Beyerdynamic DT 880 600 Ohm Review (Headphone)

[Sharur]

Both of what? Are you referring to the headphone out and the speaker out of the NAD?

yes

 

[JohnYang1997]

yes

So how do you know it's outputting 8.4V? Setting volume to max doesn't mean the headphone out won't clip. So what you encounter is headphone out clipping.
And you cannot measure voltage like that. In the least you need a multimeter. And preferably you need an oscilloscope/cro. With an oscilloscope you can see at what point the headamp is clipping. It's also possible that the headamp already has excessive distortion before max level.
In Amir's test, although A90 doesn't have crazy amount of single ended power for high impedance load it's very good, it doesn't clip with HD650 so I don't think it would clip with DT880.

By saying that, the current discrepancy is that you don't hear dt880 distorting with the speaker amp which supposedly outputs higher power. The thing is you really don't know the level you are outputting. For Amir maybe he can try A30pro which has 400mW power into 600ohm load. If it was the A90 clipping there should be a difference. For you at least get multimeter and play 50hz tone, see at what voltage the headamp starts distorting and see what voltage you are getting from the speaker output.

 

[Sharur]

ok so this was my first time using a parametric eq and i was doing it wrong lol. After fixing it and following the instructions exactly how the first reply said, it sounds better than what i had it set to before. Distortion is undoubtedly much higher though.

 

[Sharur]

i switch 60 Hz and 210 Hz filters off and distortion vanishes

 

[Sharur]

yeah, @amirm is right. distortion is straight up unbearable with his EQ. Without EQ is a completely different story

 

[Helicopter]

I see that NAD speced only at 2V out at NAD. same spec for line out. Doesn't specify max power though. I bet it is just the line out, or amp out and a resistor or something simple. You don't normally get a proper headphone amp in an integrated at this price point.

Glad you got it sorted out. I thought you were hard headed earlier but I misjudged your genuine curiousity.

yeah, @amirm is right. distortion is straight up unbearable with his EQ. Without EQ is a completely different story

So you either get distortion or stock frequency response. Not something I would purchase.

 

[Sharur]

I see that NAD speced only at 2V out at NAD. same spec for line out. Diesn't specify max power though. I bet it is just the line out, or amp out and a resistor or something simple. You don't normally get a proper headphone amp in an integrated at this price point.

Glad you got it sorted out. I thought you were hard headed earlier but I misjudged your genuine curiousity.



So you either get distortion or stock frequency response. Not something I would purchase.

I enjoy the stock frequency response a lot lol

 

[Helicopter]

I enjoy the stock frequency response a lot lol

Well there is a silver lining then. Glad you like them.

 

[Sharur]

Well there is a silver lining then. Glad you like them.

i highly doubt most of the people who hype these up use eq

 

[Robbo99999]

Because it's not a graph of a single headphone, the purpose is making a comparison. If you try using the tool you will see the lines are clearer and easier to interpret this way.

I do wish the tool generated a legend to show the compensation used though.

Yes, good, just wanted to point out for the readers, because it initially threw me why it looked so strange. Normally I prefer to see raw frequency responses rather than compensated because the raw tells you more about what is really happening and teaches people how target curves are different (after all there's not just one target curve), so raw helps people expand their understanding.....but I agree compensated can be clearer in some situations when comparing a lot of overlapping lines.

 

[solderdude]

You don't have enough power if you're getting clipping from the topping a90

Amir reached 114dB SPL without clipping. This is obvious otherwise the distortion plot would have looked different.
Having more headroom for measurements isn't going to help here.

 

[solderdude]

Amir, we need the 1990 Pro review

https://crinacle.com/graphs/headphones/beyerdynamic-dt1990-pro/
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7zkgbc1b6flevp/Beyerdynamic DT1990 (A Earpads).pdf?dl=0
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/beyerdynamic/dt-1990-pro
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/brands-a-i/dt-1990-pro/

The DT1990 with A pads can be seen as the ' DT1880' (expensive brother of DT880) with B pads as DT1990
DT1990 with A pads is totally unlistenable to me without addressing the treble peak.

 

[Sharur]

lol

 

[usern]

https://crinacle.com/graphs/headphones/beyerdynamic-dt1990-pro/
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7zkgbc1b6flevp/Beyerdynamic DT1990 (A Earpads).pdf?dl=0
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/beyerdynamic/dt-1990-pro
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/brands-a-i/dt-1990-pro/

Amir's distortion measurements are most useful though. Rtings seems to measure low distortion for anything they test.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Amir's distortion measurements are most useful though. Rtings seems to measure low distortion for anything they test.

Because their distortion measurements are processed. Meaning it's completely utterly useless. Only measurement I take from rtings is the raw frequency response graph.

 

[usern]

Only measurement I take from rtings is the raw frequency response graph.

Breathability was also useful for me when I was looking for headphones for very long sessions.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Breathability was also useful for me when I was looking for headphones for very long sessions.

Honestly I don't think that test shows the full picture. The material and texture makes a lot of difference in the sweat. And clamping force also contributes to that.

 

[solderdude]

Rtings seems to measure low distortion for anything they test.

The reason for that is that they wanted a single rating number. Not at 500Hz or 1kHz only because that says nothing.
That number is input into numbers put into the formulas for different use cases so they can calculate a rating for it.

Our hearing is less sensitive for distortion in the lowest frequencies.
3% at 20Hz is not nearly as audible as 3% at 3kHz but they still wanted a single number representative to how we perceive distortion so they could not simply use the highest number as that would not be relevant to the mids where it matters more.
As transducers are mainly 2nd and for lowest frequencies also 3rd harm. they decided to 'weigh' distortion.
I presume they used A-weighting but may well be something different.
In any case this means Rtings distortion plots show (more or less) how we would perceive the distortion at 90dB (I thought)
Some measurement folks also measure at 100dB.
Measuring at lower SPL is rather pointless and will give misleading results.

 

[Maiky76]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the 600 ohm version of the Beyerdynamic DT 880 "semi-open" headphone. It was kindly sent to me by a member and costs US $198 on Amazon including Prime shipping.

I am not a fan of the silver color on the pads but otherwise, this is a good looking headphone:

View attachment 138721

The sample I have has been modified to have independent 3.5mm mono jacks and was supplied with a balanced XLR cord. The original has non-removable cord.

The cups are round and have inside diameter of 65mm and rather shallow 15 mm depth.

These are light headphones considering their size:
View attachment 138723

So overall comfort is very good although I found the fabric a bit scratchy.

Note: The measurements you are about to see are made using a standardized Gras 45C. Headphone measurements by definition are approximate and variable so don't be surprised if other measurements even if performed with the same fixtures as mine, differ in end results. Protocols vary such as headband pressure and averaging (which I don't do). As you will see, I confirm the approximate accuracy of the measurements using Equalization and listening tests. Ultimately headphone measurements are less exact than speakers mostly in bass and above a few kilohertz so keep that in mind as you read these tests. If you think you have an exact idea of a headphone performance, you are likely wrong!

The large cups made an easy job of mounting them on my fixture and getting good measurements.

Beyerdynamic DT 880 600 ohm Measurements
Let's start with our usual frequency response measurements:

View attachment 138724

I was impressed by how closely the response hugs the preference curve from 500 Hz to 3 kHz. You can even extend that to 100 Hz as deviation is not large there. In my opinion, this is a very important region to get right as so much of music spectrum is concentrated there. Levels in music drop off rapidly outside of this region. Here is our relative measurements of the same:

View attachment 138725

These headphones definitely need bass boost but unfortunately we have a brick wall in front of us in fixing that:

View attachment 138726

We can see how the distortion is off the charts by 104 dBSPL. In absolute levels, we reach nearly 60 dBSPL at 20 Hz which is speaker level distortion, not headphone:

View attachment 138727

Group delay is not revealing of any problems:

View attachment 138728

Stated impedance is 600 ohm but in reality, response is even higher than that:

View attachment 138729

Bass is where we need power and here, we are above 720 ohm so you best have a headphone amplifier with very high output voltage. Forget about any portable device driving them especially when you include its low sensitivity:

View attachment 138730

Beyerdynamic DT 880 600 Ohm Listening Tests and Equalization
A casual look at the frequency response would say these are going to be "bright" but they don't come across too much in that regard. The reason is that we only have a couple of peaks in treble region before the response settles back down. The extra energy there accentuates spatial qualities which is very good out of the box. I would give it B+/A- in that regard. Bass response is poor as expected so I tried to fix that with EQ. While on bass light tracks I could get away with right amount of boost per frequency response measurements, with anything that had deep bass I was greeted with static in one or both cups.

Not only was distortion a problem, so was low sensitivity and high impedance. To avoid digital clipping, I had to pull levels down. This in turn put my RME ADI-2 DAC out of business as far as achieving proper loudness. I switched to Topping A9 and even there, I was almost at max volume in high gain. I reduced headroom but then that caused severe distortion. At the end, I had to pull out much of the bass EQ and wind up with this:

View attachment 138735

As you see I had to shut off Band 1. I also dropped Band 2 and still I could hear distortion at elevated levels with anything bass heavy.

Pulling down the upper bass/mid-range has a good but small effect in making the headphone "lighter on its feet" (less boomy) and the couple of high frequency fixes brought down the sharpness that was highlighting background hiss in the track. To give back some spatial qualities, I boosted the one dip.

Once there, with lighter music such as classical, orchestral, jazz and vocals, this was one good sounding headphone., The spatial qualities continued to jump out at me in a good way putting a smile on my face when they did.

Conclusions
I didn't think I would ever see a genre specific headphone or speaker but here we are. Due to low efficiency, high distortion and lack of bass, you need to limit your listening enjoyment to music that doesn't have much low frequency demands. Shame that we have to change our music listening to adapt to limitations of a design. But such is the story of this headphone. Feed it what it likes and with a bit of EQ and you have a very enjoyable headphone. Do otherwise and it produces garbage. And oh, you best have a super high output headphone amplifier. And drive it differentially as I did with this modded version.

Overall, I can't recommend the Beyerdynamic DT 880 600 ohm but if you choose to like it with the right music consumption, I won't be there to hound you.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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Here are some thoughts about the EQ.

Notes about the EQ design:

• The average L/R is used to calculate the score.
• The resolution is 12 points per octave interpolated from the raw data (provided by @amirm)
• A Genetic Algorithm is used to optimize the EQ.
• The EQ Score is designed to MAXIMIZE the Score WHILE fitting the Harman target curve with a fixed complexity.
  This will avoid weird results if one only optimizes for the Score.
  It will probably flatten the Error regression doing so, the tonal balance should be more neutral.
• The EQs are starting point and may require tuning (certainly at LF).
• The range above 10kHz is usually not EQed unless smooth enough to do so.
• I am using PEQ (PK) as from my experience the definition is more consistent across different DSP/platform implementations than shelves.
• With some HP/amp combo the boosts and preamp gain need to be carefully considered to avoid issues

Very Good L/R match.

I have generated one EQ, the APO config file is attached.

Score no EQ: 68.6
Score Armirm: 84.7 (because Armirm did not fully compensate the LF, the error regression is flatter hence the higher score)
Score with EQ: 82.3

Beyerdynamic DT 88 APO EQ Flat@HF 96000Hz
July052021-141406

Preamp: -7.7 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 38.73 Hz Gain 7.69 dB Q 0.60
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 207.31 Hz Gain -2.58 dB Q 1.16
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 583.08 Hz Gain 1.08 dB Q 2.19
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 1724.74 Hz Gain 2.44 dB Q 1.05
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 4485.16 Hz Gain 6.70 dB Q 4.95
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 5585.07 Hz Gain -7.11 dB Q 5.00
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 8276.25 Hz Gain -6.18 dB Q 5.00

 

[Sharur]

What is the point of using EQ with this headphone if it leads to tremendous distortion? Is the thought of listening without EQ blasphemous?