Can you tell me what are the differences between those? I really like my monk plus, but going from them to my iems I just notice how much top end they're missing, I'm looking for something much brighter than them but the absence of fr graphs for earbuds makes it very hard to know what to buy and to not just waste money getting 5 pairs at once to compare lol

Does it fit in the original case? I'm just about to buy it as well but I'm a bit scared at the heft of the 16 cores, if there was just a thinner 8 core version at the same price I would probably buy it

If they interact in any measurable way, they do so in pcm recordings as well. The biggest thing that affects sound quality when considering higher resolution than 320kbps mp3s is recording/mastering quality. If you're concerned about the interactions of ultrasonic harmonics between instruments, as long as the sounds are digitally produced and separately recorded, such an interaction is never possible. Once you factor this as well, you will notice this "quality" must also be present in pcm recordings, as long as it's audible, if it's not audible then no quality of recording will make you hear that.

Another thing to infer from the fact that mastering/recording quality plays such a big factor in the perceived sound quality and intelligibility of music, is the fact that natively dsd music cannot be objectively compared to high quality pcm, since as long as they're recorder the same, they will sound the same.

The real question is : do you need all of that information to enjoy music conventionally? No. And if you were super keen on digital artifacts and maximum performance? Well, unless you're a superhuman with higher hearing resolution, many studies state that it's still just snake oil.

Small addition : in the original txt file, there are some line breaks at the end of each "filter settings", which are not displayed here correctly since I'm using the reddit app. I'm not sure of how copying and pasting it will work, but I guess it should be fine, otherwise you can just do the process again by yourself

Here's the parametric eq setting I use for "hd560s-to-hd600" :

Preamp: -2.3 dB Filter 1: OFF PK Fc 38 Hz Gain -1.0 dB Q 0.500 Filter 2: OFF PK Fc 42 Hz Gain 0.4 dB Q 2.000 Filter 3: ON PK Fc 80 Hz Gain -0.6 dB Q 1.000 Filter 4: ON PK Fc 120 Hz Gain 1.0 dB Q 2.000 Filter 5: ON PK Fc 180 Hz Gain 1.7 dB Q 0.700 Filter 6: ON PK Fc 3200 Hz Gain 3.7 dB Q 1.800 Filter 7: ON PK Fc 3900 Hz Gain -1.0 dB Q 0.700 Filter 8: ON PK Fc 5600 Hz Gain -5.4 dB Q 1.400 Filter 9: ON PK Fc 8500 Hz Gain 2.6 dB Q 0.500 Filter 10: ON PK Fc 8700 Hz Gain -4.3 dB Q 2.000

The way I make it is through the crinacle headphone graphs tool site, in the equalizer section. To do this, first delete both the target and the headphone graph that comes up when you first open the site, then load in the graph of your headphone first, from the list (it's important that the first graph is that of the headphone you want to eq), then add the "target" headphone graph. Then, in the eq settings, there's a button that says "autoeq", that will match the fr of the first headphones (yours) to the one of the second (the "target"). Before clicking the button, you can add or remove empty filters from the eq settings to make the eq more or less detailed or "specific", even though it's not really that useful since the graphs you're using to do this are not those of your specific headphones, but of those that were graphed by crinacle, so a small amount of unit variance always occurs. Also keep in mind that eqing past 10k becomes unreliable, since the fr depends a lot on the specific headphone placement and the pinna gain of the articifial ear used to create the fr. So dont worry too much about it, and let the autoeq do its magic :)

After the eq is done, go ahead and delete the second headphone from the selection, and then in the eq section click on "export" to have the txt file with the parametric eq settings, like the one I've pasted here. Optionally, there's an option to download a txt file for wavelet, that will work as an autoeq preset once you import it in the app from your downloads.

The hd600 is greatly tuned, but the mids are actually quite a bit different. If you check the fr of the headphones on crinacle.com, you will notice the hd600 has some elevation in the 1k area that the ksc75 lacks, added with a slightly laid back "middle-midrange" the ksc75 actually follows the target more closely than the hd600. I've played around with eq with my ksc75 and hd560s, and when eqing the hd560s to the hd600 target, if that's at all what they sound like, they're quite different from the ksc75.

Great, now I have yet another budget pair of headphones I don't really need but I want to buy lol

Can you tell me how you found the knockoff on aliexpress? Is it the one that's always being advertised with the shiny metal grills?

Exactly, it might not be a problem of the headphones

Before changing anything about the headphones, make sure your ears are OK, and test with other headphones. You could just have a slight earwax buildup

Listening to compression artifacts on purpose sounds really menacing lol. I just settled for 320 kbps mp3s since I can't hear the difference from flacs, but whenever I have to listen to some music on YouTube and I can hear the difference in quality, it does bother me quite a bit lol

Something I like to do a lot is playing tetris lol. I play Cultris 2, it actually also has some pretty cool music as a "soundtrack", but recently I've been turning all of its sound off and just playing tetris in "training" mode. My mind goes on autopilot on the tetris game and I am somehow able to focus a lot more on the music, and at the same time to occasionally space out on it and focus on clearing lines, I find it overall very relaxing and I really like to do it after a long day or just to unwind before going to sleep. It took getting somewhat good at tetris though, so I wouldn't recommend unless you're already into it lol

Grados with hifiman headband

Why does Saudi Arabia's inflation rate change steeply at every new year?

How is there not yet a Jojo edit, I would make it but I can't use Photoshop lol

I read that as "Not as wide as HD800 /sarcasm" and I don't know why but it made me laugh lol

I've read someone online using these words and I use them to describe my experience, but that's probably something totally made up lol

Passive Soundstage is the feeling of the sound being wide because of the open back nature of the headphones, simply because of the fact that your ears aren't occluded and the drivers are further from your ear canals. For example, iems and closed back headphones lack this feeling, which I describe with these words.

Active Soundstage is what people usually refer to as "regular" Soundstage, and is the feeling of the spatiality of the sound despite the actual distance from the driver, ear occlusion and so on. Imo it depends on both tuning and technicalities like detail retrieval, layering and "imaging", and from a tuning perspective it depends on how the headphone/iems follows your particular hrtf.

My experience with the ksc75 is that yes, they feel open compared to an iem or closed back in the same price range, but though being open the sound feels quite "in your head", and there isn't much separation from instruments being in the front, in the back, closer or further away. Imo that has to do with the headphone struggling with layering, in a way that if two different instruments are playing at the same time, especially when there's a difference in volume, a part of the detail of the sounds is lost and therefore the illusion of space is compromised.

Instead, with the venture electronics monk plus, to make an example, the layering is much better and that in my experience results in a much more accurate Soundstage and feeling of space, even though the specific location of the sound (imaging) is not always clear, so that results in sounds in the "background" as sounding further away, while still detailed, and sound in the "foreground" not being affected by the other sounds around them, resulting in a clearer and easier to understand depiction of the music.

Another example of "passive" vs "active" Soundstage is an iem like the Moondrop Aria. Being an iem, your ear canal is completely occluded, and therefore they lack that "open" feeling of open back headphones or flat earbuds, though they make up for that with technicalities and tuning, that are pretty good for the price. That makes the sound still feel "wide", especially stuff sonically designed to sound that way, like ambient music, or well mastered orchestral music. The spacial image is more defined than the ksc75 Imo, though being closed they feel wide in a "different way", therefore why I started using this comparison between these different feelings still using the word "Soundstage"

Sorry for the wall of text, also this is just my personal way of describing my experience, and it must not in anyway be taken as something universal or that I expect anyone to agree with. There probably are people with better knowledge and better terminology who can describe what I'm experiencing better, this was just my personal take on the subject "Soundstage" lol

This makes me want to get a pair and just use eq, one thing I don't like about my ksc75 is that the Soundstage is barely there, and it's mostly "passive" Soundstage

Plus with the autoeq directory it should be pretty easy to make them sound good if the problem is the tuning

Koss ksc75 exists though

Have you tried HiByMusic? It's free and I'm currently trying it out, the ui looks faaaar nicer than neutron and uapp, as well as it being free lol and offering basically the same features

Better yet, speak for your self-states

I will, but I mostly started using flacs instead of streaming to actually listen to my music even when offline, so even if I don't notice any differences I probably will still be using flacs, my music is worth sacrificing a couple gb on my phone lol

I believe 100% it could be placebo, I'm just reporting my experience lol

It's actually music from an Italian indie rock band, that I previously thought to be badly mastered because it didn't sound the best compressed, now instead it sounds like a breath of fresh air hahah

I also have some classical music in my library, but I still have to properly test it lol, I also expect it to sound much better than the Spotify albums I've heard

Also if what you said about mainstream record labels is true, it's a shame since some of Billie eilish's recordings actually sound so skillfully mixed, I would love to hear more detail in them, even though I feel like they are capable of sounding pretty good even just on Spotify, so I actually agree that it may be as you say