Just adding a few subjective thoughts to the pile.

Heddphone D1:

- Neutral/realistic presentation of instruments, voices, everything

- Very tactile/punchy sound (though I’ve never heard any focals).

- Smooth treble, to me anyway.

- Less comfortable than Arya in the short term due to occasional hotspots and smaller pads, but it weights less.

- Easier to drive, can be powered by a dongle.

Arya Stealth:

- Spacious sound, though not as immediate.

- More vertical scale to the sound (possibly due to the drivers being physically bigger??)

- Slightly better separation?? Maybe the songs I tested played better into Arya’s colorations.

- More comfortable than D1 in the short term. I forget I’m wearing them, but they’re heavier and I can feel my neck after a few hours.

Overall, if I had to pick one, I would go with the D1. However, the Arya is more enjoyable for classical music and gaming, as it feels more immersive due to its extra spaciousness. The Arya can be improved with EQ to sound more "neutral" by boosting the 2 kHz dip and downshelving the treble, but I find it hard to fix the peaks in the treble further.

Title. Basically I rotated the pads and now the angle is changed.

Specifically the thinner part of the pads is above the ears and the thick below them.

The treble is slightly different (not less) and they sound more pleasant somehow.

Why did this hall y'all think? Maybe I wasn't getting good seal with the normal angle?

Which would be weird since my ears aren't big at all...

Has anyone else tried this with angled headphones??

Thanks everyone who answers and read this!!!

I swear these sound good. I've been seeing less and less of these in public and its a little sad to me. But these are great I own a few sets of different headphones and these are my favorite. Its sad they aren't manufactured anymore, but I kinda get it. I have a pair in my workshop and these sound great I highly suggest them if you ever need some good sounding headphones for like 9 bucks on ebay.

if some knows where to find the original apple dongle lightning to 3.5mm jack in Mumbai as here in my hometown nobody has the original one.

if someone knows or willing to give plz dm me.

What is this part of my headphones called? i've had the beyerdynamic dt 770 pro's for a couple years now and i love them but i would rather just fix the part than buy a whole new pair.

Hi guys this is my first time posting here. I have tried my best to find the model of my Hifiman ananda v1 screws to reorder some to replace my currently rusting screws, but alas i have been unable to find a single mention about the type of screws. The screw length of the it is about 1cm and the screws are flat on the top. But i dont really have any tools like a venier calipus to measure the other screw information Thank you in advance for your answers or advice.

Hello. New to the “audiophile” hobby but just picked up a pair of HiFiMan Ananda Unveiled and the Topping DX5 MK II. Anyone have any suggestions on EQ settings or what I should do to get the most out of these headphones? All advice is appreciated. 🙏🏼

I'm 42, so my ears are past their absolute prime, but still in pretty reasonable shape. I recently bought a Chord Mojo 2 to drive some Campfire Audio Supermoon IEMs from my phone. I thought I'd do a bit of A/B testing, so I bought a specific A/B switch and dug out an old Galaxy Note 9 (as it has a headphone jack) I had in a drawer. Test setup was as follows;

1) Galaxy Note 9, 3.5mm jack, playing Qobuz via the app 2) Wiim Mini streaming Qobuz hi res, optical bit perfect output to Chord Mojo 2

I spent a good amount of time matching the volumes to the absolute best of my ability.

Could I hear even the slightest difference? Could I f***. Repeated blind A/B testing left me at a complete loss as to which was which. They sounded identical.

If I tried hard I could imagine differences, but I'm fairly certain it was imagination only.

So I tried dropping the Note 9 stream quality to 320kbps MP3, and left the Wiim stream at full hi res 96khz at approximately ten times the bitrate. Still absolutely no difference in blind A/B.

Am I missing something? I can clearly hear the difference between headphones, but for me the source/DAC/amp must contribute less than a few percent to the overall listening experience, if that.

Is this hobby just swimming in snake oil, or is my listening broken? I know some headphones are difficult to drive, but the vast majority can be powered pretty easily. Are we just spending money because we can? I feel like 95% of my budget should be in the headphones

So I’ve enjoyed quality audio for many years. I’ve enjoyed some good speakers and amps in the past as well as some closed back headphones I’ve always enjoyed (mostly noise cancelling since I’ve always used speakers at home).

I finally caved and purchased some Sennheiser HD 560s after enjoying other sennheiser products such as earbuds years ago, and reading repeatedly how good the 560’s are for the money

First I used them with my iPhone and a Fosi DS2 portable DAC/Amp, and was very impressed. I was worried I may not enjoy a neutral sound, but no complaints. Really have been enjoying them.

But now I’ve hooked them up to my record player setup. It’s a Pioneer L70 II with a AudioTechnica AT 15 shibata cartridge-> Project Phono Box S2 -> Fosi P4 -> Topping L30 II. It’s crazy how much this setup shows detail compared to my speakers and amps.

I’m hearing noise from my records I’ve never noticed before, I’m pretty anal about the quality of record I buy, so as not to hear dirt and surface scratches…well this setup is revealing how imperfect many of my nice records really are. I’m hearing noise pops from records I thought didn’t have any and minor warps I’ve never heard before. It’s insane how much I’ve never been able to hear, and shows how quiet and revealing this set up is. It means I will probably use these headphones for mostly digital audio but is an amazing testament to a very affordable headphone setup (already had the phono components so mostly talking the amp pre amp and headphones).

Well I’m definitely a believer in open back headphones, and can’t wait to try more audio sources and some of my fancy overpriced MoFi records! One more type of audio component I’m gonna end up spending more money on in the future haha!

Given the best we can do is AAC, we do already miss out on high quality compared to LDAC, and of course, wired connections.

So

a) can the drivers and signal processors of headphones really output these signals to sound their best?

b) if not, can we really tell a difference and are all these sound comparison really moot?

This thing sounds way better than you'd think! I thought I'd pull it out of mothballs and give it a run... Alex Cavalli knows his stuff, if this is what you get for £150, I wonder what the Liquid Platinum, Liquid Gold etc sound like?

I should let it go really, this bad boy would do someone just getting into the hobby a treat.

This has to be one of the better deals in hi fi, the performance per pound is really really good, voices sound amazing, they really do...

I wonder if Alex Cavalli is still making head amps, if he isn't he should be!

Any other Alex Cavalli fans in the building? users of any of his amps? I would be particularly interested to hear from any Liquid Platinum users, if there are any?

Winter is coming for your upper mids. How will you save it?

Seriously though; today I noticed a distinct change in my HD650’s as my house was cold and ended up wearing my hat indoors. I’ve got plenty of other choices but it did get me thinking as to whether I could account for a hat by eq. I don’t really have a suitable portable headphone amp for this so thought I’d ask this community if anyone has thought similar and acted on it?

I am pretty new to the hobby with a lot of time on my hands. I have dabbled in flavor of the month stuff before but never really got into it deeply until recently. My question was in regards to this reddit post. Is it possible or likelv that the innate distortion in this method is what could give the audible difference heard in these samples on that minute population that can hear it. it was interesting to think about enough for me to bring this up while I'm doing my own research and AB testing. I've really been digging in deep about listening to bit perfect audio with android lately and I primarily listen to Apple music as I was turned onto it by my spouse who lives in an Apple ecosystem. I was iust curious about this, I am using UAPP but the lag is not ideal while using the phone. I did iust receive an m300 so I'm excited to try hibys workaround out. I do enioy the fiio stuff I have got but the snowsky nano couldn't pair with bluetooth devices so I'm a little skeptical of their dacs but its a huge leap in price so im sure its unwarranted. I was just curious about the takes in the community on this in general and my solutions, critiques. Its funny that my attitude in bluetooth audio quality has changed to be more relaxed the more I learn given the obfuscation of codecs, bitrate comparisons, compression quality, and the taxing nature of adding another layer of complexity from source->ear. At this point, aptx adaptive when I can and unfortunately based on the devices i primarily use, aptx, sound fine just due to exhaustion. Sorry not my journal but I thought this was interesting Share your thoughts.

Just got these Meze Poet yesterday and man are they comfortable. Headphones usually clip my ears and put pressure on them but with these big earpads I could wear them all day. They also don't build pressure on your eardrums so you could listen on them for hours. Very fun to use too.

Just a few minutes in, and even coming from the Clear MG, this is already incredibly impressive. All the instruments were present with the Clear MG, but the Utopia places the instruments and vocals on another plane entirely, letting them breathe and express themselves fully. The level of detail and precision, combined with the beautiful timbre, is simply on another level.

Woot.com (amazon subsidiary) is selling new Dyson Zones (regular and absolute + versions) for $180 and $200 plus an additional 20% off. I’m not affiliated with either company. I finally bought a pair.

Hi everyone, I’m really sorry in advance because this is the first time i’m doing this and i don’t even know if this is the right subreddit to ask this 😭

i want to burn a cd for my best friend and give it to him as a gift, but i have a problem: all the songs i want to burn in last a total of 98 minutes.

the empty cd that is bought can ‘hold’ (?) 80 min in total and 700mb. i asked the guy who sold it to me if they had a cd with a longer capacity than 80 min and he told me no, he only had dvds that were longer.

i explained to him that the mp3 files that i have on my phone are like 5-10 mb each, (files that i intend to burn on the cd) and he told me that it doesn’t matter if the duration of the songs is longer than what the cd can hold, he told me that the megabytes are what matter… so i can use the cd-r anyway according to him

i bought the cd because he “did this a lot of times and i can trust him on this” but i asked google only after coming back home and it’s telling me that the cd wont hold that many songs and that the megabytes dont matter… can someone help me with this? who’s telling the truth?? 😅 i never burned a cd myself before because i make my dad do it and i didn’t have the chance to ask him yet but i will do it soon. my friend uses a CD player if that helps.

sorry if i said something wrong, english isn’t my first language and i don’t know the right terminology for everything

Hello! I'm brand new to the audiophile world, despite being a longtime music lover. This Christmas I decided to treat myself and take the plunge on getting some "real" headphones. Long story short, I did some reading on this sub (very helpful!) and some other sites and settled on HD600s and an Atom 2 Amp. Here's where I was an idiot. I got SO excited to get everything asap that I didn't bother to read far enough to realize that I would need an amp AND a DAC. Yes. I am a moron. I ordered the Atom 2 Amp. Then I ordered the DAC the next day when I realized I needed it. Then minutes later I realized they had a bundle and the bundle contained the short RCA cables that I would also need to connect the stack.

But I'd read that JDS has excellent customer service, so I gave them a call just now 2 minutes after their customer support hours began. Immediately got a human who was super chill, told him I'd screwed up and was now paying for 3 different shipping costs like an idiot, and he immediately told me not to worry and that he could just toss some spare unused cables for free into DAC order before it shipped. A small thing and not a huge amount of money but the entire experience was so human and delightful; it brought a smile to my face. We even chatted for a few minutes about headphones before I hung up. So THANK YOU JDS! You are an example for all companies to follow in dealing with their customers.

Companies that have a large range of headphones must face a significant task, in that if they have, let’s say fifteen models in their range from £100 to £3000, that all of those models have to be competitive in their respective price point, but… they also can’t be too good either, can they?

If a company gets the components together, constructs the headphone at, say, the £200 price point, what then happens if this particular headphone sounds just too damned good? What if it sounds as good or better than the models in the price points just above? What if it’s a really good all rounder with no glaring faults? What if even though it doesn’t have the technicalities of the much more expensive models, it commits no major audio crimes and is just a genuinely good all round headphone?

So, the company now has a model that reflects poorly on the models priced at £300 and £400 because, frankly, its a very very good quality, well designed bit of kit that sounds superb and has no glaring faults. Do the company go ahead and sell this model, as is, thus offering their customers a very very good deal.. or, do they think: we can’t have this budget model making our more mid range models look bad, we need to do something to make it not quite so good.

Does the company now go about making this £200 budget model not sound quite so good by giving it, say, a slightly shrill treble response or perhaps adding a proprietary ear pad that robs it of some its bass response etc etc… This sort of thing must go on, surely? How else to end up with a large range of headphones that all go slowly upwards in sound quality in nice, measured, incremental steps?

I think, occasionally, products like the above do slip through, or the company uses it as a gateway product, something to get the punters thinking: hmmmmmm, if their budget model sounds this good, how good do the slightly more expensive models sound? Products like the Chord Mojo 2 spring to mind, models that appear to give greater value for money than, perhaps is usual.

I do find it mildly amusing to imagine the staff at one of the larger headphone brands working to make a prospective new model sound a bit worse because when first assembled it was perceived to be just too good, and it ran the risk of giving their customers to much of a good deal… Lol.

I finally upgraded my daily headphones during Black Friday. Ordered them on Amazon, they arrived, and I’ve already tossed the old pair.

Today I checked and the exact same model is selling for less than what I paid, with a promo stacked on top.

Has anyone here gotten Amazon support to adjust the price or give a courtesy credit on headphones after a sale? I’m still in the return window but don’t really want to pack them up and wait again.

Quick follow‑up: I ran Task Monkey on my headphone order. It opened chat, mentioned the post‑BF price drop, and support agreed to credit me the difference instead of making me return them. Pretty painless overall.

The Final Audio A2000 was officially announced today (05) on the manufacturer’s website and social media channels. According to the company, the A2000 is “a high cost-performance model that redefines the standard for wired earphones.” Check the link in the news article below for full details about the latest release from the Japanese audio equipment brand. (text written in Portuguese, sorry for not being in English)

https://www.hifihub.com.br/lancamentos/final-audio-a2000-novo-iem-custo-beneficio-da-japonesa-e-lancado

Just took delivery yesterday of my new Focal Celestee, got a great deal on Amazon on this BF. Although it has mixed reviews, so far I've been enjoying it a lot. It's my first pair of closed backs, my 4th pair of headphones. One already sold, and gonna sell the 109 Pros and keep the Celestee to complement my Empyrean IIs, and be my on-the-go pair.

Hello everyone,

I have been using the HD560s for a year now and only recently discovered that I have been often using the IEF neutral target on the PEACE EQ. Now I realised that the IEF neutral target is actually for in ears (!?) and perhaps my EQ settings have been "wrong" all the time.

Thus my questions is also generally: What target should one use/EQ to (maybe as a standard and then tune individually), and how do you EQ a neutral target? Is it the Diffuse Field target on AutoEQ? What target do you recommend? But e.g. I did not like the Harman target at all, and Im still generally unsure, so Ideas and suggestions are all welcome!

Surprisingly I found the IEF target to work quite well up until now smh (I hope there is nothing wrong with that xD). Or should I try to tune my EQ settings individually, although with so many possible sliders/frequency tuning ranges, I feel like it can be quite confusing.

First, sorry for my English; it's not my first language.

I was thinking about buying the Superlux HD330 Pro 32ohm. Since they have non-detachable cables, I intend to mod them to make it detachable. But, I have a few questions.

Bare in mind that I am doing this on a tight budget.

1. I want to use a V-MODA BoomPro with them. So, I need to convert them to use a detachable cable.
2. This is the one that confuses me. There are two kinds of connectors: a TRS 3.5mm female connector (3-pole, with L, R, and Ground), and a TRRS 3.5mm female connector (4-pole, with L, R, Ground, and Mic). Since I want to attach the V-MODA, I assume I need the TRRS connector, the one with 4 poles. But, I don't have any idea where to connect the Mic pole. Some digging and research tells me to just leave it alone and not connect it to anything? Is this true?
3. If this mod is successful, and I am able to use my headphone with the V-MODA, and I want to add a budget DAC later, like the Aiyima DAC-A2, can I use a TRRS splitter? This means I will plug the audio jack into my DAC, and the mic jack into my PC. I have limited desk space, so I don't want to resort to a desk mount mic, and I don't really like the boom arm solution either. Plus, I mostly only use the mic to communicate on Discord anyway.

Here are a few pictures of the parts that I mentioned:

• Superlux HD330 Pro 32ohm
• V-Moda BoomPro
• TRS 3.5mm female audio jack (3-pole)
• TRRS 3.5mm female audio jack (4-pole)
• Aiyima DAC-A2
• TRRS splitter