The Headphone and Earphone/bud thread

Carwash?

Are the controls (on, off, skip track, volume up/down etc) pretty much standardised across all manufacturers, or do some have better controls than others? What say you FGers?

Edit: true wireless buds, I'm talking about)

I know bugger all about headphones and stuff, so a couple of quick questions.

Active Noise Cancelling headphones, do they have a silent mode? i.e. can you wear them like a pair of active ear defenders and just enjoy the silence without playing music?
All the places I’ve looked seem to suggest you can, but don’t explicitly say that you can.

Also, how will they fare at cancelling out the thud from my loud neighbour’s bass?

I think they would. I went into a record store the other week and some crap band were playing, so I carried on wearing my XM3s. I was literally stood in front of the PA browsing records and I could feel the thump of the bass in my chest but I couldn’t hear it. It was so weird.

RIP my Beyer DT880. Bought them in 2006 and used them daily. I've replaced the ear plushies a couple of times, the headband twice I think. But yesterday when I was blasting some bass the right side driver started buzzing and then stopped producing bass entirely. Turns out the diaphragm decided to weld itself to the magnet.

Beyerdynamic doesn't sell parts in the UK at the moment (thanks Brexit!), and their distributor is quoting £55 per driver. So I decided to say fuck it and ordered Hifiman HE-5xx from Drop. They've got an insane deal of $169 plus $15 delivery (and most likely taxes when it arrives, but that's like whatever) going on at the moment. I think I can buy myself a new pair of daily cans after 15 years, right?

Since I've got a spare pair (Fostex T50RP, and a cheapo pair of Logitech wireless for hoovering and stuff) and I had new cans on the way, I decided to do a bit of surgery on the Beyers. I got the diaphragm pried off with a needle but it's now torn. Bit of sticky tape and they're working kinda-ish. They're not great but listenable, I'd say.

But reality is that I don't need 4 pairs. So, the old Beyers are free to a good home. They are well loved (read: beat up as shit) and realistically you should replace the driver. But free, yeah? Heck, if you pay me for the part I'll replace the part for you. Let me know if anyone's interested.

Will do!

Don't forget to hook them up with the App if you do ever want to listen to music/for software updates.

Haha I was a bit surprised by that one too.

Very nice. I dont think I will get as lucky, somehow. I have some 400se which are ok but they do almost demand to be upgraded to something else.

Got a pair of beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro headphones arriving today.

Went for the 250ohm version due to the coiled cable and velour pads but online jury is out on if I'll need some kind of headphone amp to drive it.

Will be plugged into a Mac mini M1 (and nothing else) - can see myself going down full headphone wanker route looking into external DACs/amp solutions if not.

Uuh, I cannot recommend that Behringer amp. They sound pretty grim. I once bought 5 of them for a corporate shoot where the client insisted that their whole marketing team gets simultaneous translation in cans (this was in Korea). I donated them all (along the cheapo Sennys) to a school after the shoot because they were not great.

250ohm cans are just tough to drive. Otherwise I'd recommend you the Fiio E11K / A3, as I've used my K2 ages and it just works. It lived ages in my recording bag and I used it day in, day out with Fostex T50RP that aren't easy to drive either. Might be worthwhile giving it a try and returning if it doesn't work

Otherwise have a look at this wonderful head-fi thread: www.head-fi.org/threads/amp-dac-to-power-dt-990-pro-250-ohm.954516/

The new FiiO E10k is supposed to be really good. I had the older model for a bit and was brilliant for the price.

I’ve had a few FiiO bits and bobs and they are all pretty great for the money.

Probably fine. Audio is very little data compared to USB throughput. I'm running my multichannel audio interface through a cheapo Anker USB hub and haven't had any issues with it.

There is a lot of 'it depends' on 'better', though. What youre listening to, source, fidelity, how youre listening to it.....

Like, if youve got a hi-res source, decent headphones and a decent dac, fire up something youve heard a million times on the radio like 'The Only One I know' by The Charlatans because its a super underrated mix.

Just close your eyes and listen to it, you can hear the ride on the right, the tambourine on the left, and the wah-wah guitar really low in the mix so it sounds like its coming from someone stood outside the door on. Details that you probably hadnt heard before.

And thats, really, where the improvement lives, in the details. The instrument separation is better, the 3D space is better, the vocals sound more powerful and so on. I dunno, it is hard to buy gear and go 'yeah, thats better', its more noticing the changes and the things you couldnt hear before, if that makes sense.