Not in my room. Reverberation and resonances were so bad, I I could clap and hear any metal in my apartment ring. Lined the walls with Rockwool panels and now everything except the bass resonances are great. For headphones, I turn on my RME's crossfeed for old hard-panned songs and get 95% of the way to speakers.

I buy gear for the features and comfort. I don't plan on buying anything more than a second pair of headphones for paired listening. If something comes out that is more comfortable with the same sonic qualities, I may consider buying something again but don't plan on it. For source gear, I have a device that has all of the features I could want so the only reason I would buy something else if if I can get the same features for cheap enough that I can get a net gain on selling my old gear and buying the new gear, which is very, very unlikely.

That does make it seem a bit like a sealing issue if the bass stayed low with increase volume. If you ever want to do a pretty good volume match, a multimeter with AC voltage is a good option for cheap.

Do you have access to a PC to listen with that you can use EQ APO on? If so, you might put a low shelf on the one that has less bass. If it takes more than 1-2dB to sound like the other one then it is probably certainly a sealing issue.

An alternative test is to use a tone generator like this one and see how low it goes. If the seal is broken on the less bass one, it should roll off much sooner than the other.

Another possible consideration, did you volume match them and if so, by what method? If one is a bit louder, they look close enough in sound that the extra perceived bass from loudness increase could also explain it.

One thing not mentioned here, how are they sealing? IEMs are especially sensitive to seal tolerances. If you have too big of a tip, the tip will deform and break the seal, if you have too small of a tip, the tip won't occlude the ear and there will be no seal. Tip material can matter on the seal as well. I have not personally listened to either of these, but that is often an overlooked reason why something will sound different than it measures.

In a vacuum, I would agree with you. The meme part came from how it was a sudden, very unexpected turn compared to everything else that had came before it. A large portion of comedy is subversion of expectations and boy did that comic subvert the expectations of historically funny, light hearted comics. So while it isn't the most funny thing to me, I can see how some people can find it funny.

Shouldn't you use EQ to compensate for errors in the headphone so the music isn't tuned to compensate for the deficiencies of the headphone you're monitoring with?

The Expanse also won't have those features without a good seal. I'd had to buy those only to find out that I need to EQ them anyway because they don't sit right on my head.

I think Hifiman report is their numbers in dB/mW, meaning the HE560 would take only 0.49V to reach 100dB. That would put their sensitivity at 106dB/V, making them still a fair bit more sensitive than the Venus.

According to this image, a resistor, inductor, and something we can't quite see. So it seems they use passive filtering in the cup to tune the sound.

>With some tracks and genres these need more power to get to the volume I'm accustomed to, some significantly less. I can see how these are purported to be a little amp picky.

This is due to how power delivery works. These are less sensitive than your average headphone but that tends to matter more at higher volume levels. About every 6 dB, you have to use double the voltage from your amp. This means that the difference between two headphones at lower levels may not seem so much (a couple of mV) but at higher levels can mean a whole volt of difference. So if you have a song that has an overall quiet level of loudness, you will have to turn up the amp more for the Venus than you would another headphone since it will require more voltage to get the same increase in volume, especially if you have a linear volume pot.

Also, glad you like your Venus. I love mine. :)

I have crossfeed in my amp as well. It is super useful for older songs so I don't have to have such hard-pan with different things. It is nice to see it in more amps. My knob feel isn't as good as yours since mine isn't just a knob for turning but also for selecting.

Does that headphone amp have a crossfeed switch? Also, how is the knob feel with that? I don't think I have ever used one with a round knob.

> they just provide the raw measurement data.

Did it change so they provide it directly? It used to be that an image reading program was used and that is why sometimes the filters are in the wrong place.

I'm skeptical that these will be able to produce any lower frequencies. Otherwise it is a cool idea.

So what was the point of asking that question if all you were going to do was the same thing? I don't get what you intend to do with things like this. Just ignore it and move on with your day instead of acting in bad faith.

>Seems like people read ASR and think they’re automatically a genius that sees through the hifi BS, but if you actually just listen to the damn thing you’ll realize what a fool you are.

If that is an honest question, it is because this is assuming that I just read some ASR then think I am a genius when I am really a fool because I cannot hear what they hear despite not being able to show any counter evidence from what I showed as evidence that what they were saying was incorrect.

Also they are calling me a fool for not agreeing with them.

Derogatory is to take a disrespectful attitude, to disparage. It can also mean to try to detract from the standing of someone. Calling someone a fool for not agreeing with baseless claims is derogatory in both senses.

I reiterate, I am not saying these people aren't hearing what they think they are, I'm saying what they are hearing is not caused by what they are claiming and it is a different part of the processing chain. To prove otherwise, it needs to be properly tested. I have linked a video multiple times where one of the most expert persons discusses this very topic and why it is so important to make sure things are tested properly.

My part of the post where I stated that you'd need to be able to explain your stance was to avoid people who spout this and that with no substance. We don't have a conversation and your derogatory attitude is not helping.

>How about this: there is audible distortion when an amp is being asked to drive a load beyond its ability. There are headphones that are beyond the ability of many amps. You will not see this on a sine wave sweep, but it’s clear as day with a real input signal.

But you literally do see this with a sine sweep? Though they tend to pick one signal and increase the power of that signal until it clips.

Do you understand how testing for max power before clipping works? If not, I can probably find a resource for you to learn. The way headphone amps are tested is pretty cool.

The amount of power a headphone amp outputs before this is what results in how loud it can drive a headphone. All of what you are talking about is already taken into account when I talk about two amps being set to a specific voltage output. It was what I was referring to when I said the advantage is loudness but I don't listen that loud. A JDS Atom can handle ~7v before clipping, maybe a little more if you allow for 1% distortion. That is 104dB on the HE-6. I don't listen that loud ever.

>First, dismissing someone’s auditory perception in a hobby that is literally all about auditory perception is pretty silly.

I didn't dismiss it. If you read further down, I explicitly say I believe they hear what they think, I just don't agree with what they think their reason for it is.

>But second, higher powered amps make a huge difference to demanding headphones.

Any two amps that are not super flawed that are able to produce a set voltage without audible distortion, noise, or clipping, will be the same. Having more to turn on the volume knob remaining doesn't increase the sound quality. Why would it?

>Amps that don’t have enough power just can’t keep up with high current demands — bass doesn’t decay right, very dynamic passages sound congested, and yeah, you can’t get as loud.

Not being able to keep up with current demands but being able to keep up with voltage results in clipping. I have addressed that below.

>Honestly if you can’t tell the difference between a powerful amp and a run-of-the-mill chifi while driving a demanding headphone, I’m not sure what you’re doing even commenting on gear

Not being an elitist to others, that's what. I literally made a meme about people with your attitude and it was one of my most upvoted things.

Nothing in your post explains why it would make it sound better, it only shows that you need to look into how amps work.

I will keep that in mind. I don't get to travel much (at all actually), but if I ever am in the area, I'll send a PM.

In the words of Kite Man, hell yeah.

>The other part of why it happens is that proper speaker amps have a huge amount of power reserve in their capacitance and dumping the amount of power needed doesn't come close to their maximum power so you're never starving the capacitors and losing dynamics because of it.

This doesn't follow though. If the headphone amp is attenuated to a specific voltage output, the part that gets to the headphone is the same. Voltage at amplitude and frequency oscillates the driver to make a certain sound by causing the driver to move at a specific speed to a certain point of excursion. The amount the capacitors are being utilized would affect the amps ability to handle the current/the voltage it provides, but if that were an issue, you'd have less power or the power would clip/distort severely. Speaker amps, at a given voltage, are almost always less clean power than a headphone amp.

>The HE6 is incredibly high on current demand for a headphone and that drains capacitors really fast, fast enough that it severely gimps the amount of dynamic range due to the voltage swings being lower because of the capacitors never being fully charged and ready to discharge on headphone amps.

This also doesn't follow. If an amp is able to provide equal voltage at a given frequency, it won't have this issue you are describing. Add on that DR is a function of signal and noise so the thing that determines that will be the amount of voltage the amp can provide. If both can provide the same voltage, and the device isn't also outputting a lot of noise, the dynamic range would be the same at a given voltage. Also, capacitors don't have to be fully charged. The prevent fluctuations in voltage delivery due to inconsistent flow of electricity. See this video. If this were an issue, your amp would cut out intermittently. Also, voltage swings being limited is the same as voltage out being limited and is the same as the clipping issue I addressed earlier.

>I didn't spend $50k on speaker amps and another $50k on headphone amps only to settle on the Parasound because I'm imagining shit. I sold off every one of the amps I tried because they didn't do anything special, it's not about amount of power, it's about the ability to sustain it without keeping the capacitors in a constant scavenge stage where they're trying to recharge and never delivering their full voltage swings.

It is about being able to supply power. That is what amplifiers do, they amplify the power given to them by the DAC. They should do so completely transparently. I believe you hear the difference you think you hear, but I don't agree that it is because of the amp. That is touched on in this video. You like what you like, you can't argue preference, but proper testing needs to be done to see if what you are hearing is due to the reason you think you are hearing it. Currently, I would argue that it is not.

>I know how to test gear, I understand volume matching and have decibel meters and even a measurement head to measure volume with a pad seal.

This isn't how to match volume. Use a multimeter that is accurate in the audible range or an oscilloscope. This is especially true if the headphone is the same and being A/B tested through a transparent switcher. Since you are using the same headphone, what matters is the voltage out.

>The problem is making a blanket statement that they need a speaker amp, but that is only half of it, they need a GOOD speaker amp and several speaker amps I tried even over $2000 MSRP absolutely sucked and provided nothing over a run of the mill powerful headphone amp.

I disagree. There are a lot of cheaper speaker amps that are better than the touted audiophile gear.

>It was also immediately noticeable on the Parasound that the Hifiman HE-adapter was lowering the quality over plugging directly into the speaker taps. I have spent more time trying to perfect an HE6 chain than most people spend nitpicking audio gear in their lifetime and I don't even feel like I'm close to the end but I do know for certain that if all I had was the 789 and A90 I originally had when I first purchased the HE6, I would get rid of the HE6 because without being driven well, they aren't anything special, but when they are, I prefer them over basically every single TOTL headphone, including the 1266 TC, Utopia, D8000 Pro, Empyrean Elite, haven't owned the Susvara but have demoed then at shops on my own gear and they are incredible and I'll eventually buy a pair but they aren't the dynamics kings like the HE6, and several others in the summit-fi realm.

And it is perfectly fine that you feel that way and I wish you luck in finding your perfect setup but none of what you have shown is an objective thing you can say other people should follow because it hasn't been properly tested. If getting that set up makes you happy, then go for it.

>A lot of people don't understand that they have the thickest planar diaphragm in existence and all that mass is really hard to push and even harder to push to full excursion, it takes a very fast slew rate and and capacitance to dump power fast enough to make them worth owning. The diaphragm mass is why they can slam so hard.

I do understand how thick their diaphragm is, but that is also why their sensitivity numbers are what they are, which is ridiculously low. But that is already taken into account when you refer to the loudness that the amp can push the headphone to.

>I have done significantly more testing than your skepticism would ever allow you to believe, all volume matched and tested properly.

This is incorrect. Your testing was not proper.

>Granted it wasn't blinded

This is a huge issue though. For a short anecdote on that, I recommend watching the ~1 minute story from this video. There are several parts before and after that explain why this happens and why non-blind testing can't be reliably used. I recommend people watch the whole video if possible, but that one anecdote from the video is a pretty good one. The speaker is basically the guy when it comes to how hearing works.

>What 100W speaker amp did you use, and what headphone amp did you compare it to?

I don't recall the exact model but it was a NAD one, I think a bit older than their current one. Rated for 100W into 4 ohms. Headphone amps were SMSL SH-9, also used a JDS Atom, which is the 1w amp I mentioned being sufficient. I also had a Topping A50 that I used which has likewise the same.

Did you not read my previous components? I tried. It doesn't make a difference at equal SPL. Which is in line with how amps and headphones work. Have you properly tested to make sure you are hearing what you think?