It should be understood that an IEM can have good or bad value regardless of the name attached to it. The one Crinacle collab I tried, 7Hz Zero, was good. I would consider Crinacle a reviewer with a commercial agenda, but at the same time one that's upfront about it. I wouldn't praise him, or try to put him down, unless I wanted to appear like an NPC.
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Budget HD800? Soundstage & comfort recommendation, please!
- Thread starter lain
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I do not recommend the K702 based on the fact that there seems to be either too much variance between individual pieces or something else that causes variance in 3rd party measurements, and as a result it is difficult to get a "perfect" EQ in my experience. Also they're more sensitive to positioning: if you move them by a centimeter (which due to the very large earpads is possible with no discomfort), you will lose much of the top octave.
To give some perspective, I also own Sennheiser HD559 and they suffer from neither of those things, after EQing they simply sound better (and that's after spending some time trying to test and finetune the various EQ settings for K702 as best as I can). Too bad Sennheiser makes them too tight on the head. I don't want to say that the K702 are bad, after EQing they're still better than anything un-EQd at their price, but I would recommend looking for something that doesn't have their issues.
To give some perspective, I also own Sennheiser HD559 and they suffer from neither of those things, after EQing they simply sound better (and that's after spending some time trying to test and finetune the various EQ settings for K702 as best as I can). Too bad Sennheiser makes them too tight on the head. I don't want to say that the K702 are bad, after EQing they're still better than anything un-EQd at their price, but I would recommend looking for something that doesn't have their issues.
Hatto
Active Member
I can also add AKG K612 Pro to the list.
RTINGS has tried to quantize "soundstage". I find their ordering not bad:
www.rtings.com
Our Passive Soundstage Score And Tests: Headphones
Soundstage determines the space and environment of sound, as created by the headphones. That is, it determines the perceived location and size of the sound field itself.
www.rtings.com
Hatto
Active Member
Curious how far they've placed Drop 8XX below HD800s, I thought they were the same thing. At least that's how they're advertised.RTINGS has tried to quantize "soundstage". I find their ordering not bad:
Our Passive Soundstage Score And Tests: Headphones
Soundstage determines the space and environment of sound, as created by the headphones. That is, it determines the perceived location and size of the sound field itself.
staticV3
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Uh no? They're advertised as having very different tuning:
(that graph is directly on the 8XX's product page)
Hatto
Active Member
I stand corrected, thank you.
Re K702, unit variation could be a thing, but I haven't really experienced the variation with headphone placement. I haven't experienced placement variance issues when wearing them, and also they didn't exhibit large placement variance when I measured them on my miniDSP EARS rig. I could go along with unit to unit variation being not particularly good with the K702, but I don't agree with placement variation.
Harmanize. That's awesome. You should trademark that or something.
Well, I got my K240 Monitors (from the 90's, apparently of We Are the World video fame) for $30 CAD, so definitely inexpensive. I would say soundstage and imaging blow me away, but that's all relative to what I've tried. Brutally uncomfortable with stock pads (very sweaty and drivers would touch my ears) but I got Geekria velours for $20, which are really comfortable and have not altered the FR for the worse.
Hatto
Active Member
This is just in!
I couldn't help myself to order a pair of Fidelio X3 cans on Woot once I saw the $99 price tag. They arrived just this morning.
WOW! These are BY FAR the best headphones I've ever heard under $100. There's no competition until HE6se v2 at $400 and even then, X3 still have the better sound stage.
Even under $1000 these have the best comfort and best sound stage I've experienced, second only to HD800.
I'm having a moment right now auditioning them side by side with the HD800. Unbelievable!
I couldn't help myself to order a pair of Fidelio X3 cans on Woot once I saw the $99 price tag. They arrived just this morning.
WOW! These are BY FAR the best headphones I've ever heard under $100. There's no competition until HE6se v2 at $400 and even then, X3 still have the better sound stage.
Even under $1000 these have the best comfort and best sound stage I've experienced, second only to HD800.
I'm having a moment right now auditioning them side by side with the HD800. Unbelievable!
Are you using the Oratory EQ?
Hatto
Active Member
Yes, a slightly modified version that is "tamed" at both ends though.
Very good. $99 is a big price reduction from their normal price. Here in the UK looking on Camel Price Tracker, they've been about £179 on & off since beginning of 2022, sometimes priced a lot higher, very variable in price. I really don't know much about the Fidelio X3 in terms of how it's received by most people & reviewers, ultimately it would be good if it was measured here on ASR. But $99 is really not a bad price at all for any reasonably decent headphone! The frequency response measured by Oratory doesn't look optimal with a big bass & mids boost required, so unknown if that will be a problem, but it would be if the headphone has any distortion problems in those areas when at stock frequency (because boosting problem areas will make the distortion worse of course). Frequency response not ideal, but not disastrous, seems mostly fixable with EQ.
staticV3
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Because the graph isn't showing THD, it's showing Weighted harmonic distortion.
The distortion profile of the headphone probably changes a bit with volume (more low order, less high order), and due to rtings' weighting methodology, that counts as lower perceived distortion.
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I thought about that too, and my conclusion was weighting would effect the overall distortion number but not how the distortion changes in certain frequency range for different sound levels as long as the weighting stays the same for the frequency range. Did I think wrong?
staticV3
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I think so.
Dazerdoreal
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I have a theory I would like you to explore.
If you look at the FR graphs of expensive high-end headphones, you can see that the majority of them is below the harman target at about 2000hz. The big rise comes a bit later.
(Examples: Sennheiser HE-1, Hifiman Susvara, Denon AH-D9200, T+A Solitaire P, Beyerdynamic T1, Focal Utopia, Austrian Audio HI-X65, Neumann NDH30, Meze Elite, Nectar Hive, Heddphone, Audeze LCD-5.)
I opened a topic about it in the Oratory1990 reddit forums a few months ago. It was discussed if a later rise might correlate with a perception of a bigger soundstage. Many people agreed that they prefer a "later" rise.
Now when you look how Oratory1990 EQd the X3, he also didnt try to "nail" the target but he left the 2000hz area slightly below target.
Maybe this plays a role here, and you could test on other headphones if you can also improve their soundstage by doing so.
Am I understanding the following graph? They're saying they reduce the measured 2nd Harmonic Distortion by up to -62dB for the bass down to -33dB from 1000Hz upwards before they turn it into percentage distortion? If that's the case then I find RTings published distortion figures really quite misleading.
Those really would be massive adjustments for lowering the amount of reported distortion.
HD700 was very open sounding. But without EQ it's extremely sharp and just off sounding.
But from time to time they are showing with very good price.
Keep in mind that EQ is mandatory with them.
But from time to time they are showing with very good price.
Keep in mind that EQ is mandatory with them.