Seems decent for the price, but the battery life could be better.

TheLostSwedeSeems decent for the price, but the battery life could be better.

I have one here along with final's new TWS set, but not sure when I can get to those exactly.

Yeah no thank you, 20 Hz - 20 KHz Meh.

Decent price with ANC, and I like the design, but ultimately with audio gear it's got to deliver on audio quality (relative to the price, of course, but ideally punching above its weight).

AsRockYeah no thank you, 20 Hz - 20 KHz Meh.

Wait, what are you looking for if not that? Our own hearing is withiing that range.

Every thing is not about hearing

AsRockEvery thing is not about hearing

Okay Confucius, enlighten us.

20-20 is not great. Standard for most mediocre stuff. something like 4-35 would be magnificent please. Just because you "might" not hear it, don't mean it doesn't matter.

Tigger20-20 is not great. Standard for most mediocre stuff. something like 4-35 would be magnificent please. Just because you "might" not hear it, don't mean it doesn't matter.

Can you please provide specifics on how it does matter? Please let me know, I am genuinely asking. There are many headphones I have here that claim 5-40 kHz or even more, I haven't felt any difference. There is minor rumbling under 20 Hz for sure in some cases but that is more scattered energy than sound waves imo.

VSGCan you please provide specifics on how it does matter? Please let me know, I am genuinely asking. There are many headphones I have here that claim 5-40 kHz or even more, I haven't felt any difference. There is minor rumbling under 20 Hz for sure in some cases but that is more scattered energy than sound waves imo.

Try listening to the same track on mp3 and flac and you should see what i mean.

So why don't really expensive headphones or speakers only produce 20-20. I am sure them companies are pretty sure of their equipment else they would only be 20-20 as that is the best our ears can hear.

I am pretty sure i can tell the difference twixt mp3, which imo is pretty crap, and only came about to make the files smaller, and Flac.

I honestly never thought anything of the frequency response measurements. I don't really see how a driver being flat out to extreme ranges really benefits me in the spot in the middle, where the peaks and valleys I care about are. This idea that because a headphone can extend out to inaudible ranges before noticeably trailing, it has an inherently better response across the whole spectrum, strikes me as a fallacy. There's nothing inherently linking those things in my mind. People can believe what they want to believe. But measurements in the audible range do give you a lot more easily-linked information to work with. And there are confounding factors to the measurements. Compensation isn't typically applied for frequency response range tests, so the measuring ears don't hear what we have approximated ourselves to hear by way of lots of sciencey guessing and making things that look like ears. It better be for the actual frequency response plots, or you might as well disregard it as "A machine that doesn't care how you hear, hears it like this." With the compensation it's... moderately more indicative of something real.

It's also worth noting, a lot of times the decibel cutoff isn't listed. To me, -3db is good. That would mean that at both 20hz and 20khz, the amplitude is half that of the loudest frequencies... as in it is beginning to roll-off and that is a realistic indicator of what the drivers can do, what can be heard from them. Sennheiser boasts like 6-48000hz for their HD820s... but at least they have the decency to say that is at -10db... which is to say it has dropped off by orders of magnitude by then and has in fact been on a steep curve down for a while above and below those respective frequencies. It's always interesting how that little number always gets left out.

This reminds me of amps duking it out over .000x THD measurements.

VSGWait, what are you looking for if not that? Our own hearing is withiing that range.

Ya know, in case his dogs want to listen to dog whistle music.

TiggerSo why don't really expensive headphones or speakers only produce 20-20. I am sure them companies are pretty sure of their equipment else they would only be 20-20 as that is the best our ears can hear.

Ehhh
Do we have to spell it out?

Audio is overloaded with nonsensical 'perception' of audiophiles and marketing greedily jumps on it to differentiate from the mainstream, so people spend big on something that is ultimately super simple.

Audio has already reached perfection about a hundred times over, the same features have been rebranded and re-sold to idiots for equally as many times, and still people buy special cables forged by elves in moonlight.

Come on. Rather, ask, is there any substantial evidence that ranges on headphones below 20hz and over 20khz are audible.
Spoiler: there isn't.

For the low & sub frequencies you will need excessive amounts of energy to push them 'accurately', which is why 'size matters' when it comes to sub drivers and wattage plays an equally important part. Headphones possess tiny amounts of power. Even if you do hear something below 20hz, its going to be some weak fart compared to what it should be. Which is why you cut off the frequency, it only distorts the rest.

And for the ultrasone frequencies, its been researched that as our ears age, we simply stop hearing stuff we would otherwise classify specifically as 'annoying sounds'. Ultra high pitch is horrible to listen to, so again, in our 'perception' it disturbs more than it clarifies.

Buyer's remorse and cognitive dissonance then does the rest of the work: surely what you're hearing on your ultra special 40khz headphone must be 'more texture' or 'greater depth' right, when in fact its just static and not at all more accurate or 'as its meant to be'. Producers don't mix things to cater to 1% of the audio world that has basically gone nuts. What you're saying you hear is a musical presentation that was specifically NOT as intended, simply because you've bought equipment with too much range/sensitivity.

I don't buy or own special cables, or headphones, or "hi-fi" gear. But i have heard extraordinary music on extra ordinary Hi-Fi equipment, that ordinary audio equipment would not have a hope of sounding even close to. I guess the whole time my ears and senses must have been fooling me, and i should have told him to ditch his £60/metre speaker wire and £500 interconnects and just use stuff from the pound shop.

The uber hifi market is certainly onto a good thing if your post is anything to go by anyway. I bet there are a few on here though that have some non standard listening ger from what i have seen, guess you think they have wasted their money too.

I will stick to pound shop stuff from now and crappy mp3 audio files. :) Thanks for the wake up call

TiggerI don't buy or own special cables, or headphones, or "hi-fi" gear. But i have heard extraordinary music on extra ordinary Hi-Fi equipment, that ordinary audio equipment would not have a hope of sounding even close to. I guess the whole time my ears and senses must have been fooling me, and i should have told him to ditch his £60/metre speaker wire and £500 interconnects and just use stuff from the pound shop.

The uber hifi market is certainly onto a good thing if your post is anything to go by anyway. I bet there are a few on here though that have some non standard listening ger from what i have seen, guess you think they have wasted their money too.

I will stick to pound shop stuff from now and crappy mp3 audio files. :) Thanks for the wake up call

Its an extreme to go from pound shop to audiophile. Of course there are quality differences, but there are lots of factors beyond the equipment too. For example, the acoustic performance of the room its used in; placement; etc. None of that applies to a headphone though ;)

There is a lot of PLACEBO going around, when talking about audiophile grade stuff, I mean, especially cables. And with headphones there is GREAT diminishing returns after a certain point. The 300-500$ headphones achieve a very high quality already, after that, diminishing returns are very high. 1000$ headphones are pretty much perfect and you will not get anything out of higher ones, that is even remotely worth the money, it will be 99% placebo and the headphones will look luxurious. Same goes for extremely expensive audiophile amps etc., not worth it, and they wouldn't hold it against more affordable quality stuff, in a blind test. Sound is very much a subjective thing, if you are not trained to discern it, or be neutral about it.

Vayra86Ehhh
Do we have to spell it out?

Audio is overloaded with nonsensical 'perception' of audiophiles and marketing greedily jumps on it to differentiate from the mainstream, so people spend big on something that is ultimately super simple.

Audio has already reached perfection about a hundred times over, the same features have been rebranded and re-sold to idiots for equally as many times, and still people buy special cables forged by elves in moonlight.

Come on. Rather, ask, is there any substantial evidence that ranges on headphones below 20hz and over 20khz are audible.
Spoiler: there isn't.

For the low & sub frequencies you will need excessive amounts of energy to push them 'accurately', which is why 'size matters' when it comes to sub drivers and wattage plays an equally important part. Headphones possess tiny amounts of power. Even if you do hear something below 20hz, its going to be some weak fart compared to what it should be. Which is why you cut off the frequency, it only distorts the rest.

And for the ultrasone frequencies, its been researched that as our ears age, we simply stop hearing stuff we would otherwise classify specifically as 'annoying sounds'. Ultra high pitch is horrible to listen to, so again, in our 'perception' it disturbs more than it clarifies.

Buyer's remorse and cognitive dissonance then does the rest of the work: surely what you're hearing on your ultra special 40khz headphone must be 'more texture' or 'greater depth' right, when in fact its just static and not at all more accurate or 'as its meant to be'. Producers don't mix things to cater to 1% of the audio world that has basically gone nuts. What you're saying you hear is a musical presentation that was specifically NOT as intended, simply because you've bought equipment with too much range/sensitivity.

You feel music too, it's less important when talking headphones but still i like the low end feeling and not just hearing it.

next you're going to tell me that there is a perceptibile difference between 44KHz sounds and 96KHz, or better 192KHz ... :)

AsRockYou feel music too, it's less important when talking headphones but still i like the low end feeling and not just hearing it.

Same. It's what I got a pair of LCD2C's for. From here on in, I'm just gonna try to exemplify the spirit of what I'm arguing over in this thread, when it comes to picking this stuff out. A lot of it is personal to me, but the arguments are in the portrayal.

Gotta be planars for the reach, even if dynamics sometimes have a bit of an edge in slap. Room for overlap on both ends but you can generally count on each for certain characteristics. Planars are better in transient overshoot than they used to be - it seems a lot of manufacturers have gone through years of trials dealing with decay and resonant frequencies in the membranes themselves. If you ever look at a CSD plot of virtually any planar, you will see at least one (usually one) sharp peak somewhere that juts deeply along the decay axis... just this dagger of driver ringing. Over time I think they've gotten better at working with the materials and applying traces. You get a lot of thinner, lighter drivers that hold up better and tend not to have that sort of 'ethereal' or 'overly fast/glossing over' quality they often had in the past - or that big, but amorphous bass. In my mind, the way that stuff functions is that the ringing interferes with the very frequency information that initially sets it off by continuing to run as the driver is asked to do more at that frequency. You lose some transient information there. What I see now is them kind of trying to place that frequency better by how they tension the driver... what tension they build it to. Maybe place it where it can be managed by airflow control or some other aspect of the enclosure. A mesh or pad can filter with some costs. Whether this stuff is heard, I can't actually say. I'm correlating changes in measurements with changes in the sounds and builds of these types of headphones over the years. Bottom line is that we get two kinds of planars now that both perform really well: warm, chunky ones with grippy bass - and cool, crisp ones with a lite but even midrange, more balanced overall. They're essentially tuning them based on the driver topology, material, and dimensions - sizing up the compromises. Irrelevant to most, I guess. I am a nerd about this stuff though.

My main consideration of the low end with the LCD2Cs happened when I was seeing the distortion measurements and quickly realizing that LCD2Cs are nearly dead flat and almost impossibly low in distortion across the whole bass range, down to the deepest sub bass. I run the signal from my Modibit into (believe it or not) a Behringer DEQ2496 in order to pump a good +5db overall bass boost where I want it. They can do much more, but on some tracks, the EQ can't - even with the input volume as low as possible, it clips the signal. The drivers in them seem like they are practically made for that... they don't do anything else exceptionally well but they can take some serious current and pump crazy amounts of bass without breaking up and I can say that I do feel it :laugh: They have quite a seal on them. Honestly, it's bordering on too much bass for normal people run at stock. These things thonk on your head and pressurize your ear cavities a little. You're in the thunderdome. It does get to that point where it's conducting well enough in your skull to rattle you. Nothing compares to the chest pound of >12" woofers, though, or vibrations coming up through your feet. That adds something completely different.

Eh... point is, I wasn't looking too much at that number, but rather sizing-up a range of factors to find that bass niche. I went to measurements more specific to what I was looking for and considered the design a bit, as a headphone can boast a fairly wide frequency response range, but not even have the full presence in those ranges when in actual use because of how the spec is applied. It's all relative to different frequencies across the spectrum. Headphones tend to have considerable fluctuations in frequency response across the audible range, and those relative amplitudes in frequencies change how everything ultimately presents itself. Nobody can tell me they haven't had a pair of headphones that had little to no NORMAL bass presence, but specced at 20hz-20khz. Maybe that same pair of headphones still manages to be dark, as well. It's a case of 'true on paper.' To me, that renders the value of it questionable in the grand scheme of purchasing decisions. It's not a foundation I would comfortably stand on. Others may choose to, and it may work for them. I'm not out to shoot anybody down. Just throwing in on my thought process.

To me, regardless of the range shown, it says the bear minimum. Even if I concede that further range = better perfoming headphone, I still need to point to the elephant that is the differing frequency responses seen across headphones as a whole. They are pretty much all distinctly colored in some way, just by concept alone. Your own damned head is a big part of the problem, honestly. All of our heads are different. And our ears, too. It ends up mattering a ton more when we are talking about trying to get a realistic sound presentation by strapping full-range-drivers-in-cups to our ears. Past a certain point in the world of headphones, it's like a high-stakes betting game on getting the right flavor of coloration. That clean, even pair just doesn't exist. Maybe you can get a pair built and tuned for your skull. Barring that, it's asking a lot to look at a spec like that and find everything you're looking for in it. For instance, that spec won't tell you what Beyerdynamic treble sounds like, or how it makes some people physically uncomfortable with its crazy treble peaks in the squeaky upper range.

I think at the end of the day, it's not about price, or some particular metric. The ears they go on ultimately decide. So in that regard, I examine many angles but hold no one true metric. I am content to rule out things that do not provide me what I deem to be sufficiently detailed info. Something that can be used to make more detailed qualitative comparisons. That keeps me from being a big believer in much of the talk about amps and dacs, either. The headphones are the bulk of it, as far as I can tell.

Actually, back to those LCD2C's for a more direct anecdote. They have a range down to single-digit hz and up to 50khz, but it really doesn't stop them from being extremely tonally lopsided. You get a flat line up to 1khz, from which point there is a steep drop bottoming at ~3khz, that only comes back up steeply when it hits the range of 5-8khz. It actually confused me when I heard it. Electric guitars really sound strange at first. Just very pulled back. It works well for terribly mixed metal, but the bite is almost detached. Vocals have similar issues. I would not use them without EQ, and even with it, they do not sound natural and suffer from some issues with imaging, detail, and timbre in the core midrange. They are simply dark and scooped. They sound big and exciting, but that's not everything a headphone can do. If all you wanted was a bass headphone, that single-digit low-end dropoff point might stand a good chance of steering you there. But if you were looking for an all-around better headphone and factoring in the 50khz side, you made a terrible mistake on an $800 pair of headphones. This is why I argue against just going by that number, or generally using this approach. It's a a good basic bar for determining a speaker's bass performance, but in the headphone world, I don't think it's a very meaningful gauge.

Take it even further back to the HD820s with their very similar 6-48000hz range. Yet they sound completely different, especially in the midrange and treble, where it's a bit like that first breath of warm air on a frozen day with how much clearer, smoother, and more present it all is. It's like a real eureka moment, they are so different. The HD820s also sound weird to me, but completely not like the LCD2Cs. The soundstage is far wider and more diffused, for instance. The 820s also won't make bass push your eyes out no matter what you do. Really completely different signatures and perks. Same frequency range, entirely different experiences.

I could go on and on. I think there is plenty of room for nuance in this stuff. There's a lot worth considering when buying headphones, depending on how serious you are about the sound. I'm not talking cables, amps, dacs, nunna that. The drivers, the enclosures that house them, the pads that support them, the damping applied when and where, the airflow. So many different ways to dial them in, all with faults. It's been a case of reinventing the wheel for a long time. There are distinct differences between all of them that are probably entirely due to the headphone's fit and general distortion/rolloff profiles. In my experience there just is no magic way to suss out the sound sans having them to yourself.

AsRockYou feel music too, it's less important when talking headphones but still i like the low end feeling and not just hearing it.

Absolutely.
Ive worked with a (the) King Shiloh system a few times... google it ;)

The gist... its one of those rares places in the world where beer might escape your glass on the drop. Even if you stand still :D

Vayra86Absolutely.
Ive worked with a (the) King Shiloh system a few times... google it ;)

The gist... its one of those rares places in the world where beer might escape your glass on the drop. Even if you stand still :D

Just one question...

If I place that in my yard, near the road, and rig up a couple of mics to that system, will it tip over cars that drive by blasting music at 4am? Honestly, I think that won't be a problem but it is vital. Also, what is the AOE like on a weapon like that? I don't want too much collateral damage. It'd be nice to keep the trees intact.

robot zombieJust one question...

If I place that in my yard, near the road, and rig up a couple of mics to that system, will it tip over cars that drive by blasting music at 4am? Honestly, I think that won't be a problem but it is vital. Also, what is the AOE like on a weapon like that? I don't want too much collateral damage. It'd be nice to keep the trees intact.

Ive seen one (!) bass bin of that system break car windows and a few other loose bits on said vehicle. Fun times, that old Opel Kadett never bounced like that before.