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Listening to my HD650's, a sobering experience...

My fellow audiophiles, I'm a bit depressed. Please let me take a moment & jump up on my soap box and vent a little..

A couple months a go I picked up a pair of the excellent Sennheiser HD650's, to replace my venerable HD600's.

While I primarily listen to my "big rig", during the evening hours I am relegated to listening to the cans to keep the peace around the house.

So, I'm listening to a couple discs recently re-processed and re-transformed by the Reality Check CD-R process (more to come, see www.positivefeedback.com, Clark Johnson's report for details -- EVERYONE should check into this, but I digress...) when it dawns on me how much more detailed, relaxed, natural, musical, REAL -- well you pick your adjective, EVERYTHING sounds through the headphones.

It just really makes me realize that even as good as I think my big, honkin' EXPENSIVE main system is, there's STILL a helluva lot of information that's in those little pits that I'm just not hearing.

Just HOW friggin' high up on the scale do you have to go to get this "HD650" type of reproduction in your listening room anyway???

Is it even POSSIBLE????

Since I'm using my CD player as the same source for both the 'phones and the main speakers, I guess I can rule it out as the culprit. Must be in the speakers, amp, room acoustics, or a combination of all.

Not like my system is a "lightweight" by any means, and I'm generally happy listening to it, but...

I know, I know, SELL MY HD650's, right?!

My main system; MArtin Logan Prodigys, Halo JC-1 amps, Audio Aero Capitole 24/192, Analysis Plus cables, PS Audio P300, SoundString cables, Acoustic Zen AC cords, dedicated AC lines, dedicated soundroom, and one slightly depressed and frustrated audio-dude.

Headphone System: A. Aero Capitole, Wheatfield OTL tube headphone amp, Sennheiser HD650 (with STOCK cord, how good are they gonna sound when I get that Silver Moon replacement cord???).

Oh well, thanks for lending an ear (or eye, in this case) and Happy Holidays everyone. I've been pretty good this year, so maybe Santa will leave a set of Lamm's in my stocking and a pair of DALI Magelines under the tree.
denf

Showing 3 responses by megasam

megasam's avatar
megasam
798 posts
 
I also have high end headphone rig with Senn 650 among others, of course the reason headphones sound so great is they use single full range speaker (no multiple speakers and crossovers) plus no room interactions, direct feed right to ear. Unfortuantely headphones have one serious drawback.......no 3D soundstage compared to speaker stereo!

So headphones are like viewing an ultra high resolution photo of an object with razor sharp detail. Stereo is like seeing same object in 3D space but not quite as finely detailed.....I prefer stereo version but cannot ever quite match the microscopic detail of great headphone set-up.

I do feel every audiophile should own good headphone set-up for a number of reasons.
megasam's avatar
megasam
798 posts
 
Oh one more thing........

You must replace stock cord on Senn 650! I prefer the Zu Mobius to Cardas, Silver Dragon etc. you are not hearing full potential of Senn 650 with stock cord.
megasam's avatar
megasam
798 posts
 
Denf.....what about the CDR you got from Reality Check?

I have had good results playing with my outboard CDR drive and am seriously considering getting $500 custom CDR duplication decks offered by this company. What are your findings so far?

Please start new thread here, we have briefly mentioned this in a couple related threads about CDRs and I saw recently a few people at AA have been to guys house that sells these see/hear for themselves.
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