>having being used to hifi and flagships for a long time it's shocking to me I ever thought the hd650 sounded good when I put them on nowadays.

You could get that feeling simply by using AKG K612 Pro, and they're cheaper than HD650.

Headphones flaws have nothing to do with listeners impression. If you highly enjoy phones with extremely colored sound, it doesn't mean they don't have flaws, it means you tolerate those if you experience more exciting sound. And you can't compare HD650 to hi-end in that regard simply because most of the hi-end is basically about the system of flaws and perks for providing excitement in various genres and productions (and Abyss does that approach in the most extreme way), while HD650 is designed with conception of having the least flaws possible (and their only real flaw is the lack of subbass). Of course HD650 isn't an exciting headphone - flawless acoustics is never exciting.

Back then I believed that you may have a more exciting sound that doesn't sound disgusting on numerous tracks. Not anymore, I have tried enough hi-end to prove myself wrong.

No, it doesn't. Actually the only mid-fi headphone I have tried that has shouty 1 khz was Yamaha MT8, other mid-fi phones had pretty linear mids, or had problems in other places rather than 1 khz. It really is only an issue with hi-end headphones, Audeze in particular. Haven't tried TOTL Sonys though.

Talking about HD650/600/6xx and others from this series - this is the only headphone in the world that doesn't give me any ear fatigue at sane levels of volume. The most comfortable sound signature in the world. They really may feel dull compared to other headphones, mid-fi included, but it is worth getting used to that sound sig, because balance between details and fatigue is perfect.

The hugest flaw of almost every planar and most high-end headphones in general I have heard is 1 khz peak, and 1266 TC has rather huge one. Why should I get used to shouty phones that give me fatigue very quickly? 1 khz peak doesn't give me any more information that I already hear, nor it makes sound more natural, but it absolutely gives me fatigue. It's a huge flaw to me.

Lucky guy. I have easily heard flaws in all planars I have heard (1266 TC and LCD-2 included). Was a bit harder time with Focals but still.

>it sounded so hollow like the character was speaking into an empty pringles can, and footsteps sounded like corrupted sound files.

Your ears didn't lie to you, DT770 really do have this effect. The reason is a dip at 200 hz, it can make voices sound hollow. G Pro X do not have this dip, thus the difference in sound.

Any headphone is a combination of perks and flaws that either makes you have fun or makes you do some specific task better. I have never heard flawless headphones personally, all of them have flaws.

>He later laughs at me for not knowing the true quality of sound or what a real studio headset sounds like.

Headphones are usually called studio for the other reasons rather than having high sound quality. DT770 in particular are made for tracking vocals and instruments, they're comfortable, durable and they make you feel comfortable while singing, that's why they're called studio headphones. Not because of their sound quality.

>It's pronounced like shit.

What a great choice of words lol

Imagine it being older than Vorbis and Opus. Early 2000s.

Maybe the lack of documentation killed it, but in fact it's one of the most epic lossy codecs I have seen.

According to tests - yes. Practically, assuming we work with relatively high bitrates, - I don't think it matters so much.

You can also have some great experience with Musepack (sounds amazing, no generation loss because it's subband), but the problem is general compatibility - I refused it because I couldn't transfer it to my smart watch and to friends through messengers. Shame, because it's my favourite free open source format, I like it even more than Opus for my tasks.

To my experience AAC FDK VBR 5 is good. Bitrate is something like 200-210 kbps. Sound is generally transparent to me.

Any codec is transcoded to AAC, including AAC itself. The question is if you can hear generation loss or not.

AAC to AAC is almost 100% resistant to generational loss, so use FDK, mode VBR 5. Opus is compressed better, but it's up to you.

To be honest it looks more like an app issue.

Still AKG K612, and leave HD560s as your music phones. Trust me, if you're after spatial and imaging characteristics, the whole HD6xx series is not for you, but AKG K6xx/K7xx surely is.

People need to stop that "midrange" rant about Sennheiser, it's not even the tenth reason why they're so good because there're a lot of other headphones that do midrange correctly.

And yes, AKG K612 are one of them.

To AKG K612.

>To see whether or not spending that time saving is worth it!

No, it's not. It's better to learn EQing, you will get a lot more.

The thing you're missing is that HD560s actually have very decent, pretty linear and low distortion bass down to 40hz. Saying that they do not focus on bass is pretty much ignorant because they're one of the best hi-fi targeted headphones in this regard (better than whole HD6** series, Hifimans and lots of other headphones). The problem here is not the headphones itself, it's the fact that topicstarter boosted bass in damn Sony XM4 with already boosted bass.

Only volume normalization through the player. If you use youtube-dl to download Opus stream, you get completely unprocessed audio.

Now it's up to you to decide if a change in digital volume degrades quality for you or not :)

What did ASR notice? They only said they were surprised that Ether CX weren't superloud. Nothing else. If you had enough volume, you were good (you HAD enough volume... X2HR is a very efficient headphone that can be driven by a mobile phone, and Asgard is a crazily powerful amp).

Btw - term "driving" means having enough volume and that's all. It has nothing to do with the sound signature.

I use 256 kbps with Opus for robustness against all possible artifacts (heard some at 192kbps and even 224kbps). But if you ask me, 128kbps is the best bitrate for Opus in terms of efficiency. ALMOST transparent, yet files are super small.

>and I feel the same about the upper-mids being too shouty.

You don't even get the idea. The dude will DIE listening to Elegias! They're extremely shouty even for me :)) Focal Clear is a lot more balanced headphone than Elegia

Youtube does volume normalization through the web player and through their mobile apps. It is not applied to music during encoding.

Man, it's so cool that you can listen to YouTube and it sounds almost transparent because of Opus. This codec rocks hard.

Actually I was wrong about Qudelix, it is not that convenient there, because the app does not have a calculator. It only has the mV level on the right of the headroom regulator. For example you get 1e+2 there, 1e+2 is 100, so you get 100mV, means 0.1VRMS. https://www.headphonesty.com/headphone-power-calculator/ - you can calculate the else here.

I was wrong because FiiO devices really have this calculator built into the app and it's connected to the volume level, so you enter sensitivity and impedance of your headphones and get output power and DBFS in return. It's the most convenient way.

If you have FiiO BTR, Qudelix 5k or smth like that, then there is a convenient way - through a built in calculator in an app. Otherwise there's not.