robot zombie

Straight to jail

If this isn’t the quintessential definition of a guilty pleasure, I don’t know what is!

That’s it. Get out. :-)

I must say, I'm a bit confused by the term "essential gold watch." Seems like an oxymoron. No offense intended.

@Mithrandir41 Thanks, man. I'll say, wise has really attractive dials and features. Love their lume. I've been tempted by them - divers aren't my favorite, but ones with sleeker forms with classy color schemes definitely do it for me.

@Senorx12562 None taken - I was dissatisfied with ambiguity, there. I get stuck on vocab dilemmas when I have to truncate.

I meant 'essential' as in 'the one gold watch I need,' implying that I could pass on the rest. I really only need one good gold watch. You could say it's my personal quintessential - my 'standard' gold tone option.

The detail and treble response are there, maybe very lightly rolled. The mids are a little less cool, more laid back and intimately shimmery overall presentation. Really nice microdetail considering the slight background smear. It just unfortunately stacks a negative with the lack of slam a lot of HFM already have. Unsatisfying for you or me. Mindblowing for mom until I get her something nicer.

I will say, I did like the 2+ with Audeze, but those have the opposite character that HFM has been doing lately with their eggs. Audeze is a hearty dumpling to HFM's fluffy biscuit. Doesn't hinder their strengths at all, just double dips the gaps.

I'd love to see how the newest Vali does TBH. The 2 is giving out say... 85% of what the Arya Stealth has going for it.

Probably time for me to spend time with Days of Future Passed again.

I don't get complaints about brightness either. More just underdamped treble. I like the comply 500's with foam port covers. That puts them dark-slanted with cool-ish and bloomy low mids with big, full sub bass. Great detail, headstage and imaging. They come out of the box with foam tips for a reason, probably. They're wonky, but in a good way.

They also sound pretty good with Spinfit W1s if you like silly cones in your ears - less sub, tighter midbass pluck and impact. Increased fundamental mids and upper presence/ear-gain-region. More prone to hot treble, but mostly even-handed with fun-heuristics incorporated in, tonally. Just less scoop and more bite.

That would make the rears of the cups the actual front baffles/grilles, in a sense. Especially with dual-mag planars that travel equidistantly.

That makes how closed backs sound make so much more sense to me, and explains why pad seal has the impact that it does. Closed is like hearing the inside of a speaker that's pressed up against a wall. Or maybe like being shrunk between that wall and the speaker.

Am I dumb for this? I know dynamic drivers can be asymmetric in travel and emit spiraling waveforms on travel axis that expand to become omnidirectional while propagating, and cab/baffle properties influence the radius on either side of the phase line. As in, there's a difference between front and back, which matters for the analogy.

Not quite right. The space in the cup is the room the speakers are in and those speakers are an open baffle, only opening into another larger space.

@Lyander I think the SW51+ improves 600-series bass. It's kind of in a sweet spot with its impedance and inherent color that makes 600-series tighter and fuller. Goes great with the holography it brings on the top end and the lightly-sweet-but-faithful mids. But yes, with a lot of other headphones it runs lean.

@joch I could definitely add to the thread, I just figured it had enough different impressions lol.

And I agree with you on dynamics. I think it's partially modern planars being far younger and have thus been able to make some monumental leaps. It's weird - most of my favorite new headphones are planars and it's honestly exciting hearing the things they can now do, but there are certain dynamics they can't replace. And those dynamics still lag in a lot of areas, comparatively.

I'm still fine-tuning that mid-presence boundary shift, but bass and treble are about there for me. These headphones are really responsive to tiny adjustments. I just started from rounder and shorter versions of those initial curves, made some changes to upper peak dips to catch those peaks without ending up slashing so much treble. Add bass heft and not completely f**k the midrange character.

Forgive my ignorance - is this capable of digital in - digital out?
I'd be less impressed by using it's built in dacs.

That's the best part about it - AES and Toslink ins and outs, 24-bit 96khz max. I run mine before a Modibit.

I think the actual authors would just ask if they could turn his talks into books and all he would ask is that they say he wrote it. There's just no other way that all of these writers would do that. The character you get throughout them says it all. They all glaze him in this painful way, while he proudly recounts his creeper old geezer tales of being an awkward dickhead. He's weird as f**k, man.

The worst part is that they ARE based on anecdotes he gave about himself, with full sincerity, over years, and they unwittingly show you how much of a weird asshole he was. There are these stories he would pepper in across all of those books, that gradually evolved into these freak-level tall tales - the level of cap is MORTIFYING to even read. Even the guy he fantasizes being is an insufferable asshole.

At first you're relieved that he's probably lying and the writers are probably fluffing. And then the real horror sets in trying to comprehend what kind of weirdo makes up and actually says shit like that to rooms full of people. That's how you know it's not real and truly only more bizarre. Something in his mind was deeply broken. Holy Freud.

Modern astrophysics is on some arcane codex where space is stuff, and stuff is space. And stuff can move through only 3 spacial dimensions but act and appear as though there are sometimes 4, and the math is perfect. It's fascinating, but sometimes I think Lovecraft's realms are more chill than the actual cosmos.

I now live in a world where there is math and observations, that I understand better than I expect, which show how localized space could cyclically make perfect circles that don't arrive at 0 after completing 360 degrees. I know I can't walk in a perfect circle without winding up at the beginning, but it looks like electrons MUST. Once you internalize spinors, you realize the figures are everywhere.

time to find a nice chair or bed and play some music.

On a less frivolous note: it's encouraging to see curiosity about existence around us. We barely understand sound, nevermind more esoteric forces-- shit's wild and terrifying and great fun. Not heard a lot of this before but I'm holding off going down a Google rabbit hole cuz I don't have the bandwidth for it, but interest is ignited. Good to see you around!

You know they're good when everything you play through them just makes you wanna move. I'll never settle on an endgame, the range of what the headphone listening experience can be only ever gets wider for me. How could I ever hope to choose? ADHD + OCD is a whole bitch - it's easier to just have a range of stuff to rotate.

I love Audeze's drivers.

I'd be lying if I said this would be my last pair. I see them as experts in their bespoke formula, much more mature than HFM there. HFM goes all over the map to sometimes strike gold - "sowing oats" approach. Audeze attentively raised a handful of children into well-rounded adults with their tech. And ~15 years later they're making top-class headphones.

LCD2C are warmdark, corporeal, big, close, and dynamic monoliths. Sound isn't In your head, it IS your head. Physically they are heavy but solid, like they sound.

Arya S are neutralbrite, ethereal, wide, far, and finely diffused skyline bluffs. And again, much like their sound they feel light as air, yet steadfastly sound and sure like the cosmos. Sound is in the universe, and the universe is your head.

What amp and DAC ? Wouldn't mind hearing these.

Honestly nothing crazy, lotta changes comin this year. For now it's an OG Modibit going to the SE of Liquid Plat. SE out too. These are for sure getting a Forza XLR cable. I am beside myself. Can't wait to put these things on the juice.

https://www.theonion.com/mark-zuckerberg-vows-employees-responsible-for-facebook-1847802329

I love so, so much that their door locks used the same systems that their sites do so many people were effectively locked out of the building. I love it so much that I might divorce my wife and marry that thought.

Big Hose is responsible for many of the calamities of our times, friend. Your realization takes you the first step down a path that leads to my newsletter.

Cause people don't trust scientists and engineers any more?

Big hose... Panty Hose.

Interesting, I really can't compare. But my takeway from comparisons here was a good 560 wins out on overall technicalities and tonality. Bass, too. Different headphones. But the 5xx's definitely are quick in what I'd bet are similar ways. Quite light on their feet. Emergent would be the word. It's interesting how they can be almost be a little dark/mellow, yet resolving and dynamic.

I gotta say, these things are treating me well tonight. The right headphones. They sound great! More resolving than I gave em credit for. The amount of 'peel' on synthesizers is like confectioner's sugar. The wide spacing in image sections pops-out everything.

Stereo shifts/marches are also exaggerated in a neat way. Percussion sort of bursts into these large spaces like pressurized fresh air - to each element a discreet section.

These things are pretty rad. It's a unique sound. There's some magic going on with dynamics that goes on an upwards climb starting from the midrange. Lil sub bass backing it up, it can have some oomph too. But the top punches past it.