Sennheiser HD 555 finally arrived!

so i finally got them! HURRAY!


Im so excited and i already started using them and they sound amazing! compared to my other ones...which are like muffled :S


Anyways, i would like to know if plugging them into an amp or using my Creative X-Fi 5.1 surround sound would offer the best performance overall?

(music/movies/gaming)?


Thanks1

 

Lol ironically I was just about to ditch my HD555. Anyway it depends on the amp but generally HD555 or any phone for that better will sound better though an amp. The X-Fi is decent but not great for music. I would also let the cans burn in for a bit.

 

Yeah, as a general rule an amp will make any headphone sound better, or a decent sound card.

 

yeah i heard they sound better overtime

the only con i found was that sound leakage is kinda annoying...

but its fine, sound quality makes up for this

 

Open headphones leak sound but sound better because of low or nil resonance.

Congrats btw.,

u can burn them by playing "pink Noise' on loop/repeat overnite.

download it from burninwave.com

enjoy the cans..great for male vocals.

these headphones give u a taste of audiophile headphones.

 

Congrat's on the arrival!

I checked those out! They look sweet!


Cin

 

remember when i had got them? ..had posted some pics?

sold them off few months back though to fund my HD600..the Reference class headphones

 

Vaguely..my memory hasn't been the best as of late...

Sorr's I should've remembered....

I do remember the HD600's though


Cin

 

I have been using the HD555's for movies, music, games for about a year. They are a great all purpose set, I have been very happy with them

 

I'd advise against the 'pink noise' in my opinion your better off to just use them and enjoy them as they change.

 

ya i think ill just let me headphones burn in with time

 

u ll get bored...if u want fast results then try Pink Noise... one night and u ll notice a big improvement in Bass.

2nd nite and u ll notice improvement in vocals.

soon the highs will sound clearer instead of rolled off.

i had same headphones hence can advice u.

 

As I said before, I wouldn't do pink noise, Your better off to let your headphones break in with the music you listen to. Personally I think pink noise can be to hard on your headphones, hence I advise against it.

 

syndrome VS nocturnal: the headphone showdown

 

yeah lol im completely confused. I have no idea which advice to take...i know that nocturnal has owned the Senns and thus i would probably lean more towards it..


but are there real inconvenients about using pink noise? will it destroy my headphones in some ways? or reduce its life span?

answers please!

 

I think it could, but thats just what I think, I don't have any proof, I just think its an unnecessary risk to take with your headphones. I mean, I've had HD580's, HD590's, HD280's and my HFI-780's and I didn't use pink noise on any of them. If you look into it alot then you'll realize that in the headphone world theres alot of arguments about whats best and whats not best, none of it really has that much hard proof.

 

I do the following:

WhiteNoise
PinkNoise
WhiteNoise
PinkNoise
FullFrequencySweep

Repeat for 2-4 hours.

A few minutes of nothing.

Then repeat.

Anywho, congrats on your first Hi-Fi headphone. I'd recommend a Fiio E3/E5 amp to start out, or maybe a CMOY if you're the DIY type.

 

There are 2 train of thoughts: burn in headphones or do not burn in headphones. It is debatable if headphones can really be burnt in. Each side is passionate about it. Ultimately, the only thing that matters is your own personal enjoyment.

People generally burn in their headphones with pink noise, white noise, brown (Brownian) noise, etc. These different types of noises are just different types of computer-generated sound. If you look at the frequency response graph of one of these noises, it looks like a graph with a function from math class. If you want to know more about this stuff, I will save the lengthy explanation and let Wikipedia do the work.

If you do burn-in your headphones, make sure the volume is not too loud. Just turn the volume slightly louder than a comfortable listening volume. Then play some music (or pink noise) on a loop and put your headphones in a drawer overnight.

The Creative X-Fi sound card should sound good with your HD 555. There are better sound cards, but they cost even more money and most people will not notice the difference. If you have a good amp, then use that as the HD 555 sounds even better with a good amp.

The HD 555 sound great with music that have acoustic instruments like those found in jazz, classical, etc. They are a good pair of entry-level audiophile headphones. I should know, I own a pair!

 

*Wants a pair of Grado's*

 

Thanks alot you guys!

can i plug my headphones into an amp and plug that amp in my external sound card? or will that just not do?

 

it should work.

 

I love mine and as everyone has said an amp will increase the amount of power which means more sound.

 

They don't just up the power, they actually have different 'sound signatures' to make it simple to say.

 

you're going to want to get an external dac to go with your amp for best results - doesn't need to be expensive, mine was $120 (Zero DAC). Then you should download the ASIO plugin for whatever music player you have (winamp and foobar are the two I use) to let your computer bypass the kernal mixer if you use Windows. This will in theory allow bitperfect streaming to your external DAC through either usb or spdif. Your DAC will in turn convert the digital signal to an analog signal to be sent to your amplifier. If you have your ASIO plugins installed and set up correctly your volume mixer in windows will have no effect on the volume of the output. Just set your player's output volume to 10 and use the volume control on your amplifier to control the volume of the playback. Using ASIO and pure digital output to a dac will yield the best quality you can get from your headphone setup using your laptop as a source. I thought it was snake oil until I tried it with my setup, and I've been very pleased with the results. It totally cleared up any popping/clicking that was present from the internals of my laptop, increased volume and clarity of the output, and audibly improved definition of what I was hearing, and I was completely skeptical before I tried it. You can go to Head-Fi for more info, and check out this link: http://www.aqvox.de/Asio-USB-Audio-installation-e.htm
My current setup: Sager 9262 using Foobar2000 w/ ASIO plugin => Zero Dac/Amp ( only use DAC section ) => Little Dot MKV amplifier => AKG K701

 

Firstly,

Pink Noise doesnt damage the drivers unless u blast up the volume, in which case any sound can damage the drivers.

and
Do not do Frequency Sweeps now...they will stress the diaphragm.

Pink Noise is a kind of noise which consists of nearly all frequencies across the human hearing range and hence improves the diaphragm's responsiveness across the spectrum


for HD555..u dont need a powerful amp actually
and ZERO DAC like saintalfonzo (u got an awesome setup man) said is highly recommended but is too big (desktop DAC) and something for experienced/enthusiast users as its opamp has to be rolled for optimum experience...if u r gonna carry around laptop with HD555 then i dont suggest that.

ASIO plugin is highly recommended though..as it bypasses the Windows OS Kmixer and gives u a low latency signal which is undetioriated by various API layers a sound usually passes through.

So checkout something like iBasso D2 Boa..which is a USB DAC + Headphone amp.. just plug it in and it becomes a output soundcard of the laptop and is a very good amp...can also be used with iPod.

or u can checkout Fiio E5 if u want a cheaper amplifier to drive your HD555.


btw if u go to head-fi u can catch me there also:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/members/nocturnal310/

c ya.

 

I didn't know this setup was meant to be portable since the source was a laptop - I mentioned the Zero for its cost/performance ratio, and the opamps only need to be rolled if you are going to use it as an amplifier which I do not. I have played around with the amp section though, and its clarity surprised me. It is fatiguing though, in the higher end frequencies, at least to my ears. I've thought about rolling opamps and clipping those capacitors like they talked about on head-fi, but I don't think it would ever sound as good as my MKV.

BTW, have you checked out the first peek at the new HD800? I might be stupid enough to spend the money if they drop a few hundred dollars. I'm going to wait until they're out for a few months to make sure it isn't all hype.

 

ZERO DAC is indeed a great value for money product but its not portable and if u have a laptop then u ll be using integrated card when u travel around ...thats the main reason i didnt buy it.
but i did audition it and liked its DAC.....the amp is so so.

MKV is a tube amp so its another class and i have also heard a lot about it..and how good it drives HD600.
If possible try posting its photos for us guys..its smthg worth oogling at


regarding the HD800..man..that is the thread which nearly caused Head-fi to crash..especially Jude's first impression thread.

the price is too high and not sure of returns..so i ll wait around for auditioning it and post my impressions too here and on head-fi.

nice to see a fellow audiophile on NBR btw....c ya around

 

*is a picky audiophile who downloads vinyl FLACs and uses Shure SCL4's*

You're not alone!

 

lol Vinyl & FLACs are two different things.

FLAC is a digital Lossless file.

whereas Vinyl is the medium which is used for analog music.

 

80 % of audio users haven't got the basics when it comes to.... listening audio. If you ask them a few questions they will simply amaze you with the responses...Most of them listen with treble on -, bass on full and medium on +/ Why do they listen like that? Well because they cannot comprehend that there is a spectrum with frequencies.

I recently made an acquaintance and I was pleasantly surprised to see that this person owned a pair of...HD650s. He had them for a few weeks now and he was very pleased. He wanted me to try them and I did. When I put them on, I was stunned . My phone had better quality and I had the impression I was in a train station and there was someone playing music through the P.A. I said, these are either broken or he did not set them up properly. I read something else about the 650s.

I played with this Audigy Platinum, my cup of tea, and the sound was blowing me away. I played Eric Claptop - Layla - DTS with a lovely EQ, smooth crossover frequency and the acoustic guitar was mesmerising.

The guy tried them on and he did not like the fact that his headphones had 3 distinct frequency ranges : low, mid, and high.

I tuned them back the way they were and then he said they sounded like a trash can. I gave him a crash course in audio set-up and now shares with me every discovery.


Bottom line? Opinions differ because some people cannot comprehend that there is a better way to listen to music so they do not accept it.

 

They sound better than most of the Audio CDs on the market.

 

noob question. how is it supposed to be done?

 

Speakers are not 3way or 4 way because the treble value needs to be on -. Moreover, why do cans go from 20 Hz to 22KHz for example? I won't get into the 16KHz argument now...


The optimum setting varies from song to song. There is no 5% here and 20 % there and every track sounds the same.Tracks do not sound the same. HOWEVER, you need to have bass, mids, and treble. You need to be able to distinguish them. They need not run over one another and more importantly, don't listen with the treble on negative and with the mids so high so it sounds like a fricking cell phone . Treble ends up on negative only when the volume on the amp is so high that you want to protect your tweeters or headset because the high range is amplified enough through power.

You have treble? Use it, most of the time it needs to be close to 100% positive and decreased when the can/speaker starts to distort it due to either high volume or bad track recording.


Let' s use an easy 3 , 4 , 3 band equaliser.

3 - bass, adjust them in a way so the can's/speakers don't break but try to make them as "round" as possible.
4 - mids, these are tricky because their slightest change over the positive value will cover the highs. On my EQs I keep them under 0dB. Very rarely, a song needs them higher but I never go more than +1dB.
3 highs - these are very tricky too because if yo don't increase the right one you loose lovely sounds in the high range.

All those Winamp, Creative, Media Player , pre-sets are rubbish. They are always set up in a way so you have 2 spectral frequencies dominating and the third undermined.


These settings often vary due to can/speaker ability to reproduce the frequency.

 

Never use EQ imo.

the idea of HiFi sound is reproduction of the sound as it was engineered by the artist and the sound engineers.

 

Hi-Fi quality varies like any audio quality.

That is your choice it does not mean it is the correct one. The reproduction of the sound you are talking about will yoyo according to the rip/audio source. EQs exist to help the user manipulate frequencies for a crisp and lovelier sound.

What will you do when you find your fav song on in a rubbish recording? Will you play it like that and fool yourself by saying " Uhh...the artist wanted me to hear him like this ..."

 

EQs are generally used for loudpeakers because not every house is setup like a recording studio with egg-cartons on the walls. Headphones have a smaller environment to contend with versus loudspeakers so EQ is not really necessary. The problem with the HD 650 is that they are really bass heavy and are tuned more for pop music. Some people are not bass-heads and listen only to classical music. Plus you did not say what amp he was using as that affects the sound quality.

Still, it is your choice. Nobody is forcibly stopping you from using EQ.

 

In digital music there is no such thing.

if the Mastering was poor..all copies will sound poor..and if it was mastered properly without dynamic compression obviously..then they will sound good enough.

EQ only boosts certain frequencies ..it DOESNT add definition to frequency...nor does it undo the damage done by Dynamic compression.

so if u hear the guitar lack the tightness... Boosting the EQ will only increase the loudness of the same tone but not improve the tone.

if the vocals have sibilance and aint clean enuff...increasing that range will only boost the sibilance and poor vocals.


Also, the artists i listen to have a reputation of their albums...Pink Floyd, Eagles etc.

True....the EQ can help with the Bass resonance on speakers because their placement greatly affects the bass apparently.

but regarding the HD650..
HD650 are not for pop firstly...their bass has the heaviness/weight which makes the lows on the piano sound realistic and gives weight to instrument...but its not the kind of bass which is present in Pop music.

also, on most amps they sound very dark..so unless u spend another big amount on amp..u aint getting the best out of HD650.

 

I have a huge collection of DTS/AC3 Albums and I have Pink Floyd and Eagles in there too. It takes audio to a new level and my Senn's simply blow me away. I also have Beethoven in DTS/AC3. You close your eyes and you are with the orchestra.

 

seems like we can have an Audiophile's thread on NBR...lot of enthusiasts i am noticing.

btw are u on head-fi?

 

No I am not. But yes, a thread might sound nice. To share some info

 

There is no need to be a douche bag about things you know nothing about. No ****ing way, vinyl isn't FLAC? How could I be so ignorant!!!

Try not talking out of your arse next time to people who are on the same page about audio quality.

 

Then theres the other view, which says use your EQ and make the music sound how YOU want it to, cause hey, your the one listening to it. What your saying is basically like saying that any headphone other than the most perfect reference headphone is bad. So since we can't adjust an EQ to make it sound good then why buy different headphones with different sound signatures. And yes, some EQ's work alot better than others.

 

By not using an EQ you are making the sound FLAT. A flat sound will diminish what the sound engineers did in the studio. You can be most certain they used EQUALISERS so your Pink Floyd can sound as you adequately put it "was engineered by the artist "

 

In the studio they use equilizers to get the sound they're looking for, and then the album is mastered using those levels of equilization. This means that when you play the album with no equalizer, or with equilization set to flat, it is the way it was meant to be. Of course this only applies to people with the same sound system and speakers that the album was mastered with. Equilizers exist to make up for differences or deficiencies that may exist in different sound systems. Only high end equipment needs no, or very little equilization.

An example of what I'm talking about:

"This album has been engineered to sound correct on JBL 4311 speakers or an equivalent. Best results will be achieved if you set your pre-amp tone controls to the flat position with the loudness control in the off position. Before adding any treble or bass to the sound of the album, it would be advisable to check it out this way first. F.Z." (Frank Zappa talking about his album "Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch")

Of course in the end all that matters is that you enjoy what you are listening to.

 

we do need an audio section.

 

You are an embarrasement in this thread to no one but yourself.
the more u speak..the more foolish u sound and u do Self Ownage.
I hope u mind your language in your next reply or else i ll have to inform moderators.

And just so that u know where u went wrong.. Saying Vinyl is FLAC is like saying Cassette is Mp3...do u realise how stupid that sounds?

Vinyl is this:



And FLAC is an abbreviation for Free Lossless Audio Codec which is a format for Digital Lossless Audio files.

it uses a compression algorithm which uses less storage space than WAV file and supports ID3 Tags ..i.e name of artist, album name etc. etc.

somewhat like ALAC ( Apple Lossless Audio Codec)

If you dont have Reference headphones then by using EQ u dont increase the overall detail level of your existing headphone but u only boost certain audio frequency at the cost of sacrificing other.


If your headphones really lack in certain area of the spectrum then by using EQ u recess other areas of the sound spectrum.

For example, if your headphones lack the Highs..then u boost the 14Khz+ Frequencies.....u are not increasing the detail level of your headphone..the highs will not sound better, cleaner......u r only increase the decibel level of that frequency which in turn will relatively suppress the other frequencies and make your EQed frequency Louder....so if u wanna hear what the Singer is singing..u can do 'Vocal Booster' to hear his/her voice louder over other instruments.

or if u want Bass for fun..u can do Bass Booster..it ll add heaviness to the headphone and make the Midrange somewhat Muddy.... EQ is something for Fun listening but it doesnt improve anything and its not something u need to do if u really have high end stuff and u enjoy a natural sound.

This is the way i see it...your argument is welcome Syndrome!



----

My dear friend... pls type 'Loudness war' in youtube and see what digital EQing has done to music industry.

it has only flattened the music u get at a higher decibel level...which is basically Noise.


Pink Floyd have been lucky to stay away from the damage.

even if your Sound equipment is not as good as that of studio by using EQ..u r only degrading the Sound.

if u think by boosting certain frequency the Kick Drums will sound better u are WRONG.

First the Kick drums will Sound louder... LOUDER is NOT EQUAL to BETTER btw.

then if u EQ more ..the Kick drums will start distorting..and finally that sound of kick drum will cause clipping in your headphone or speaker if it has exceeded the Loudness an output device can produce.
.


By EQing u dont improve the Sound of the frequency but u only increase the loudness.


If u want it Louder its upto u ...but

 

Increasing one frequency on a good EQ doesn't really 'degrade' or suppress it, the only way that it would suppress it is just because its now louder, thus you pay more attention to it. So you could consider it suppressing the other frequencies, but that wouldn't matter, because the entire reason your turning that frequency up is because you want to hear it more than you already are. Even if its only turning up the loudness, your brain will probably consider that quality, because its closer to how you want to hear it, or to what sounds good to you, otherwise you'd just turn it off. By all means, if you have a good system then there is no need for an EQ, but once your system starts lacking you can definitely make it more enjoyable with an EQ, and if your not enjoying your music... then why even listen to it?

 

I think we need to take this outside .

 

Dearest Nocturnal,

"Vinyl FLACs", if you had bothered to assume the best about what I said, refers to vinyl rips transferred to lossless FLAC for digital consumption.

I'm a member of sites you've never heard of dedicated to ripping vinyl to FLAC and I can assure you I, and they, know more about it than you.

Don't patronize me.

 

Jlbrightbill is right on this one.

And yes, quite a few audiophiles.

My setup is:
Apple iPod Video -> Silver Plated Copper Custom Interconnect -> AMB Mini³ (soon to come) -> Head-Direct RE2.