You also need to keep your fingers crossed listening to these. Only then they reach their full potential.
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Abyss AB-1266 Phi TC Review (Headphone)
- Thread starter amirm
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Now, you said one must get EVERYTHING right...
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Not really. I believe you like your setup, but why would one need that very special tube amp to fix a broken headphone design.
Synergy is what subjectivists call that, and it's a myth.
But then, what do I know. My hearing barely extends to 13kHz, and I am fine with my Focals (which do not get much love from Amir, too). Easy to drive, easy on my head, easy on my ears. EQed by my brain only. I know their shortcomings, but it works for me. Never came to my mind it MUST work for others.
Synergy is what subjectivists call that, and it's a myth.
But then, what do I know. My hearing barely extends to 13kHz, and I am fine with my Focals (which do not get much love from Amir, too). Easy to drive, easy on my head, easy on my ears. EQed by my brain only. I know their shortcomings, but it works for me. Never came to my mind it MUST work for others.
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Could you point me to a warm dac and a warm amp please.
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Ha!
Good job reading the room, Sherlock. Out of curiosity, did you get the replacement cable as well?
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Good call and good luck.Ok, i was here to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, but i guess you REALLY are a cult in here. I am gone.
Good luck in life, you will need it
Soria Moria
Senior Member
Why do people come here thinking they can convince people of cold and warm amplifiers while not showing any proof of it?
Soria Moria
Senior Member
I’ve owned ‘warm’ amplifiers and DACs like Bifrost 2 and Singxer SA-1 and there’s no difference from what I can tell when I switch between them and my RME ADI-2 DAC FS. Not the most scientific test but there was nothing sticking out to me to prompt me to test further.
Do you have issues to find the door by yourself or maybe you need for a moderator to show you the way ?
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Wow you're really a keyboard warrior. Don't let that door hit ya in the face.
Almost like he was never here!
Just FYI here. If they are new and they obviously need to find the door. Don’t Quote them, just report them and we can simply Spam Clean the account. That process will delete all their posts, except the ones you quoted. Making them essentially disappear. But now they live on through the quotes. Less work for everyone and I don’t like to delete our valued members posts just because of the quote. Hopefully some of you can go back and edit out the quote.Almost like he was never here!
Just want to give my two cents. I understand technically there is evidence of bad outcome in terms of measurements but want to make an argument for the musicality of the Abyss. While they might be not be for everyone, I've compared these headphones on a tube amp (two tubes per channel) for some hours with all the other usual TOTL (Yamaha, LCD-5, Susvara, Utopia, Caldera, Elite) and I cannot get to have the same amount of rawness when listening to natural rock instruments. The Yamaha are for me the best for acoustic instruments, jazz etc and the only ones I would buy besides the Abyss. Susvaras are "perfect" in any condition but never too musical, very "plain perfection", I see myself loving them though but not more than the Abyss. Utopia, lets be honest are plainly bad, I tried for at least 1 hour because I wanted to make sure, it felt cheap and much worse in comparison to the rest (all of the others attain a similar level of goodness expected of the pricing tier), I don't know if this is marketing or something, maybe they just don't pair well with tube amps? I didn't understand the hype for them, nor did the owner of the shop, he said "it's an entry level headphone for people who have not heard the others on high end gear and also because they can drive them to sound good enough with any kind of gear", I don't know about this but this was his opinion from selling headphones for years. The Elites stood their ground but never felt like a "I'd go back to it" the bass is better on the Abyss and while they are better in what I assume is that distortion you see, its never as exciting from a musicality point of view. So back to the Abyss, I still see that for some recordings and genres there is this distortion, I know it's there, something breaks up, but you can mitigate by bringing the cups closer, angling them etc. You basically have to learn how they work and move them around your head, play with EQ, play with convolution filters, and after some months you'll know exactly how to move the options to make them sound perfect for what you are listening to. They don't disappoint me in any track now, and for rock specially the rawness and feeling "you're in the room with the band cranking the amps to 11" is palpable. If you really crave that feeling of having a tube amped Les Paul in the same room or in reggae a precision bass in your face making your heart vibrate, then these are the headphones for you. Again not everyone craves the same feelings but this is just my two cents because I see a lot of people going just with the charts, I get it, it's science, but for music in my experience it's also about feeling and rawness and chaos.
I heard 1266 many times, never had feeling of being there in room.
What I heard was wonky tuning, very strange and bad - at least without peq.
Hope that helps.
You are not hearing anything more with them. What you hear is bad tonality when harmonics are higher than fundamentals of instruments or fundamentals are peaked and you hear no harmonics (masking effect is strong with them).
Everything that you hear with them is because the tonality/tuning was thrown away to the trash so it sounds weird - audiophiles love to call it "different presentation" (omg
)There is nothing magical even though marketers from youtube and company will say different.
ps. as for further comments that I was not using proper chain.... believe me, "chain" was top of the top what audiophiles would consider. Whole "chain" cost was circa 30k$ (not that I personally care)
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Zensō
Major Contributor
Welcome to the forum. I think you’ll find subjective reviews such as yours are not taken seriously here. You might want to have a look at the following thread to gain some understanding on why that is:
Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?
Seems like so many review threads get challenged with: 1. Measurements are not everything. 2. You all never listen. 3. I trust my ears, not graphs. 4. I don't listen to graphs. I listen to music. 5. You all must not listen to music at all. 6. Why don't you all buy the best SINAD gear? 7...
www.audiosciencereview.com
It's not that it's not taken seriously not per se.Welcome to the forum. I think you’ll find subjective reviews such as yours are not taken seriously here. You might want to have a look at the following thread to gain some understanding on why that is:
Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?
Seems like so many review threads get challenged with: 1. Measurements are not everything. 2. You all never listen. 3. I trust my ears, not graphs. 4. I don't listen to graphs. I listen to music. 5. You all must not listen to music at all. 6. Why don't you all buy the best SINAD gear? 7...
It's just same thing that people talk over and over about magic/house sound/different presentation and so on.
When in reality these reviews/reviewers are lacking basics about sound reproduction.
I'm not saint at some point I was the same. Thank God I did my homework and read and educate myself with reliable sources on how access sound quality and what we are really hearing.
No more confusion as soon as you learn basics (or at least the confusion is minimized so your choices and thoughts are better sorted)
Thanks for saying this. I see questionable subjective reviews using fancy terms that sound made-up to me, that's been in audio mixing circles, where adjectives understandable to laymen are routinely used. Discussions of minutia without even covering the fundamental qualities they heard. And how a one trick pony is put on a pedestal rather than questioned. "This set is great on female vocals(it sucks on everything else)".
Exactly that.
Floral adjectives which makes no or very little sense.
I used to be that, not anymore.
I don't blame you, everyone adapts to the vernacular that seems commonly used. It's just that the vernacular of the headphone and IEM space is dumb. I've considered which terms might be useful to convey my true impressions. I prefer to call it staging style rather than "narrow" or "wide", because what comes after has a more neutral connotation, wide sets have their quirks. I don't use "3-blob", I just call it a indistinct staging.
Terms like timbre I never use, it's a misnomer and I have no damn clue how it maps to what I'm hearing. Musicality is another dumb term. And evaluating bass, mids, and treble ranges individually is odd, because all frequencie ranges are contributing, all the time, in all recorded music.
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