would be learned in the process, and 2nd, 3rd, or 4th efforts would be much better executed.

There's a great sense of pride in building your own, but by the time you're done, $400 spent on a set of Beats Pros isn't that bad considering all the R&D is complete, the fit & finish will be better than any home-brew project, and they come with a 1-year warranty. Just saying, not everything new is "garbage" just because we see kids we don't like wearing them. Sure, there's a lot of marketing for Beats, but they've put a lot into the product to back it up. My impression was they were pretty bass-heavy, but it sounded good. Maybe not audiophile in the true sense, but definately sounded good, and built to last in the case of DJ use. From what I know about your Crossfade LPs, they have a similar heavy bass emphasis.

I've never seen a set of phones that felt so well made and looked as good as Beats. I have no desire to own a pair (my 10 year old Sony MDR-V500s are great) , just have respect Beats' good design, build and sound quality.

I agree completely and this has been my experience with many "projects" over the years.

As long as one is willing to put in the time and effort, DIY can be rewarding and a lot of fun. But in some cases, commercial off the shelf solutions really are 80% or better than what one could build themselves, but with less time and R&D. It just depends on one's priorities, and how much time is available for various projects. Sometimes one has to pick their battles so to speak

Al

I'd say it all depends on what you're making and what equipment you have . good luck making a computer processor that has transistors so small that over two hundred can fit in a human red blood cell, or over a a couple billion per Sq in. Good luck making a gun better than anything but a musket.. Cimpanies like Remington, H&K and such have tolerances of less than a few thousandths of a mm, especially when it comes to the barrel and rifling. Good luck making other things like an LCD high definition screen, aerospace gear and other extremely hard to make things as well.

Yet things like speakers, or even a bow, cars, and many other things can be custom made to become much better than the average expensive item for a lot less money if you know what you're doing.

Companies like BOSE are and Beats are nowhere near as good as people think. I'll admit the hears studio are solid, but as far as sound quality goes, there's much better. As for bluetooth speakers.. Why even bother paying $400 for something that's crippled by the quality of bluetooth in the first place, not to mention a few Dayton audio drivers, silk domes, a class T amp diy board, crossover, battery and trickle charge system, and a nice fiberglassed enclosure would have much better quality through analogue than the beats ever would

All depends what you wanna build, what equipment and resources you have and the knowledge and skills you have to make it happen c:

The average person can not build a speaker, let alone most anything talked about in my reply though D:

Hi guys! Haven't been on in a while cause my car isn't doing so well but I just finished my new bedroom in the apartment I moved into.

Basically what we got here is a 5.1 system consisting of some AR passive near field studio monitor bookshelves for left and right, a wharfdale center (the front 3 speakers all have ferofluid cooled silk dome tweeters. The receiver is a Sherwood Newcastle 7.1 receiver running either chromecast or my custom gaming computer hooked up to surround sound and the 50 inch plasma. (Bitch TV) My gaming monitor is a 27" Qnix Q2710 2560x1440 PLS panel imported from Korea which has over a billion colors and about 1.5ms input lag, even faster response time and can be overclocked to achieve a refresh rate of around 120z and has a tempered glass screen; better than any bigscreen in the world right now. The subwoofer is two Alpine Type R's in a 2.5-3 cu ft sealed box made from Sound Ordinance (My car subwoofer actually) It's an extremely good home theater subwoofer and is very linear. -3db cutoff is like 19hz and sounds dead flat. will go way louder than I ever need doing so (iv'e set off car alarms with it in my car) with almost nonexistent distortion. Subwoofer amp is a Soundstream TA1 3000D (a 3,000 watt RMS 1/2 ohm stable monoblock which is currently being powered by a 600 watt computer power supply), PSB Image 4T towers for rears at the moment (No I will never use them as front left and rights. Aluminum dome tweeters are garbage unless they're anodized. Only good aluminum tweeters I've ever heard were from Focal.