Headphones

Headphones are a little different than speakers in that their frequency response curves takes into account the fact that speakers are typically used in un-treated rooms, and thus headphone manufactures are likely to work less hard.

The frequency response of the Sennheiser HD-650 Headphone for example is atrocious - reminiscent of 1950's Klipsch with vacuum tubed-electronics - and yet, listening, you do not notice the utter lack of quality. It is so comfortable. The previous models top models (560 Ovation and 560 Ovation II) felt so comfortable too, but you did notice. One could not believe how good they looked, how good they felt, and yet how poorly made were the components like the cables and ear-pads, not to mention the utter lack of quality sound. Sennheiser made a turn-around with the HD-580, audibly, which has continued into the 600, 650 and model 800.

We very much respect the Opheus as well, and regret not having purchased the product while it was on offer.

One thing about headphones is that it is reported that you can get the same quality sound for less money than buying speakers. We do not agree with this, but acted on this, buying our present reference, Stax's Omega II and SRM-007t Headphone Amplifier in lieu of a $300,000.00 Wilson and Mark Levinson system, which sounded rather better, in a $500,000.00 room, to our ears.

We chose Stax because at this time, in high school, we read that Keith Jarret used Stax (Stax SR Lambda Professional) whose peerless musicianship (at the time) we admired, and that German acoustic engineers used Stax in their bin-aural laboratory CD recording.

We do not have Stax 009's because while they are better, we do not like the look of them, and because Stax has not released their mentioned in Japanese literature, reference amplifier.

We should mention that we chose a Stax system over a Wilson X1 Grand Slam system after hearing the terrible (worse than Stax) sound of the same system with McIntosh MC 2KW reference amplification.

We do not trust present headphone amplifier manufactures, in terms of quality, though we have written Nelson Pass and Pass Labs to produce a variant of his First Watt SIT-1 for the Reference 009 Headphone and Devialet to produce a variant of their D-Premier, which would do well on just the Class A core - leaving the class D switchable, for speakers - also.

 

We give some deference to the German manufacture Audio Value for their RKV Mk III Headphone Amplifier and associated products (Verto).