I have never heard a headphone that didn't need EQ, so your strategy doesn't really work in my experience. Even my favorite headphones have things about them that need correcting. Plus, EQ is very easy to apply across devices, takes a minute or two at most if you've already made a profile.

The perfect headphone does not exist. That is why we have the tools to make them into what we want.

It's mostly because they have good extension on both the low and high end, and low distortion overall. So if you get a pair that works (buy Open-Box), you can basically mold them into just about anything you want.

They aren't even that good. 650/6XX in particular have so many issues, it has decent mids and basically nothing else.

The fact that everyone calls them their endgame tells me that they either don't know any better, or don't care about anything other than timbre and mids. Which you can get them just as good in other headphones after EQ.

Nah, they are flawed, even after EQ.

HD600 is about the closest, but your can do so much better than the 650/6XX. They have so many problems with their sound.

Sundara with EQ is a much closer "one and done" purchase.

It's not wasted, it's used for the low-pass filter that is a crucial part off the digital to analog conversion process. If you don't use a low-pass, ultrasonic information left behind will ripple back into the audible band and distort it.

Nope, not quite. We don't have the ability to measure the minute differences accurately enough to make the amount of extremely small changes to do that.

You also can't really fix resonance peaks with EQ, when you try it messes with something about the sound, though I'm way too sleep-deprived it remember.

Otherwise, if we had good enough measurements, we could actually do what you described with a convolution filter, assuming the headphone had low enough distortion.

If I recall, the SE output of Jotunheim 2 is sort of there for convenience, and built mostly around the balanced output.

So for those who talk about balanced audio not making a difference (I am one of those people, it normally doesn't make any difference at all), it does for this specific amp.

HE400SE. The Massdrop ones are terrible and the headband is actual garbage.

This is a Drop product, those things are build like garbo.

Modern Hifiman designs are fine, just buy open-box.

I think the KSC75 sound far better and more natural than 6XX do, despite being 1/10 the cost and having no bass. 6XX are, as far as I'm concerned, mud-fi and a Reddit meme.

I know I'm alone in that opinion on Reddit, but this isn't just my opinion. I just think Reddit has fairly questionable taste and doesn't know any better.

> That's like trying to compare your Anandas head to head with a Focal Utopia

Having heard them, the Utopia isn't anything to write home about. Cost isn't much of an indicator of sound quality after a certain point, and as we can see with the KSC75 versus 6XX, you can charge out the ass for very mid stuff.

EQ helps with the treble issues, but everything else I agree. It's has too many issues.

I bought a pair of KSC75 on a whim since they were on sale, and started to laugh when I realized that they sounded better, haha. No bass is really the only downside to their sound, but everything else is good.

Honestly, if you're going to get Sennies, just get HD600 Marble. Actually good headphone, though overpriced.

Meanwhile I bought Ananda, EQ'd it a little, realized how inferior the 6XX was in pretty much every way, and never really used them again. Well, I do sometimes out of curiosity, then I hear the extremely muddy bass with no control, the recessed treble, the completely closed-in soundstage, and go "Oh right, this is why I don't listen to these," and go back to my Ananda.

They are a beginner trap, because they sound better than the usual commercial garbage.

That's because they are, Meze doesn't have very good sound. They are the absolute top of the line in build and comfort, and not a whole lot else.

Find a FLAC, or at least a very high bitrate copy of Gerudo Valley from the Zelda 30th Anniversary Concert. It can be very hard to find outside of YouTube though, but there are a few websites that are dedicated to preserving that stuff, if you know where to look.

That track is mixed disgustingly well, and has tons of instruments that has fucktons of detail and dynamic range.

The Twilight Princess Medley from that same album is even better, but it's 11 and a half minutes long, so I figured the first would be more readily palatable.

I don't think you would in terms of practicality.

Even when listening really really hard, really dedicated people with extremely high-end stuff only notice once it reaches -55 dB.

I have a hard time noticing HD until it reaches -40 dB of so.

-80 dB distortion is effectively inaudible.

-120 dB distortion is literally impossible to hear.

I know, it was a joke, lol. I was teasing the fact that all of them except the 880 have crazy treble spikes.

Beyers are hardly perfect. DT stands for Death Treble after all.

Because plenty don't change at all, there's nothing confusing about it.

Plenty of devices have a very low output impedance. Assuming it has enough power to drive what you want, they wouldn't sound much different if it's even remotely modern.

Amps have a purpose, but it isn't really what most people seem to think they are for.

It depends on what you're trying to test your transducers for.

Though well-mixed or not wouldn't really affect your source gear, I can't think of any modern amp or DAC that would be affected by genre. Digital signals are well-within the limits of accurate reproduction of any device that wasn't made like garbage.

It's actually pretty well-mixed and everything fits into the frequencies well, but yes, it's very busy.

But BECAUSE it's well-mixed and busy, it's a good measure for it. My Ananda have no issues keeping everything well-defined and separate, and it sounds great. Meanwhile, if I throw my HD6XX in to listen to it, it's suddenly a muddy mess with no definition (Though that's kind of that headphone in general).

> Hifiman have almost identical tuning in most of their headphones

I think what's being said here is that they don't actually have the same tuning. They have the same general TREND of FR, but if you were able to get a good, accurate reading of them, there'd be a ton of differences that change the sound quite a bit.

Plus, our measurements past I think 10 khz aren't very accurate, if I recall. So it gets even worse once you start reaching the treble, which is where a LOT of detail is.

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.