I'm thinking of buying a Sennheiser HD650, but I had a few questions regarding music soruce material. If anyone could help, it would be much appreciated!

Submitted by madmidget t3_y7egis in headphones

So basically I always wanted to buy a good hifi headphone, and had my eye on the HD650/HD600. However, people around the internet told me that these headphones are so revealing that they require audio files that were recorded with quality, and that if I simply bought one of these headphones and used it on spotify, it would actually sound worse.

So my question is, do I need to find good quality recordings on CDs of my favorite artists so that the HD650 can sound good like they are supposed to? Would buying one of these headphones just to listen to music on spotify be a waste of money? If so, where can I find good quality CDs? I listen mostly to classic rock from the 60s/70s, so I imagine it shouldn't be impossible (they say that nowadays most recordings are trash). Is there maybe a website that keeps track of which versions of CDs were recorded properly? Thank you in advance!

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GamePro201X t1_isu0ls7 wrote

>Would buying one of these headphones just to listen to music on spotify be a waste of money?

Nope not at all! It's actually pretty hard to tell the difference between Spotify premium, and something a bit higher quality unless you know what to look for. If you really do want something higher quality then you could switch from Spotify to another streaming service (I recommend Qobuz personally, but there are others like Deezer, and Tidal)

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madmidget OP t1_isvdgn5 wrote

But the thing is, I heard that the problem is not necessarily the size of the audio file (mp3, flac, etc), but rather the quality of the recording. Even if a song you're listening to is flac, if the recording was shit then it won't sound good with revealing headphones.

Do you agree with this? Or do you think its nonsense? These are just things I read while researching, I have no idea if its true lol

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djtoshiba t1_isvedco wrote

The recording quality depend of when/where the artists was in the studio, when/where the album been mix and mastered.

So it's way before the distribution cd, vynil or streaming.

You only need to choose a good streaming service and pickup good album and having fun !

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madmidget OP t1_isvfaj1 wrote

This makes things much more simple. Thanks for the response!

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GamePro201X t1_isvedz4 wrote

This is definitely true. However, most songs sound fine, and I think people over exaggerate how bad your average bad recording can sound. Yes, it can be bad, but in my opinion it’s never bad enough for me to not want to listen to a song I enjoy. Half the time you have to focus on the music extremely hard to even find anything bad about it!

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madmidget OP t1_isvfkob wrote

So basically, its not really worth hunting down good CDs right? I should just focus on finding a good streaming service (tidal) and getting a good headphone + amp/dac

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GamePro201X t1_isvgclj wrote

Well I think CDs are good if you want a physical medium for music, but in general lossless streaming services do the same thing and are a lot cheaper/convenient than collecting CDs.

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thms0 t1_isx7x9d wrote

Yes Or your MP3 320kbps could be a 128kbps upsampled. So the best way is to use Spotify or Tidal.

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ultra_prescriptivist t1_isu11et wrote

>However, people around the internet told me that these headphones are so revealing that they require audio files that were recorded with quality, and that if I simply bought one of these headphones and used it on spotify, it would actually sound worse.

Complete nonsense.

>do I need to find good quality recordings on CDs of my favorite artists so that the HD650 can sound good like they are supposed to?

Better quality masters are highly desirable, not matter what headphones you use.

>Would buying one of these headphones just to listen to music on spotify be a waste of money?

Not at all.

In general, modern recordings are victims of the "loudness wars". Here's a good resource to find which masters are generally preferable - the higher the score, the better.

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RB181 t1_isuccn6 wrote

The Dynamic Range Database is (unfortunately) so unreliable in my experience that I'm not sure if it's worth bothering at all.

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madmidget OP t1_isvdmn4 wrote

Man.... really? I thought I had found the perfect resource to procure some good CDs... oh well

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ultra_prescriptivist t1_isvhvfn wrote

Unreliable how?

I've never had any issues with it.

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RB181 t1_iswsn2c wrote

I don't know the technical details behind it, but DR values for the same master can vary when measured with different tools or versions of the same tool.

For example, Epica - Design Your Universe (2009) is one of my favourite albums, and it was re-released with a remaster in 2019. According to the DR Database, the remaster is worse than the original, yet I have the exact same CDs and to my ears the remaster sounds better (which is what one would expect of a remaster). I'm also pretty sure that the last time I ran a DR measurement tool on those two CDs, the results I got made more sense than what the database says.

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ultra_prescriptivist t1_iswyk7i wrote

Well for starters, both those masters look pretty similar. I wouldn't expect there to be much audible difference when it comes to DR, at least. There might be other factors that make you enjoy the remaster over the original.

>to my ears the remaster sounds better (which is what one would expect of a remaster)

Not really - the vast majority of remasters, for pop, rock,and electronia albums anyway, sound worse than the originals, since they are usually louder and more dynamically compressed to meet modern industry standards.

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RB181 t1_iswzbto wrote

I'm pretty sure it's the database's fault because what I am actually hearing is more in accordance with my own measurements than the database (here are the original album and the remastered album if you want to listen for yourself - I haven't noticed any difference between the CDs and streaming releases apart from compression).

And this is just one of the many cases where I've found what the database says to be inaccurate - I can't remember anymore right now but I can run that measurement tool on my albums again if you want.

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ultra_prescriptivist t1_isx2s4v wrote

For science, I just downloaded mp3 versions of the Ltd. Edition Original Master and the 2019 Remaster and ran them through Foobar with the DR analyzer plugin.

Here are the results, which are almost perfectly identical (only 1 track has a slightly different DR score when compared to the database). So the readings in the database do seem to be accurate.

-/+2DR isn't going to make a huge audible difference. Ultimately, whether or not you hear a difference and prefer one master over the other in this case presumably has little to do with dynamic range compression but rather some variance in the mixing/mastering process that was applied to the remaster.

Where the loudness database does come in handy is in situations where one master has signifcantly better DR than the other, which most of the time is a strong indication of which will sound better.

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RB181 t1_isx8ag4 wrote

I downloaded the latest version of TT DR Offline Meter (which the database entries for this album claim to be measured with, or compatible), and here are the results for my personal lossless rips of the CDs. The results for the remastered album (NB 5062-0-1 and NB 5062-0-2 acoustic bonus CD) match the database, but not the results for the original album (NB 2345-2 standard edition, not the limited edition). I double-checked the discs to make sure that the catalog numbers match the database. I don't have the old measurement tool or the results I got originally, so I'm not sure if the results were the same (I don't think they were the same though).

Most people I know who have heard both versions of the album agree that the remaster sounds better than the original (if you're curious, you can listen to those MP3s you've got or the YouTube playlists above), while the DR Database would suggest it sounds the same or worse. This is not the only case where I found DR Database entries to be misleading in the past, which is why I stopped caring about DR measurements when purchasing music, but I don't have the time to analyse my whole album collection right now.

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HubbaMaBubba t1_isvwmqu wrote

>Complete nonsense.

I think a nice revealing system can kind of ruin you when it comes to poorly mastered tracks, so not complete nonsense imo.

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ultra_prescriptivist t1_isw2tme wrote

The original statement was so garbled that I didn't think they were actually talking about the quality of the mixing/mastering.

But if they were, then yes - that would be valid.

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PassiveAgressiveCan t1_isu1ix3 wrote

If you live in the states I’d order a 6XX. Get a better case, sounds the exact same, much cheaper price.

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Hendrixj92 t1_isua2ao wrote

I'm selling a pair over on avexchange. Love those headphones, going to miss them.

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leftlanespawncamper t1_isu4cvq wrote

That extra bit of resolution can be a double-edged sword, but it's mostly good. Depending on what you listen to, it might make you aware of how poorly produced/recorded some of your music is, but it will also let you experience how wonderfully a lot of other music is produced/recorded.

FWIW, I primarily listen to Spotify. I can hear the difference doing A-B comparisons to something like Apple Lossless, but I pretty much have to be doing back-to-back listens. You'll hear more difference between a well versus poorly produced track than you will Spotify versus something else.

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PolarBearSequence t1_isu6lr1 wrote

Use Spotify Premium on the highest possible settings. The difference between that and uncompressed files is probably undetectable for 99.9% of humans.

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madmidget OP t1_isvevg4 wrote

I'm gonna just copy and paste a response I made above because my question is basically the same.

But the thing is, I heard that the problem is not necessarily the size of the audio file (mp3, flac, etc), but rather the quality of the recording. Even if a song you're listening to is flac, if the recording was shit then it won't sound good with revealing headphones.

Do you agree with this? Or do you think its nonsense? These are just things I read while researching, I have no idea if its true lol

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audiophile_lurker t1_iswk4jl wrote

> Even if a song you're listening to is flac, if the recording was shit then it won't sound good with revealing headphones.

This is sort of true? Depends on what is wrong with the recording, and what is meant by revealing. There are headphones that make specific recording mistakes really stand out (Beyerdynamic DT880 for example), but that is because they have treble spikes in specific regions that help detect that. Those headphones can make it straight up punishing to listen to a badly made record. Well tuned high quality headphone will still enable you to hear those mistakes, but it should not punish you.

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PolarBearSequence t1_iswsiud wrote

It’s definitely noticeable: badly recorded or mastered songs are going to sound bad, no matter the quality, and some headphones can make that quite noticeable.

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RB181 t1_isucgif wrote

I agree that the majority of people can't tell the difference, but 99.9% is an exaggeration.

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Eezywhippet t1_isunnvf wrote

If you want good headphones, the hd600/650 is an excellent choice. They are very good. Once you have them, listen to Spotify if you already have it. If you're not happy, at that point it won't really cost you anything extra to move to a higher quality streaming service like Tidal, Qobuz, I've been using Deezer for about 2 yrs and have been very happy with the quality and interface of it. But getting the headphones is the first step and then work on the source if you think you can get a better result.

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HooksAU t1_isuzkru wrote

Spotify is easily good enough, I switched to Deezer because it's cheaper in my country and it's "lossless" but honestly doing an A/B comparison between Spotify/Deezer/Qobuz/Amazon/Tidal I couldn't tell a difference.

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dimesian t1_isysgdy wrote

You'll hear that good quality gear reveals problems in recordings but, someone might interpret that as you need hi-res/lossless files for good audio, that is not the case. The production and mastering that takes place in the studio is the most important factor, if its recorded well it will sound great on a 320kbps mp3 and maybe a little better as lossless though the differences can be very subtle. If its not well made it will be more obvious with better gear. I have some albums I bought as 320kbps mp3 files that sound really great, I have lossless stuff that doesn't sound as good. You should definitely buy the best headphones you can afford.

Hi-res is appropriate for some music, I don't think its some kind of scam but, its a daft distraction sometimes.

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madmidget OP t1_iszgzaq wrote

Do you think a sennheiser HD600 is a headphone that would be very revealing of bad recordings?

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dimesian t1_iszno76 wrote

A bad recording can sound bad on cheap earphones. I think this issue of headphones being too revealing might be overblown, unless you're into a genre that is nearly always particularly poorly recorded I wouldn't worry about it. Sometimes rough audio is part of the charm with some types of music. I've seen some comments claiming that a headphone was so revealing that their favorite classical piece sounded terrible, I checked it out and that particular recording sounds rough on cheap headphones and IEMs. The hd600 series headphones all sound really nice with a wide variety of music, if you mostly listen to very bass heavy music open headphones might not be the best option.

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madmidget OP t1_it44kkv wrote

I listen primarily to rock, these are the bands I most listen to:

Grateful dead Led zeppelin The doors Pink floyd Radiohead

Do you think the HD600 would be a good choice?

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NomDePlume007 t1_isu13og wrote

Spotify streaming is not usually very high fidelity, but if you find it bothersome, try out a service that offers higher quality streams. I liked Tidal myself, but there are others out there.

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AnOldMoth t1_isw9ykc wrote

Untrue, Spotify is imperceptibly similar to FLAC in most cases. The extreme, extreme majority of audiophile-types have no need for anything else.

You can learn to hear the differences if you're trained to do so, on top of having an extremely high-end headphone, but unless you're doing this, you will not hear any differences you are not just imagining.

https://abx.digitalfeed.net/

If you want to test yourself. If you can consistently get 80% or higher, you can hear the difference between the file-types (I've met a couple who can do this pretty well), but there's an extremely high chance you won't.

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audiophile_lurker t1_iswjrur wrote

Everything still sounds better, regardless of the recording being great, good, passing, or horrible. I listen to fair amount of early black metal, and that sounds fine. Classic rock actually tends to sound really nice on likes of HD650 because recordings from that period are really midrange centric, and that is where HD650 shines.

>Would buying one of these headphones just to listen to music on spotify be a waste of money?

Nah, Spotify Premium just straight up sounds great. Most people won't be able to tell it from CD rips.

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