Tenson

The baby Orpheus is the HE 60 and HEV 70 right?? They looked verrry enticing when I saw them on a website. However when I went to read a review it did not do very well at all! Although it was only one review, for some reason there are hardly any proper reviews. I can't find it again now, but I do remember it was a professional magazine review. If anyone has a pair of these I for one, would love to hear a review of them!

I just got back from my pop up to London! I'm keeping the AKG K1000's! ...and I'm going to keep my speakers too, I'm just too weak in will power to say no to either the headphones or the speakers! It may hurt the bank, but what is money compared to happiness, eh? Anyhoo, I demoed Senn HD600, Grado RS2 and STAX Basic System II I don't count the Senn HD600 as a proper listen however as they only plugged up some piece of crap Sony mini system (£595 for the whole system). But despite that they were quite good. Very airy was my main impression. Grado RS2 was a good demo, Linn CD and Project head amp (same for the Stax.) They seemed very detailed and warm, but they just weren?t transparent enough for my taste. Though the soundstage was pretty good. Considering they cost about the same as the K1000's I was not very impressed I have to say. Bass was nice. Finally the Stax. First impression was how bad the build quality was! The clips holding the ear-speakers to the head band felt as if it was going to break under its own weight. The sound on the other hand was the best of the bunch I demoed. Very free and transparent as I expected, accurate sound stage as well. But neither aspects as good as the K1000's. The thing they did do better was they had a smoother midrange and slightly warmer bass. The build quality was what spoiled it. I think I will try adding a PSX-R to my Cyrus in the hope of making it warmer in the bass and less harsh in the highs. Oh and ASK only had the HD590 which they wanted something like £195 for! Guess their prices have gone up! Or you are one great haggler N@Z!?

I have 2 weeks befor I have to send them back... if I am going to. I am going to go up to London this weekend to demo a few others like sen600 grado RS2 beyer 880 and ety 4s etc.. I know there are tons of hi-fi shops on Tottenham Court road, however I dont know where the good places for headphones are. Could anyone recomend a good shop to go to for headphones in London please? Rock on~

Well hello again! They arrived tis evening! Took a bit of fidderling with to get it connected up right, but I now have it on a switch box so I can do A/B test with my speakers. First impressions were that they sounded very good, but did lose out to my speakers. However after about 5 hours playing they have loosened up quite allot! Right now it is sooo hard to chose between them. The phones are a bit more detailed, but not allot. (very detailed speakers) The soundstage is very impressive, although it is not as wide as the speakers it is there, and more wrapped round you rather than in front, which I think I could get used to. Allot better than the left/right soundstage of other headphones I have heard. The biggest impression is that they are veerrry liquid sounding. I think if they continue to run in for another 50 or so hours as they have done in the last 5 hours then they may well be a substitute for my speakers! Impression of friend 'They look like they were put together in 5 minuets from bits of old 60's radios. But when someone puts them oh.. Ooohh its all kinds of funky!' Question: What do you all think would be better, a valve amp in class-A Single ended or a push-pull but operating within the class-A range. I read somewhere that single ended amps sound more blurred. I like detail, but push-pull has the disadvantage of crossover distortion. Thank-ya'll

Come to think of it, my CD player has 2 pairs of phono outputs. As I only use one would it be an idea to terminate the other pair as well as the coaxial? Cheers,

Sounds interesting and worth a go! Can someone confirm the resistor value please? Has anyone tryed this with an Arcam Alpha9? Cheers,

I have put the Asio dll for winamp version 2.XX on my geocities site to make it easy for me to link too. www.geocities.com/fuzzey_door/winamp-asio.zip Just put the dll into the "winamp\plugins\ " directory and it will turn up in the preferances for output plugins. Be warned however that not all soundcards have asio support. Rgds,

I think youy scared saxman away! Prehaps someone wanted to sell them to him and he needed to know if it was a good deal or a ripp off? Or something........

Well, I have sorted a deal out with Meier-audio. Going to buy them, and at the expence of EUR20 I can return them if I am not satisfied with the sound. Just got to sort some money out for the kind people! You lot have been exxxxxxtreemly helpful! So a big THANK-YOU! I will keep you informed on what happens, what I think they sound like etc..

I have not heard the 150's. But as far as I can see they are the next step up from the DT100's. I'd say the DT100 have quite an un-exciting sound to be honest. Good tight and low bass, you can feel the impact. (well when the volume is up high) The highs are fast/crisp, but to me they are also tinny. The midrange is what makes me say they are un-exciting, they lack transparency and detail. However having said that, I think they are designed for studio use much much more than home. The DT100's have very good isolation so that mic's don't pick them up, they are extremely durable, and they can go to frighteningly high sound levels. The gear I feed them with was a computer with a pro soundcard digitally connected to a Yamaha O2R digital mixer desk and then through a MTR 2way headamp. Hope that helps.

No problam with the tube amp part. Will enlist the help of ma dad lol He has lots of experiance building tube gear. Besides planning to use Cyrus as a pre hehe.. Headphone I have heard.. Grado sr60, AKG K55 & K66, Beyer dt100, Audio Technica hm30, Sennheiser HD 25 .. thats all i can think of. I must have used others but I dont remeber them.

Terratec make soundcards equivalent to Audigy Platinum. I presume this came with the soundcard? ....Saxman, it's not worth selling.

Any chance someone could explain too me exactly what X-feed does? I have looked at the 'X-Feed' topic but I got to the end of page 2 and couldn't go on reading If I used this maybe I would be happy with something like the RS-1 or 2 or HD600, Beyer880. I'll go take a trip to London and have a listen. What amps did you say have this X-Feed built in so I can ask to listen to one? *EDIT* Look what headroom said '.....AKG claims that this is because the open design allows acoustic crossfeed to naturally reach the opposite ear.'

Please don't get me wrong, I know you can't get the same from a headphone as you can a speaker, or vice versa. All I wanted was ones that sunds as much like a real soundstage rather than inside the music Thanx for the info on X-Feed i'll look into it.

N@Z can you give me some references as to what you consider bright? What music would you say they are suited too? I have a very broad range, anything from Linkin Park to Rachmaninoff. OK, I have emailed Meier-audio to see what they say about returning them if I don’t like them. I still don't know anywhere I can go to listen to them so what I will probably do is buy them and try them. If I don't like them I can return them at the expense of postage. They work out at £377 and I would expect about £400 with import tax. Which is well within my budget of about £600. I currently listen to music on my Monitor Audio Gold Reference 10 loudspeakers, a Cyrus 3 amp and an Arcam Alpha 9 CD player. Except for recoding sessions when I use phones. Now the idea is to sell my speakers and switch to headphones because I'm fed up of people complaining that I listen too loud. Also if I go to university in a year or so I can't really play a system like that. I think if I do get these I may spend the other money building a nice valve power amp for them. I have built amps before, but only for loudspeakers and I know with a valve amp you need an output transformer to convert the impeadance down. So my question is - Is it possible to skip out the output transformer because of the high impedance of headphones? Sorry if its a bit of a hardcore DIY question. Thank you all!

Kent, England

Okie dokie, will do! I have seen these mentioned here and there. You have got me interested! Are they not discontinued? They are a bit out of my price range, but from what I read they use a normal stereo amp? If that’s right then I can up my money a bit as I can use my Cyrus to power them, rather than spending another £300 or so on a headphone amp. Have you used them? Can you describe the sound? On the AKG site it says $916 and EUR-916 as well! I'm hoping it would be more like £580 in the UK. But I doubt they are that fair Where can I get them in the UK!?!?!?! Or go to listen. Second-hand would be best (for cheapness), do any of you know a good 'resource' for second-hand headphones in the UK? Even somewhere cheeaap I could import from? How muchare they in Singapore? What other headphones are there with speaker-like soundstageing? Good tonality is importiant too me as well. So many questions.. On my travels I also noticed these little (well..big..) gems, Sennhesier Orpheus. Anyone got a pair? http://www.stoneaudio.co.uk/stoneaudio/pro....asp?product=31 BTW Ablaze, great site ya got here! Found it through www.echoloft.com Where did you get the emoticons?

Yes, highly recommended. Prefer AKG myself at the price. They have a bit more clarity, better at acoustic stuff. The A-T's are a bit tougher I think. My experiance is with the 30 somethings.. Sorry I can't remeber the exact model!

How is their soundstage? I was looking at these. I haven’t heard them though. The thing I don't like about headphones as compared to loudspeakers is that the music is beside you rather than in front of you. Are there any headphones that sound more like the music is in front? Also considering the Grado RS-2's Welcome all your feedback!

The distortion is most likely from bad driver compatiblity. Something like the Audigy 1 or 2 platinum should suit. The thing about the 'platinum' is that it has a whole host of connectors on a panel that can slot into the front of the machines 5 1/4inch bay. I expect you would like that as you don’t have to go round the back with a torch to plug ur headphones in To get any better sound quality you really have to spend allot more. The Audigy range all have very good quality for the money. But if you do want to spend the money I would happily recommend the Edirol DA2496 to you. It has an extremely low jitter clock. I recently upgraded from an Audigy 2 Plat to that. Happy listening!~

I find my biggest prob with CD-R quality is that they are not perfectly circular. In my Arcam Alpha9 CD player if I press pause the normal CD will be fine, but with a CD-r it will make a slight 'chopping/scraping' noise. Better CD-R will not do this. Anyone else have this? Its only when it is on pause. Allot of the El'cheapo CD-R's are the same as the top makes like Memorex and TDK. Nero comes with a program called 'Nero CD Speed' which on one of the menu has a CD Info button. This will tell you the 'real' manufacturer of the media. For example this is what it tells me about my Memorex CD-R: Manufacture - Prodisc Code - 97m32s19f Recording Layer - Dye type 9: Short strategy (phthalocyanine) Capacity - 79:59:72 That’s the useful info. If I do the same with some by 'MaxMedia' which were 100CDs for £19 I get exactly the same info. Prodisc make allot of the CD-R's out there. I have not noticed any difference with a different CD writer. Currently I use a AOpen 52x24x52 and burn audio at 24X just to be sure. No probs. Sounds fine at 52x as well. YMMV

If you get a professional 'soundcard' (mostly outboard rack-mount units) Like M-Audio. Then they will always have to use digital-extraction from the CD as the card in the computer does not have anywhere to plug in a analog output from the drive. Also the DAC's are in the out-board unit so they don’t get so much interference. So basically the difference is if you get a better soundcard the CD playback will be better. As long as you use digital extraction. Winamp and Media player both support digital extraction playback.