Thread: headphones
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William Sommerwerck William Sommerwerck is offline
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Default headphones

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:


Why must it be so complicated, Charlie Brown?
Because human hearing is complicated.


And is probably the reason why "critical" listening should
be done over a good set of loudspeakers instead.


It depends on what you're listening for.


Though one would expect a pair of really good electrostatic headphones to

be
superior to any speaker, this is not necessarily true. WHY, I don't know.


Because recordings that are miked and mixed for stereo are done so
with the intention of playing them back in a room with speakers. So
there are room effects and crosstalk (well, crosstalk is a horribly
oversimplified way of thinking about it) created, rather than each
channel directly going into individual ears.


I'm talking about basic sound quality.

Many years ago, when I owned Acoustat Sixes, I was much surprised to find
that -- to these ears -- their basic sound quality was somewhat superior to
my STAX Lambda Signature headphones, which sounded slightly "mechanical" in
comparison. This made little sense, because the STAXes were driven directly
from a STAX transformerless amplifier.