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hvperRL t1_iu2nw1h wrote

We have been at the point where actual mixing and mastering tracks is the bottleneck for quite some time. Theres a reason why a lot of people settle on a mid to high shelf pair of cans and sell everything else

I myself am happy with my HD600 that is 6 years old at this point

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AyeYoYoYO t1_iu2px4u wrote

HD600 will always be a great headphone. It has one of the few truly classic FR, and a classic design.

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lightning696969 t1_iu53zkp wrote

What about hd650?? Hd650 is bad headphone??

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AyeYoYoYO t1_iu593km wrote

HD650 is also a very good headphone. But I feel the FR of the HD600 is more universal, and more timeless across all genres.

HD650 is the FR for people who prefer more bass, and sensitive to 1k-3k, slight changes, but to me, for reference purposes across all genres, the HD600 is the superior FR, especially the rising slope from 1-3k

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Dust-by-Monday t1_iu2swob wrote

HD 600 is from the 90’s

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hvperRL t1_iu2tvtd wrote

Yes which proves my point. Just my pair in particular was bought brand new 6 years ago but likely was produced even a few years before that. With well engineered cans that you take care of, theyll likely last a life time. Some people here have posted cans from the 80s that used to belong to their folks

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L-ROX1972 t1_iu51xaa wrote

>We have been at the point where actual mixing and mastering tracks is the bottleneck

Thank you. This is what I came here to say.

I’ve been Mastering Audio for over 20 years and I’m honestly quite a bit disheartened by how poor the quality of current releases are today - and it’s only gotten worse.

In the last 20 years, I have seen a lot of seasoned Mastering Engineers leave the business. It is rare to see people sending out their albums to get mastered by a professional who only does Mastering; these days (in most popular genres) it’s quite typical for a release to be recorded/mixed/mastered by the same engineer and the results are typically underwhelming.

The current economic situation hasn’t helped either. Most pros who are still around today have had to raise their rates, and this has lead some to use “online mastering” (AI) for their tracks. A lot of times, the results are passable, but it’s not nearly the same thing as when you’re working with a human who might give you some feedback on things to tweak on your mixes, helping you to get the most out of a mix prior to mastering.

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ImpossibleResource68 t1_iu54ful wrote

Do you think apple and spotifys quest for all lossless audio will change this?

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L-ROX1972 t1_iu56boj wrote

Nope, not at all; I see them (major record labels & distributors) continuing to push for proprietary file types and digital snakeoil (upsampling).

The quest for having the best-sounding albums is non-existent (simply because that would cost more and take more time to accomplish).

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Nadeoki t1_iu6omfm wrote

Deezer, tidal and qobuz already exist for that. Yet they use 16/44.1 and some releases are compressed for the Loudness war's sake.

Spotify is also definitely not moving to Lossless anytime soon.
They have no reason to, most people who use it, do so for the Algorithm and the ease of access. Those that care about the quality aspect have already switched or use something besides it for actual playback. That being said, I hope they consider at least flac 24/48 at some point in the future.

If Deezer can optimize their recommendations and add a bigger catalogue, they might be more competitive and therefore force Spotify to up their game.

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ImpossibleResource68 t1_iu6pjn6 wrote

I think apple is pushing Spotify with their lossless for free. From what I’ve ready Spotify are having licensing issues with it at the moment and that’s the only thing holding it up. The announced it 2 years ago now.

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Nadeoki t1_iu6t6xn wrote

Flac is an open source project with no licensing fees or royalties so either you mean it just costs more to get Tracks in flac from Production Companies or they're having trouble acquiring the Storage Facilities needed to store the significant increase in size of their 90+ million track library. Not all of which even exist in flac.

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Raizau t1_iu42nyf wrote

So heres some of my personal audio engineer experiences.

  1. They were telling us to record in the highest sample rate possible in 2013 to future proof our music in school
  2. One of my friends is a sony engineer and he just records 44.1 24bit because sony doesnt really care about high resolution so neither does he. (At least at the mixing/mastering level, they are all happy to dumb hi rez stickers on everything though)

So lets put it this way. The industrial and acoustic engineers are pushing the tech for hi rez audio.(ez marketing and product value)

The recording engineers really dont care because the music recording division highers ups dont care.(most people are listening to ogg vorbis on spotify lol)

This is just my personal experience in the industry. There is a disconnect at a lot of big labels. They havent realized they can sell the music for double by just having the engineers change a check box at the start of the sesson.

Edit: i meant sample rate lol

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SteakTree t1_iu4g3p8 wrote

Bit rate is one thing. Having a higher bit rate lowers your noise level for each track. Useful for audio engineering and mastering. And even then well recorded 16bit files would still be fine with noise levels unlikely to be an issue.

For sampling rate, there is no need to go higher than 44.1/48kHz according to the Nyquist theorem.

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Nadeoki t1_iu6p2xs wrote

Nyquist theorem has been put into question more recently iirc.
DSD for one showing some ABX test results to not be entirely conclusive.

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Nadeoki t1_iu6oxzs wrote

But the community probably spending +500% that of average audio listeners cares about sampling rates and such. So maybe it would make sense to still make sure people actually release in high quality.

Some Soundcloud artists only have Mp3 LameV3 320kb/s releases and it really pisses me off to add them to my otherwise flac/DSD collection

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hearechoes t1_iu4t5fd wrote

I think the thing is, they can still just slap the high res sticker on the end to a file that was mastered to 24 bit 96khz+ and make the extra bucks, so what incentive do they have to record at higher sample rates in the tracking stage, which reduces the # of tracks/plugins they can use, increases bounce times, etc.

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atemporaryone t1_iu30epx wrote

I've been up and down and settled on 600 and 660S as well. Smart choice.

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ExiledSanity t1_iu7ukwx wrote

I think this is it. Great sounding recordings sound great on everything.

I like having a bit of variety, and I haven't really spent more than $1000 on a pair of headphones (and that only a couple times). But I spend a lot more time with a few sets in the $300 to $500 range, the HD600 being one of them.

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blastfromtheblue t1_iu6fmih wrote

my upgrade from hd600 was my airpods max. in terms of sound quality, it’s more of a sidegrade (although it is slightly better than the senns imo, even via bluetooth) but the convenience, features and even design were well worth the extra cash.

i think headphones will continue to get better, but not really in sound quality. and the same quality/features should become more affordable over time as well.

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HubbaMaBubba t1_iu6qvtk wrote

> it’s more of a sidegrade

Extremely controversial opinion lol

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