Neat. What do you listen to with that setup?

I mostly just use mine for YouTube and video games.

Seconded. Don't be afraid of used stuff. Check the descriptions, the photos (there'd better be photos), use PayPal/an insured payment method/service, and you're good to go.

https://www.fiio.com/newsinfo/689560.html

The snake oil is especially apparent thanks to their lack of command over the English language - it's painfully obvious they're trying their best to sound like it's doing something great, but it just comes off as a bad/desperate translation.

Are they good?

I'm over here hoping HE1000 comes in a plastic grocery bag, just to keep the trend going.

If I can wear a 600g VR headset, with a 300g battery pack on the back, for a couple of hours, whipping my head here and there the whole time, then a 600g headphone while sitting still should be fine.

Weight distribution and surface area contact is key. Are the headbands on these headphones just that bad or what?

Yeah, well, a tiny dynamic driver in a mostly hollow, plastic chassis with a little bit of sponge inside will tend to be lighter, yes.

I'd say, though, that any headphone can be comfortable, if the headband is doing its job correctly.

What, you don't use an Atmos speaker setup so you can pinpoint their position in 3D space?

You're really missing out.

Again, it's a niche within a niche. It's not going to happen / even large studies get it wrong, so what chance do individuals have at providing evidence any kind of evidence you would accept? What would that even look like?

In the end, "better than nothing" is how we end up having to live our lives, and, simultaneously, the foundation for many of the most widespread cases of misinformation in all of scientific history.

We can't know until we know. Until we do, I'm not so willing to say I'm convinced, and saying I'm not convinced doesn't change anything/affect my life, so it's fine, in my book.

> Scientific studies

Did you even read the study?

[I don't know how it include images or quotes correctly, I guess. See section 4 of the first "study"]

They didn't test headphones. This took place nearly twenty years ago. They admit that they were likely using less carefully mastered/recorded sources.

Yeah. Duh. Garbage in, garbage out.

​

Excuse me.

[See the "audio equipment quality graph from the Wordpress blog.]

You call this a control? Self-described, non-standardized, three-optioned meassure of the quality of audio equipment used in this blog-tier "test", which didn't control for jack?

​

Oh, well, if Gabriella says so.

[See the About page of that blog. Who even...]

I'm not that invested in this conversation that I'm going to even bother checking the other links. This is too much work, and I'm not getting paid. Let's just say "you win", because that's clearly what needs to happen here, and then I'm going to call it a day. GLHF

>If your "coloration" theory were correct then it should make such a test much easier!

Unless a "vast majority of people" have subpar hearing, damaged by traffic noise, auto-immune issues due to modern diets, a great number of other physiological variables, etc. How many people tested/making claims of hearing no difference actually have undiagnosed/are unaware of their own tinnitus?

You can't know - especially when they don't even know, themselves.

Or, more reasonably, don't have as good of a listening environment as they think they have. If I had a dollar for every "audiophile" that listened to music while playing video games, or with a TV on in the background, or with computer fans going, or an air condition unit running, etc...

If you based everything on the words of the "vast majority", the fastest car in the world would, in fact, be the Toyota Camry.

>If people would just drop the obsession with lossless formats for their own sake and focus on things that really matter to sound quality, like better recording, production, and mastering, then I would consider that progress

...? The end user has no hand in the recording, production, or mastering of music/audio. If we're already achieved the best hardware our budgets allow, I see no problem moving on to the only other thing(s) we can affect.

Also, it bares noting - the audiophile community is already a niche within a niche. The cross-section of the community is neither diverse, nor a good enough sample size for anything.

And you're suggesting that, within that niche of a niche, that a small group of people saying "I don't hear anything" is proof that there's nothing to hear?

Come on. If we're going to science, let's science. But as long as we can't actually do good science, let's stop pretending like it's already been done well. Because it hasn't.

More than a handful of people have made this claim, and it seems there may be some truth in the matter, not only taking into consideration that there are possibly some people out there with better hearing/perceiving ability than you / the "hearing ability/range" of humans is an average rather than a hard limit, but also the fact that it's know certain file formats, when processed, decompressed, transmitted, etc., can have different sound due to variances in the processing itself (e.g. FLAC sounding different when it finally hits your headphone because, despite it being lossless, decompression ends up messing with the output, etc.)

(Edit: Something to do with increase CPU/electronic noise, depending on what device is doing the decompression/playback, I think I've read.)

To make the assumption that just because you're playing "bit perfect" files, you're actually getting every bit, unaltered, through every part of your chain, is widely accepted as a bad assumption to make.

So, if a certain lossless file format gets "colored" one way through your setup, and a different filetype is colored differently, then you may actually notice a difference.

Note that u/coconutbrown123 isn't saying one is better than the other. They're just saying they notice a difference.

I'd say, due to the fact that you're not saying it's impossible, plus what I've head, read, and seen - I'm going to conclude they very well could be hearing a difference, and any further time devoted to debating it is just a waste of our lives.

Every pad is user replaceable if you're brave enough.

Y'all are wearing pants?

Because the seemingly-trite saying of "it's about the journey, not the destination" is both true, and universal, and one would gain the most from living in the moment (within reason).

And if the moment happens to call for obsessive research, the pursuit of unobtainable perfection, lengthy conversations and reviews, community and fulfilliment?

Then so be it.

Yes, those things you're doing are for a future-something, but it's the enjoyment of what you're doing in the here and now that makes it truly special/worthwhile.

Here's the thing, though - enjoyment of life is complex, and enjoying the journey of looking for better things (A.K.A. Adventure) is sometimes even better than actually finding the better things you had set out to find.

If anything, I'd argue that those of us passively absorbing/experiencing content are getting less enjoyment out of life than those of us that are constantly sailing the high seas, looking for better treasure, constantly challenging outselves, trying new things, and never being satisfied with any one thing.

The expedition for better is the enjoyment.

*upgrade

Yeah.

The drivers are circles. Tangents on a circle point in literally every direction on a plane.

Omnidirectional. It's just another way of saying "circular".

Duh.

That's a keyblade.

I see what you're getting at. Here's what you need to remember:

Headphones/IEMs, etc. are a means to an end.

If you can hear the music with some semblance of being able to be resolved/in a way that makes you happy, then you're 95+% "of the way there". You'll hear some people around hear say, "I'd never listen to anything lesser", but if something "lesser" was all they had on them, they wouldn't just not listen to music/play games/watch movies anymore - it would be good enough, because that's what is available to them, and it gets the job done.

Nobody needs to hear that last 0.004% of decay from a violin, or that already-highly-synthetic electric guitar. Nobody needs to hear that one guy in the background coughing in the editing booth during the recording, or the buzz of a monitor in the background.

Most products out there get the job done and then some. It's all subject to diminishing returns. Of course it's nicer to have higher fidelity reproduction. It feels different. But not so different that any sane person woud simply stop listening altogether if hi-fi hardware wasn't available to them anymore.

There are many facets to sound reproduction hardware, software, sources, and what makes each individual happy. Find what makes you happy and live your life.

tl;dr - Nothing ever truly dies, and nothing else matters except your enjoyment - don't spend even another second of your life thinking about the state of things, or worrying about what other people are doing.

That looks sick, actually.

A lot of "say thanks" going on, but if "he won't be around forever", and you don't actually want the headset (personally, I'd still try it out and keep it around for playing on Xbox or whatever) then it would be infinitely better if you said, "Thanks, but there's actually a different headphone that I wanted - could you return this one and help me start a savings account? We could both get nice headphones, and you could show me some albums you used to be into, have a sort of listening party."

I've actually had my eye on Razer's Tiamat for a while now. I just want to try them out, you know?

Doesn't have to be super high fidelity or anything - if it's neat/works at all, then I'm down for watching movies and playing games with it.

Not even just ear anatomy - room acoustics, humidity/air pressure, ambient noise, dust and pollen levels, the amount of hair on their head, head size, skin temperature, the exact angles of the headphone mounted on their head, etc.

And that's on top of the fact that literally no two headphones - even of the same make and model - are exactly the same.

I've played a thousand hours of CSGO, and I'm sure several thousand more hours of Halo.

Where the footsteps are coming from is super obvious in literally any headset or IEM/earbud. That's why people crouch, because you're either stomping around, or you're silent - there is no nuance or in-between.

Good directionality comes from the engine, first and foremost.

And in no game are there, like, octagonal intersections? - it's almost always normal cardinal directions. That's how maps are setup. Nobody is using pinpoint accuracy to know that a person is 36 degrees to their left, rather than 38 degrees.

99.999999% of competitive shooters in gamesense, prefiring at headshot level, and strategy/effective teamwork and use of in-game skills and items. You actually have to be pro, or incredibly try-hard, for hyper-accuracy in sound directionality to matter even a little bit.

I guarantee you, pros could be out there smoking folks with no sound at all. It's a big part of the game. Not that big, though.

You really think people are out there playing truly competitively in noise-controlled rooms, with high end headphones, rather than some Razer sponsored garbage?

Really?

It's barely a metric.

Foot steps are a function of volume - whether or not the dev balanced that particular sound to play loudly or not/whether or not the software/third-party software allows the player to adjust the levels of specific sounds/frequencies or not.

Volume is not a measure of headphone quality.

Most video games (especially the ones you're referencing) also have dialog/character chatter, gunfire or weapon clashing, motor vehicle engines, etc. I'm not saying people don't care about footsteps. I'm saying being able to hear them is subject to highly diminishing returns, and are not the measure, or a significant measure of a headphone.

$2 earbuds at the checkout lane at Walmart will let you hear footsteps more than fine.