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In the Thread: (Hopefully short) headphone journey

Post Subject: (Hopefully short) headphone journeyPosted by scooter on: 6/28/2013

These days I am traveling frequently and relegated to listening to music via headphones and "portable" sources. I will briefly post my brief journey as a personal log. It might provide a starting point for those who might find themselves in the same situation.

GOALS

First and foremost, as this is a temporary situation, my principal goal is to listen to live broadcasts of Classical music from FM. Secondary goal is to listen to redbook files residing on my hard drive. I occasionally listen to online radio.

LIMITATIONS OF HEADPHONE SYSTEMS

Headphone systems have some obvious innate hurdles and I think headphone development is in its infancy as significant hurdles have not been addressed properly; some likely have not been identified. Recently a lot of people have put significant time/effort/money into the headphone experience and this has been a "hot" area of hardware "evolution." People sure are excited about the latest and greatest. My expectations are tempered, but I found an enjoyable solution within the limitations of the headphone world.

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PRELIMINARY RESEARCH

There are a few headphone internet sites that can be helpful to catalog what sources, DACs and headphones are available (features, benefits, obvious defects, etc.). I found head-fi.org to be a good primer and useful resource; some of the user observations are helpful and some are not, just like those at other internet sites or magazines.

I frequently visit Tokyo. There are lots of people and lots of consumer electronics stores. In Tokyo dozens of big electronics stores display several hundred models of headphones and lots of DACs, mobile players, etc. There are also a handful of headphone specialty shops with a massive variety of gear (e.g. over 100 different headphone models to try). The big electronics stores are usually quite noisy unfortunately but the smaller specialty shops are less noisy in my experience. This is a reasonable city to test out lots of headphone gear especially if you can bring along your own source/DAC/amplifier.

The ability to test a lot of different systems at one time is huge advantage of headphones over "hi-fi" and a weekend trip to Tokyo could end up saving you a lot of time and money vs. haphazard acquisition of gear over the internet based on reviews, blogs, internet posts, etc.

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HEADPHONES

In Tokyo I listened to dozens of headphones ranging in price from $20 to over $3,000, which covers the entire range of headphones being sold today.

From a pure sonics perspective I haven't been terribly impressed by the classical music headphone experience. Most just fell apart. Even my c1985 Bose alarm clock is more satisfying, but that is not an option whilst on the road. That said, some headphone systems were enjoyable with easier to reproduce jazz and popular music.

I found on-ear headphones hurt the ears after a short period of time; all of my noise canceling headphones became very painful after a few hours. Closed headphones provided deeper bass and some isolation but sounded closed in. In ear phones - no. Open headphones provided the most realistic experience but sound isolation was a weak point; I'm not convinced that sound isolation is an important factor if you are listening in a hotel, home or train, however. The increasingly popular planar phones were very heavy although if Jazz, easy listening is your thing. . .

I recently purchased the Sony MDR MA900 for $200. It is an "open" over the ear headphone with big drivers. They are very light and comfortable. I usually forget they are on and listen for hours and hours. Some internet people complain the Sony's look "flimsy;" I strongly disagree and find the industrial design and execution to be excellent. The lower frequency of headphones is limited and the bass of open headphones like the Sony is less than stellar. Overall for me they do classical as well as any headphone I tried. And I find them enjoyable to listen to for hours.

On Aguston Barrios Mangoré's "Cueca," from guitarist David Russell's The Music of Barrios (CD, Telarc CD-80373)...just kidding.

Sony inserted some silly circuitry to "improve" the listening experience on bad sources, which seems to mirror that of the MDR-F1. I think the idea was to make the listening experience relatively similar regardless of source; the electronics presumably impart some sonic penalty. I will remove that and note how things change. Also note this headphone is very low impedance so the output impedance of amplifier probably might need to be below roughly 2 ohms.

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FM SOURCE

I picked up the Sony SRF-86 which is a good portable FM source for $30, maybe the best among a small field. FM runs from 76-108MHz so it is a global source. The bass boost is terrible. The tuning dial is very crude but there is some electronics that lock in stations making the tuning process less frustrating.

The SRF uses the headphone cable as an antenna and has some dynamic noise reduction. Reception is quite good although I find the dynamic noise reduction algorithm irritating. As volume increases, the static become exponentially more irritating. The AM tuner is quite good although people say the older versions were better and all benefit from an alignment. I don't know if the FM stage can be aligned by a tech.

This guy Xin makes a reasonable case for changing some of the caps to return to the original engineering specs; I will try this also: http://www.fixup.net/tips/srfs83/srfs83.htm

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NEXT STEPS

Get a relatively portable DAC and headphone amplifier for laptop.

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